Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 6.3
Listener position in a third-person game.
With this solution, although there still is the possibility that a sound between the
camera and player will play from the rear speakers, the chance is reduced. And
even though a sound at the player will not play at a distance of zero, it will play
at a closer distance than it would were the listener at the camera. At the very least,
there is no problem with the orientation of the listener, because that will be inher-
ited from the camera. For some games, the correct decision is to always place the
position of the listener at the camera. However, because our particular game heav-
ily featured melee combat, this was not the case for us.
Falloff
Falloff
describes how the volume of the sound decreases as it gets further away
from the listener. It is possible to use any sort of function to represent falloff.
However, because the unit of sound measurement, the
decibel
(dB), is a logar-
ithmicscale,alineardecibelfalloffwouldtranslateintologarithmicbehavior.This
sort of linear decibel function ends up often being the default method, but it cer-
tainly is not the only method.
As with point lights, it is also possible to add further parameters. Perhaps there
could be an “inner” radius where the falloff function does not apply, or an “outer”
radius after which the sound is automatically inaudible. Certain sound systems
even allow the sound designer to create a multipart falloff function that exhibits
different behavior at different distances.
