Does anyone have a config.ini and smoothsw.ini that they use which allows nice swings on heavy blades so that it actually triggers the full swing and also triggers the spin.wavs easily when you swing the saber. I’ve tried editing it myself but it never works, someone out ther must have done this…
spin.wav is still experimental
Do you have #define ENABLE_SPINS in your config file?
Not sure what you mean by “full swing”.
spins work, thats not the issue, the issue is how to make them trigger more, there is a setting in the config inibut doesnt seem to do anything, ProffieOSSpinDegrees default value is 360, i’ve tried 180 and still the same, you have to do a full 360 rotation at max swing speed to triger 1 spin, meaning if you’re not spinning it like darth maul then the spins are gappy. you could make the spins longer to make up for this, but i’ve seen people with the same fonts having an easier time triggering the spins.
I can’t remember what my config is set at, but I’ve found a .4 to .6 second wav file makes for the best compromise when trying to keep up the spin vs it trailing off too long once you’ve stopped.
Example: Mjolnir
It only has to be above the swing threshold, not full speed.
It’s weird that changing it to 180 doesn’t do anything though.
Seems like a bug that should be fixed.
That is probably not how it should work.
Seems like the spin sound should fade out when you stop spinning, even if the file itself is not finished. Basically, we should make the volume more or less proportional to the spin speed…
This sort of stuff is exactly why spins are experimental: Nobody has spent the time to figure out how they should (and should not) work.
That would make sense for the volume to fade. As is, it’s not perfect, but I am pretty happy with how they’ve turned out. I’ve done it on just a few fonts and always making my own spin.wav because it works best with a loop like the hum. I’ve found the ones that the font makers include don’t really do it justice. Looping seems to work best because you can keep it going as you flow and reverse directions even. Maybe still experimental, but also still loads of fun.
I’m just wondering what it is you get from spin.wav that smoothswing doesn’t already give you. If we could figure that out, then maybe we could improve smoothswing instead. (The idea being that smoothswing is a lot more responsive than just triggering a wav file when something happens.)
I personally use spin.wav to add additional accent swings to a long, continuous swing, since the accent swings only trigger once when the speed/accel threshold has been met. Mostly to mask the fact that smoothswings sound kinda jank with sudden stops from high speeds. Maybe if there were a sound that was played if the saber stops too fast, that would provide a kinda trail-off whoomp to mask the sudden smoothswing stop? I never found much use for them elsewise, any other swing detail I need I just put in the smoothswing. I guess if you want a sound to only play at high speeds? like, having a separate smoothswing pair that only plays over a certain speed threshold?
I don’t suppose you could demonstrate this?
It’s not something I was aware of.
Having another smoothswing pair playing at the same time would be hard. A V3 board could probably do it, but V2 boards would run out of sound players. Something to keep in mind for future boards though…
It’s just the sudden stop has always felt a bit unnatural to me. The accent swings keep going after the saber stops and provide a small “gradient” from smoothswing to stop, essentially, but that only works for short slashes and such. The longer swings don’t have that since the accent swing has already played. Having a sound that bridges the gap on a fast stop would kinda ease the sound down instead of the hard stop it does right now.
I see what you mean, even if it doesn’t really bother me. To me it seems like the sound should stop when you stop swinging, but maybe having the option of putting some sort of sound at the end of the swing would be an interesting addition. That would be more an “endswing” sound than a “spin” sound though.
I wonder if it would be enough to just detect large changes in swing speed (swing speed derivative) and boost the volume when that occurs? Or, maybe play both high and low swing pairs for a little bit when that happens?
I also wonder if there is some canon inspiration here. Besides, Maul, who spins their saber(s)?
The Inqusitor sabers spin… But it seems more like you’d need an entirely different smoothswing pair to replicate it, which you have already determined to be unviable.
This clip seems to treat “spinning” completely differently from “swinging”.
For a regular saber, there is no way to know if you’re planning to spin or swing when you start moving the saber, so this kind of thing would be completely impossible to replicate, even in theory…
…unless of course you have a button, and while you hold it you make “spin” sounds and when you release it you make “swing” sounds. This sort of reliance on the wielder is similar to how lockup works (in some props). It makes it possible to perform some cool things that would otherwise be impossible, but at the cost of making the experience less intuitive and immersive for the wielder.
Personally, I make sabers for my own enjoyment (not to perform for other people), so I care more about my own immersion than I do about making it look cool to other people, but different strokes for different folks…
I mean theoretically if you have it switch to the spinning sound after a certain amount of degrees spun, and you’re spinning it fast enough, you probably wouldn’t notice that it started to play the swing sounds initially… But I do agree that it would be a completely different implementation than the current spin.wav. But in fairness, at least in TCW, Maul’s spin sound is played in a similar way, a looping sound that’s played until he stops spinning, it just happens to be closer to the regular swing sound.
I think Maul’s sound is just a “wow” sound played every 180 degrees. Looping would make it play out of sync with the saber, which doesn’t seem right. I’ve been meaning to try that to see what it sounds like, but I haven’t built my Maul saber yet…
They’ve never really lined up with the swings, at least in the animated shows. For instance, in this clip it plays the whoomp sound 3 times when he spins the saber 180 degrees:
While that might be true on tv, I think it would be still be better to line it up when implementing on a real saber. I think it would make the wielder feel more like they are “doing it” as opposed to the saber just playing sounds more or less randomly. The more I feel like I’m controlling it, the better.
A differentiation. Smoothswings are for any movement of the saber irrespective of speed, swings for harder, slashes for max violence. And then spins for fast spinning/spinning flows. I think they are well sorted as is, and I’m not sure I would change much. If I were to change anything, it might be to subdue the volume on the smoothswing a bit while the spin.wav plays. Another example here on SpongeBob. Spin is near the end of the vid.
Note: I’m not explaining to you how they work (obvs). Just how they line up with my immersion/play.
Swings are designed to work the way they did before smoothswing was a thing.
Slashes are a bit of an extension to that.
Both have been available for a while without a define, so I will not change how they work, however, I’m not particularly happy about how they work. I would prefer to have sounds that are as responsive as smoothswing for all of these things.
As mentioned earlier, spins are still experimental, which means two things:
- you need a define to use them
- I may change how they work in the future.
However, if we find that they are great the way they are. (Possibly, for implementing the Maul wow-wow-wow thing) then I would make them non-experimental, and any improvements would have to go into a new effect to keep backwards compatibility.