Waves - Ambient Mode
This is something silly I put together quickly which I initially called “Pretentious mode” because of all the “Art” games that think having a substandard shooter is OK if all your sound effects are musical (It’s not. Do some work and make a good shooter as well).
It’s an audio setting not a new game mode where all the existing game sounds get replaced by a musical instrument playing a random note in the pentatonic scale. Depending on the length of the original sound it either plays a Glockenspiel, a piano or an ambient Lustmord-like drone.
It really highlights the 64 voice limit in Unreal which you can hit just by firing the gun at the arena wall so you should be getting about twice as many sounds playing when you get a big explosion but sadly the engine it says no.
Once I remember how to do Steam updates (it being over 7 months since the last one) I’ll probably throw this up as a free update for Waves which you’ll be able to access in the audio settings.
Leenuyth
July 30, 2012 @ 8:57 pm
Haha “Pretentious mode” was the perfect name.
I just tried it and that was really funny ! But annoying as well when you play too long. I prefer the original audio settings with nothing to waste the awesome music.
Thanks for that anyway, it made me laugh 🙂
August 11, 2012 @ 7:00 pm
That was the idea! I always remember the days in “serious” game dev where we’d have an idea we thought was funny and we even implemented it fora laugh but it never went into the full game because we had to be all Serious Face about everything. Modern games need more things like Big Head or Ragtime mode.
Valzi
July 31, 2012 @ 4:05 am
It amazes me that you’re still updating this game for free. I love this game and the update provides some interesting (not great) variety. Thanks for being so supportive of the Waves community! It’s like you’re making mods for your own game for free.
Seth
August 5, 2012 @ 8:29 pm
How about pentatonic minor, for a more sad feel?
Mark
August 20, 2012 @ 3:56 pm
This was a great way of re-highlighting this game on my steam account. I had a lot of fun rediscovering this game. Is there any chance that the waiting music before a mode is picked can be accessed during actual gameplay? ><
Alex
August 30, 2012 @ 6:56 pm
I don’t think this patch was related, since the issue just started today. But I’ve been getting some hard lockups whenever I try to play Waves. I made a post on the Steam forums, which you can find here: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?p=32616334#post32616334
In short, the game will make it all the way to mode selection without a hitch. But once I start a game, it’ll last about a half second as per normal, then the screen will start getting artifacts, and then the game locks up completely. The only way out is for me to completely reboot my computer.
I left more information (and a non-crippling sound bug) in that Steam forums post. Could you please look into this?
Alex
September 1, 2012 @ 5:33 pm
Disregard this, turns out it was a hardware issue.
d1no
September 4, 2012 @ 3:08 am
Hello, it seems that the game has a bug. When the score multi reaches x999, no bomb is given any more(so I die immediately after x999 😉 I’m not 100% sure about this since it’s very hard to reproduce the x999. Hope you can investigate this. thx.
Tom Mooney
September 25, 2012 @ 7:03 pm
I do not get that ambient music feature via steam… how come?
September 25, 2012 @ 7:10 pm
It has to be enabled in the audio settings. If it isn’t there then try verifying the content on steam as it sounds like you haven’t got the most up to date version.
Tom Mooney
October 2, 2012 @ 12:55 pm
Oops, yep, it’s there in Settings for Audio, sure enough.