Adding Sounds

It is easy to add sounds to your game.

Sound Files

The first step is to actually get hold of some sound files. By default, Quest will expect MP3, and generally this is the best format to use, as it is general-purpose, well-compressed and pretty much every browser can cope with it.

Bear in mind that music and sound effects can be subject to copyright, but there are numerous sites on the internet offering copyright-free files, though generally you do have to give an e-mail address to log in before you can download anything. One definitely to look at is "Sound Image", which is free and Eric, the guy who runs the site, knows Quest at least to some degree. Just remember to credit him!

If you are creating your own, I vey much recommend Audacity. It is free and open-source, and will let you export to MP3.

Grab all the files you want and put them into a folder called "audio", in your game folder.

NOTE: Some file systems are case-sensitive and some are not. Windows, for example, is not case-sensitive, and you may find that sounds work fine on your computer, but not when uploaded. The reason could be because the file name is all lowercase, but you have written it with a capital in your code. I recommend being careful and getting it right from the start.

Tell Quest about your files

You have to tell Quest what files you will use in advance. This means listing them in settings.js by assigning them to settings.soundFiles.

settings.soundFiles = [
  'Bells4',
  'Coins3',
  'Light-Years_V001_Looping',
  'Theyre-Here_Looping',
]

If you gave your folder a different name, you can tell Quest here, or if you are using a different file format. Note the folder needs a slash after it, and the extension needs a dot before it.

settings.soundsFolder = 'sounds/'
settings.soundsFileExt:'.mp3'

If you are using a mix of formats, set the extension to an empty string.

settings.soundsFileExt:''
settings.soundFiles = [
  'Bells4.mp3',
  'Coins3.mp3',
  'Light-Years_V001_Looping.mp3',
  'Theyre-Here_Looping.wav',
]

Adding sounds to your game

Quest understands two types of acoustics: sound and ambient. In both cases, the function requires the relevant file name.

A sound is relatively short, and it runs once (but you can call the function more than once to have it repeat).

sound('Bells4.mp3')

An ambient is continuous; background music or noise. When you start a new ambient, the old one will terminate. As it is part of the background, you might want it to play quieter, so ambient takes an optional second parameter, the volume from 0 (silent) to 10 (full volume, the default). Use ambient with no parameters to stop the current ambient.

ambient('Theyre-Here_Looping.wav')
ambient('Light-Years_V001_Looping.mp3', 5)
ambient()

SILENT command

Note that the SILENT command will turn off sounds. More specifically, it will terminate any ambient, but not on-goings sound, and will prevent either from starting. Typing SILENT a second time will allow any new sound and ambient to start.