Setting Default Volume for Custom Music Channel

[SwashbucklerXX]

I'm trying to set a nice, comfy music/sound mix for players starting up my game. I have music, sound effects, and a custom "ambience" channel set up. The channel name is ambience and the mixer name is amb.

For music and sfx I can set default values just fine with:

Code: Select all

define config.default_music_volume = 0.75
define config.default_sfx_volume = 0.95

But when I try to do:

Code: Select all

define config.default_amb_volume = 0.5

I get a crash and:

I'm sorry, but an uncaught exception occurred.

While running game code:
File "game/options.rpy", line 71, in script
define config.default_amb_volume = 0.5
File "game/options.rpy", line 71, in script
define config.default_amb_volume = 0.5
File "renpy/common/000namespaces.rpy", line 11, in set
setattr(self.nso, name, value)
Exception: config.default_amb_volume is not a known configuration variable.

My ambience channel is properly set up, works, and has a working slider, so that's not the problem.

I assume this means that I need to use a different method to set a default volume for a custom audio channel, but what method should I use?

[Ocelot]

Your amb mixer is not something inherent to RenPy, and it knows nothing about it. There are no configuration variable tied to your mixer. You need to set volume yourself after you define your channel.

[SwashbucklerXX]

Your amb mixer is not something inherent to RenPy, and it knows nothing about it. There are no configuration variable tied to your mixer. You need to set volume yourself after you define your channel.

Yes. I'm asking how to do the equivalent of setting a normal variable default, but for mixer volume. I suppose I could just manually set the volume at the beginning of my script, but that seems inelegant.

[Ocelot]

Your amb mixer is not something inherent to RenPy, and it knows nothing about it. There are no configuration variable tied to your mixer. You need to set volume yourself after you define your channel.

Yes. I'm asking how to do the equivalent of setting a normal variable default, but for mixer volume. I suppose I could just manually set the volume at the beginning of my script, but that seems inelegant.

This is literally what RenPy does: as long as default preferences weren't initialized, set them to values of predefined variables and set up the flag.

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# 00defaults.rpy
init 1500 python hide:
    if not persistent._set_preferences:
        persistent._set_preferences = True
        # ... skipped ...
        _preferences.set_volume('music', config.default_music_volume)
        _preferences.set_volume('sfx', config.default_sfx_volume)
        _preferences.set_volume('voice', config.default_voice_volume)

[SwashbucklerXX]

Let me see if I can better articulate what I'm looking for. I am new at programming and don't speak the "language" very well even if I understand what's going on.

I have the default volume for Ren'py's native audio channels set in my options.rpy file. Music and sound are groovy and good to go.
I have the default values for other persistent variables found on my preferences screen (such as my explicit text vs. fade to black option for love scenes) set up like you set up defaults for any variable, aka:

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default persistent.explicit_text = True

I'm looking for a line of example code. I know I cannot set my default ambience volume the same way that I set default volumes for the built-in music channels. I want to code a default setting for the ambience slider in preferences, but I want to make sure that if the user changes the slider, their setting becomes persistent and isn't overwritten by my default upon game reload. I'm just looking for how I would properly code that, with a specific example of the proper syntax. It feels to me that it's something I should set as some kind of default persistent variable, but I could certainly be wrong.

[Ocelot]

You can do the same way RenPy already does:

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init python:
    # Check if we already initialized preferences
    if not persistent.initialized:
        # Mark first-time initialization done
        persistent.initialized = True
        # Set volume preference if this is first launch
        preferences.set_volume("amb", 0.7)
        # Setup other default preferences if needed

[SwashbucklerXX]

Thank you, that's what I was looking for!