Recent events have lead to a test concerning OpenAL audio drivers in NAB. While the Galaxy drivers certainly did their job, they were a little low quality, and had been ham-handedly modified by NAB’s developers in such a way that broke support for Unreal’s built-in music engine. UMX files could not be loaded or played in NAB. The developers of course, rather than fixing their mistake, worked around it, making NAB’s music CD-based.
I am now pleased to report after testing it myself that not only has this issue been resolved by the new beta OpenAL drivers, .ogg file import is also possible, meaning you are not limited to the constraints of tracked audio files when it comes to the music system. You can use any number of the in-engine transitions to cleverly blend pieces of music in levels, and create immersive and evolving audio experiences. Basically, if you ever wanted music in your training course, or maybe wanted to make a gametype with scripted musical arrangements depending on the circumstances at the moment, you can with these drivers.
It’s very exciting, and I have many plans for this feature. I’ve been practicing my soundtracking skills by creating some music inspired by the events of Infiltration, the only NAB content to use an (albeit hacky) original soundtrack. I’ve re-imagined parts of what was there, and developed songs that I’d use if I was ever to do it all over again and start from scratch a few years wiser. And who knows, with all the news regarding these interesting features, maybe one day I will…
Hear my work at the link below:
https://soundcloud.com/rajadanab/sets/infiltration
A lot of image editing programs do not allow me to sort the indexed color palletes of NAB’s textures in such a way that masking will work properly. While this can be remedied with some tricks or by using Gimp (a free image editor that I recommend for NAB development specifically) to mask out flat back backgrounds, I have to admit that this particular incorrect pallete looks rather neat.
