Audio: Music Manager – Arma Reforger

The Music Manager system, as the name suggests, manages Arma Reforger's music playback.

• The Music Manger itself is implemented from GameCode as a pleacable Entity (MusicManager) and must be present in a world in order to work.
• Prefabs of the Music Manager for different scenarios can be found in Prefabs → Sounds → Music (e.g MusicManager_Campaign.et).
• Within the Music Manager, Music Classes can be added. These music classes inherit either from LocationMusic or ScriptedMusic and signal the Manager when they want to play music.
• The Music Manager handles what music to play based on a priority system.

Properties

Fade Out Settings
Fade out time interruption	Time (in ms) it takes for the current music to fully fade out when interrupted by an in-game event, e.g by a gunshot or explosion.
Fade out time force play	Time (in ms) it takes for the current music to fully fade out when the Music Manager instructs to forcefully play another music.
Music Settings
Time between music	Time (in s) of rest between finishing a track and starting the next one. Does not apply when forcefully playing music.
Min interruption volume	Minimum volume of an "interruption event" required to stop the currently playing track.
Music (Array)	Array of all Music classes.

Music Classes

LocationMusic

Properties
Acp	.acp file to play the sounds/music from.
Priority	Priority of the music.
Interruptible	Whether or not it can be interrupted by "interrupting" in-game events.
Time between repeats	Time (in s) of rest between finishing a track and starting the next one.
Category	See Categories

The primary use case for the LocationMusic class is it to play music based on the player's location, using the SoundMap:

SoundMap	Sound Events
EForestProperty	SOUND_FOREST
ESeaProperty	SOUND_COASTLINE
ECityProperty	SOUND_VILLAGE

ScriptedMusic

Properties
Acp	.acp file to play the sounds/music from.
Music Name	Name of the Sound Event
Priority	Priority of the music.
Interruptible	Whether or not it can be interrupted by "interrupting" in-game events.
Time between repeats	Time (in s) of rest between finishing a track and starting the next one.
Category	See Categories

As the name suggests, ScriptedMusic is used in order to play specific tracks / Sound Events under specific conditions. These conditions are directly scripted in the respective child of ScriptedMusic itself.

Example: SCR_RespawnMusic contains the logic to play the respawn music upon entering the deployment screen.

The most straightforward way of accessing the MusicManager within a ScriptedMusic class looks as follows:

override void Init() { ChimeraWorld world = GetGame().GetWorld(); if (!world) return; m_MusicManager = world.GetMusicManager(); if (!m_MusicManager) return; }

Categories

The Music Manager system features (hardcoded) Categories. Categories can be assigned for each Music class in its Category section. The Category system is used to mute all tracks belonging to a category, using the MuteCategory() and ServerRequestMuteCategory() methods.

List of available categories:

• Ambient
• Menu
• Misc
• USER1
• USER2
• USER3

Music Interruption

Music can be Interrupted by in-game events if:

• the event's volume is equal to or exceeds the value defined in "Min interruption volume" and
• the music's "Interruptible" flag is set to true.

These in-game events are hardcoded in GameCode and currently consist of weapon shots and explosions using ExplosionEffect. How long it takes for the music to fully fade out when interrupted is defined in the Music Manager's "Fade out time interruption" attribute.

ACP Setup

Music generally does not require any specific .acp setup, but any sound node must link into the Mixer's "Music" port.