Making a sound play every time a key is pressed during gameplay

Hey all, not sure if this is the place to ask this, but I thought I'd see if some seasoned developers could help me a little.

I was working on making a slight modification to StepMania such that every time a key is pressed during gameplay (i.e. during a song) it triggers a certain sound. The mod is for an experiment on human computer interaction where we'll be testing effectiveness at performing a given task under a variety of conditions.

I was just wondering if anyone had advice on how best to accomplish this. I'm a little bit daunted by the size of this code base and I just don't know where to begin. Cheers!

Is the beat game mode appropriate for what you're doing? In that game mode, when the player hits a note at the right time, a sound tied to the key is played. The simfiles for that mode have to be specially crafted, and I don't think stepmania's editor can make them, and I don't know what editor people use. (I should get nixtrix in here, since he plays beat).

Or do you need something non-musical, where the sounds are unrelated to the song being played, and are just there as feedback that the key was pressed? Something like that can be done through the lua interface, though I don't know how much lag there is.

This is an example of how to do it as a decoration on gameplay:

local fake_key_sounds= {}

local function fake_key_sound_input(event)

	if event.type ~= "InputEventType_FirstPress" then return end

	if fake_key_sounds[event.button] then

		fake_key_sounds[event.button]:play()

	end

end



return Def.ActorFrame{

	Def.Sound{

		File= THEME:GetPathS("Common", "Cancel"), InitCommand= function(self)

			fake_key_sounds.Left= self

		end

	},

	Def.Sound{

		File= THEME:GetPathS("Common", "Coin"), InitCommand= function(self)

			fake_key_sounds.Right= self

		end

	},

	Def.Sound{

		File= THEME:GetPathS("Common", "invalid"), InitCommand= function(self)

			fake_key_sounds.Down= self

		end

	},

	Def.Sound{

		File= THEME:GetPathS("Common", "value"), InitCommand= function(self)

			fake_key_sounds.Up= self

		end

	},

	Def.ActorFrame{

		OnCommand= function(self)

			SCREENMAN:GetTopScreen():AddInputCallback(fake_key_sound_input)

		end

	}

}

(though, actually getting it into a theme in a sane and working way can be difficult for a first timer)

Oh wow, looks like I was totally in the wrong area.

Sounds like lua scripting would fit my purpose, as the sounds will generally be neutral to the songs being played (think a 'ding' or 'buzz') and a little lag won't hurt the cause too badly.

I'll fiddle around for a bit and report back. Thanks so much for the advice!

So would you put the code in Themes\_fallback\Scripts\gameplay.lua?

It just occurred to me that I could probably just run a program in the background that'll accomplish this goal. So maybe that's what I'll try.

If you already know how to do what you want with a separate program, then it's easier to do it that way than to try to do it in stepmania.

The code I pasted was meant as an example that someone who knows the basics of theming could use for reference. It would go in BGAnimations/ScreenGameplay overlay.lua or similar. But using it right would require some care to avoid overriding the normal overlay in the theme.

Awesome, yeah, I'm just going to use SoundPlant to map sounds to keys and then run that in the background. Thanks for helping.