Content

Sounds

# sounds/ambient.yml
chime:
  file: bells/chime    # assets/sounds/bells/chime.ogg. Defaults to the id.
  category: ambient    # which volume slider it obeys
  subtitle: "A chime rings"
  volume: 1.0
  pitch: 1.0
  stream: false        # true for anything long
  length: 2.4          # seconds. Only needed by something that loops it

These are real sound events, not a file played at somebody. They obey the volume sliders, they carry subtitles, they can be stopped by category, and any plugin or command that takes a sound key takes mypack:chime.

The file#

Ogg Vorbis only. An mp3 renamed to .ogg is silence in game with nothing to say why, so a missing or wrong file is a build error naming the path.

file: is relative to assets/sounds/ and defaults to the ID, so a sound called chime finds assets/sounds/chime.ogg with nothing pointing at it.

stream: true for anything long — music, ambience over about ten seconds. A streamed sound is decoded as it plays instead of held in memory, which is what stops a five-minute track costing every player who hears it.

Length, and why anything loops#

length: is how long the file runs, in seconds, and it exists for one reason: Minecraft has no looping sound. A sound event is a one-shot, so anything that plays continuously is the server playing a short file again the moment it ends — a vehicle's engine note, today.

Nothing here can measure your file, so this is you telling it. Leave it out and a vehicle plays the sound once when it enters that state; write it (any audio player will tell you the figure) and the sound loops for as long as the state lasts. Nothing else reads it, and a wrong figure is a gap or an overlap rather than an error.

Categories#

category: decides which slider in the audio settings turns it down.

Pick the one a player would expect to reach for. Somebody who turns music down has said something about your ambient track too.

Subtitles#

  subtitle: "A chime rings"

Write one. Without it your sound does not exist for anybody playing with subtitles instead of audio, which is more people than most server owners expect — and it costs one line.

Playing one#

/rp sounds                     every sound this server holds
/rp sound mypack:chime         play it at yourself
/rp sound mypack:chime Steve   at somebody else

From an item action:

      - sound: mypack:chime 1 1.2     # id, volume, pitch

A vanilla key works there too — minecraft:block.anvil.land — so an action can reach the whole vanilla sound set without you redeclaring any of it.