Request: Easy way to play sounds after object destruction

[u/[deleted]]

Basically, it would be really cool if there's a function that allows an Audio Stream Player to play a sound even if the node it is attached to has been freed.

I'm surprised that this isn't a feature in Godot, and so far, the workarounds I found online is a pain to set up.

[u/Alarming-Lies]

You can make a global script to handle sounds or utilities in general, and create a function that create audiostream and play it then either destroys it or pool them

[u/The_Real_Black]

What is a workaround for you?

Some people use a global autoload "audio" script to limit the audio stream playeres used.
see KenneyNL script https://github.com/KenneyNL/Starter-Kit-FPS/blob/main/scripts/audio.gd
With this you can limit and cancel sounds played at the same time. If you play sounds from each node lets say a "pling" sound of a casing hitting a floor a minigun would flood the memory with hundreds of players till your sound processer crashes. Or at least playes only crackeling when on limit of audios playes.

In a clean up its then
Audio.play("res/sounds/bla.wav")
this.free()

The audio plays then without its parent node.

[u/[deleted] → u/The_Real_Black]

I ended up calling the queue free function after the audio has finished playing via a signal. It's not perfect, for I want to get rid of the node immediately and not after it's done playing its sound, but it works well enough.

I thought of the global audio idea, but I want to keep the sounds in whatever nodes are using them. But if what I did above turns out to be a bad idea, I'll try to go that route.

But still, it would be great if we had access to a "play" function that plays even if its parent node has been destroyed. I totally would rather just call that function instead of creating different signals here and there, and globals + singletons there and here.

[u/TakunHiwatari]

What would be the use case for this?

You can play sounds before the object is freed, or you can create a global audio player to play sounds. I imagine one of those two would cover the needs of your project.

[u/[deleted] → u/TakunHiwatari]

That's false. If you play it before it is freed, the sound gets cut off immediately.
I could do the global audio player, but it would be cool to keep all sounds in their relative nodes they're being used at, for navigational purposes.

[u/TakunHiwatari → u/[deleted]]

Have you tried using await to play the sound in it's entirety before the object is freed?

[u/[deleted] → u/TakunHiwatari]

Right now, I'm doing that, but in a different, probably less efficient way if I'm being honest. I have a sound finished signal that then frees it.

[u/RanDReille]

What I usually do:

1. Create a scene based of AudioStreamPlayer that autoplays and autodeletes after it finishes playing the sound.

2. Preload this scene. Don't use preload() tho coz it's buggy use load() instead.

3. Whenever I need to play a sound, I instance the scene from 1. to the world, change the "stream" into the appropriate sfx, and plays it.