Audio

Sound brings a game to life. In Renzora you can attach sounds to objects, play music and effects from your scripts, and balance everything in a friendly visual mixer — no audio engineering degree required.

This page walks you through the basics. When you need the deep technical details, the Scripting API has the full reference.

How sound works

Audio plays both in the editor and in your exported game. Renzora can play these file types out of the box:

Format	Use it for
.ogg	Music and long clips (small file size, streams from disk)
.mp3	Music (small file size, plays almost anywhere)
.wav	Sound effects (plays instantly, no delay)
.flac	High-quality source audio

A simple rule of thumb: OGG for music, WAV for sound effects.

One thing to know: audio works on Windows, Linux, and macOS, but not in the web (browser) build. If you export to Web, sounds, the recorder, and the mixer are turned off.

Adding a sound to an object

To make an object in your scene play a sound, give it an AudioPlayer component.

In the editor:

1. Select your object in the scene.
2. In the Inspector, click Add Component and choose AudioPlayer.
3. Set the Clip field to your sound file (for example audio/jump.wav).
4. Turn on Autoplay if you want it to start the moment the game runs.

That's the whole setup for a basic sound. The most common settings you'll reach for:

Setting	What it does
Clip	The sound file to play
Volume	How loud it is (1.0 is normal)
Pitch	Higher = faster/squeakier, lower = slower/deeper
Looping	Repeat the clip over and over
Autoplay	Start automatically when the game runs
Bus	Which mixer channel it plays through (more on this below)

There are more advanced options too — random clip pools, volume/pitch jitter, fades, and reverb. See the Scripting API for the complete list of fields.

Making sound feel 3D

Turn on the Spatial option and a sound will come from the object's position in the world — louder up close, quieter far away. Great for campfires, machines, or chatting NPCs.

Set Spatial Min Distance to roughly the size of the thing making the sound (a campfire ~3 m, a whisper ~0.5 m), and Spatial Max Distance to how far it should still be heard.

Don't forget the ears! Spatial sound is silent until something in the scene is listening. Add an AudioListener component to your camera (or your player). It is not added for you automatically.

Playing sounds from a script

You can also trigger sounds with code. The same functions work in Lua, Rhai, and visual Blueprints, so use whichever you prefer.

function on_ready()
    play_music("audio/main_theme.ogg", 0.6, 1.5)  -- file, volume, fade-in seconds
end

function on_update()
    if is_key_just_pressed("Space") then
        play_sound("audio/jump.ogg")   -- play a quick sound effect
    end

    if is_key_just_pressed("Return") then
        play_audio()                   -- fire this object's AudioPlayer
    end
end

The handful of functions you'll use most:

Function	What it does
play_sound(path)	Play a one-shot sound effect
play_music(path)	Start a looping music track
stop_music()	Stop the music
play_audio()	Trigger this object's AudioPlayer (uses its 3D and random-clip settings)

Music does not crossfade — starting a new track stops the old one right away (with an optional fade-in).

Rhai can play audio too, but with simpler function signatures, and the keyboard-input functions shown above are Lua-only. For the full list of audio functions and the small Lua/Rhai differences, see the Lua scripting guide and the Scripting API.

The mixer

The Mixer panel is your audio control board. Every sound flows through a "bus" — a channel you can adjust on its own — so you can turn music down without touching your sound effects, for example.

Renzora starts you with four buses:

• Master — controls everything at once.
• SFX — your sound effects.
• Music — background music.
• Ambient — environmental loops like wind or rain.

On each channel strip you can drag the fader to set volume, turn the Pan knob to move it left or right, and use M (mute) and S (solo) to quickly silence or isolate a channel. Need more channels? Type a name in the New bus box on the right and click Create, then point an AudioPlayer's Bus field at it.

Bus volumes are set here in the Mixer, not from scripts. Advanced users can also add effects (FX) to a bus and even pipe in a live microphone — see the Scripting API for those features.

Recording and cinematics

Two more panels live alongside the mixer:

• Record — a timeline for recording and arranging audio clips.
• Sequencer — a cinematics tool for scripting camera moves and timed events, saved as a .renseq file.

These are optional tools for more advanced projects; you don't need them to add sound to a game.

Tips

• Use several clips for repeated sounds. Footsteps and impacts sound more natural with a few variations and a little pitch/volume randomness.
• OGG for music, WAV for sound effects. OGG keeps music files small; WAV plays with zero delay.
• Always add an AudioListener to your camera, or 3D sound will be silent.
• Pre-place your audio objects with Autoplay off, then trigger them from a script to avoid hitches when the sound first loads.