Sounds: How Are They Used In Games?

[Darkness_Falls]

Okay, who has experience implementing sounds in games? I'd like to know how the sound files should be created/structured as far as the length of sound snippets go and how transitions are accomplished.

 

I'm more referring to ambient sounds and music, than I am sound effects. Sound effects are pretty simple, I assume they just get triggered by the object that's supposed to make the noise

 

But how do games go from one ambient track to another without there being a discernable clip in the audio? Well, I have played games where there's an obvious cut from one track to another... but we should try to avoid this as much as possible.

 

I figure sound files get mapped into the map and as the player goes through the map the different ambiences occur. But what if you want a really creepy and melodic ambience in one area of the map and something more lighthearted in another section... but you want the transition between the two to be smooth? What do you do? Are separate transitionary (in-between) sound tracks created to accomplish this, or do most games just cut the track completely over to the new track without any care to how smooth the transition is?

 

I'm just trying to better understand how sounds will be implemented to help me when I create sound files.