FootstepsExtended

A footstep audio plugin for Virt-a-Mate. Detects when a Person atom's feet make contact with surfaces and plays surface-appropriate sound samples — boots on wood, bare feet on carpet, sneakers on concrete, and so on.

Credits: the original Footsteps plugin and audio samples are by SPQR (CC BY 4.0). This package is a rework of that plugin maintained by Lapiro. All footstep audio shipped here originates from SPQR's library. See LICENSE for full attribution.

Features

• 24 built-in surfaces — boots, barefoot, socks, sneak, carpet, concrete, dirt, grass, gravel, gritty, hard, heels (×5), ice, squeaky, step, wood (×3), and more
• Per-foot audio sources — Unity AudioSource components attached directly to the lFoot / rFoot rigidbodies. No scene clutter, no extra atoms to clean up
• 3D spatial audio — sounds play from the foot's actual position with proper distance falloff
• Pitch jitter — small random pitch variation (default ±15%) per step so repeated samples don't sound mechanically identical
• Per-foot cooldown — left and right feet have independent cooldowns so a double-foot landing fires both sounds
• Anti-double-fire global gap — small global guard (default 0.1s) absorbs Unity's same-frame ripple collisions so one impact doesn't accidentally fire on both feet
• Live step indicators — separate Left Foot / Right Foot status boxes flash green on each step
• Test buttons — fire either foot manually so you can A/B sound surfaces without walking the character
• EventTriggers — wire arbitrary VaM actions to fire on Any Step / Left Step / Right Step (e.g. spawn a particle, run a Timeline trigger)
• Custom samples — drop your own .wav or .mp3 files into any surface folder, or create new surface folders, no code changes required (see Adding your own sounds below)
• Debug log toggle — verbose timestamped diagnostics for troubleshooting collision detection or audio playback

Install

1. Drop Lapiro.FootstepsExtended.<N>.var into your VaM AddonPackages/ folder
2. In VaM, on a Person atom: Plugins tab → Add Plugin → pick Lapiro.FootstepsExtended → Footsteps.cslist
3. In the plugin UI, pick a surface from the Sounds dropdown
4. Walk the character around (or click Test Left / Test Right to verify it works)

UI

LEFT (sound output)            RIGHT (collision & dispatch)
─────────────────────          ─────────────────────────────
Sounds: [boots ▾]              Impact Min      0.05
Volume          0.50           Impact Max     10.00
Pitch           1.00           Cooldown        0.30
Pitch Jitter    0.15           Min Step Gap    0.10
Spatial Blend   1.00           Trigger On Step
[ Test Left  ]                 Trigger On Left
[ Test Right ]                 Trigger On Right
☐ Debug log                    ┌── Left Foot  ──┐
                               └────────────────┘
                               ┌── Right Foot ──┐
                               └────────────────┘

Control	What it does
Sounds	Pick a surface, or "None" to disable audio (collision detection still runs)
Volume	AudioSource volume scale (0–2)
Pitch	Base pitch (0.5–2). Tune for character size — smaller character → slightly higher
Pitch Jitter	Random ±N pitch variation per step (0–0.3). Keeps repeated samples from sounding identical
Spatial Blend	0 = stereo (always centered), 1 = fully 3D-positioned at the foot
Test Left / Test Right	Manually fire a step on the chosen foot. Bypasses cooldown
Impact Min / Max	Velocity range that counts as a step. Below Min: too soft. Above Max: probably a glitch
Cooldown	How long after a step before THE SAME foot can fire again
Min Step Gap	Tiny global gap after any step. Absorbs Unity's same-frame ripple collisions
Trigger On Step / Left / Right	Open VaM's trigger editor — wire any VaM action to fire on a step
Debug log	When on, every key event prints to VaM's message log with timestamps

Adding your own sounds

Audio lives at Custom/Sounds/FootstepsSFX/<surface>/*.wav (or *.mp3) inside the package. The plugin auto-discovers everything at load time:

• Add samples to an existing surface — drop new .wav or .mp3 files into the surface's folder, then re-pick that surface from the dropdown. Naming doesn't matter; any .wav or .mp3 file is picked up
• Add a new surface — create a new folder under FootstepsSFX/, drop in your samples, reload the plugin. The new surface appears in the dropdown
• Replace samples — just overwrite the files. Re-pick the surface to flush the cache

Sample length isn't enforced, but anything much longer than ~1s will overlap with subsequent steps when picked, which usually sounds wrong. Aim for 0.2–0.5s per sample.

Project layout

Project_Footsetps/
├── Footsteps.cslist                    # plugin manifest (paths relative to release root)
├── src/
│   ├── Footsteps.Core.cs               # fields, Init, lifecycle (Update / OnDestroy / OnAtomRename / GetJSON / ...)
│   ├── Footsteps.UI.cs                 # storable callbacks, filter parsing
│   ├── Footsteps.Audio.cs              # AudioSource attach, surface/clip discovery, playback
│   ├── Footsteps.Triggers.cs           # collision detection, trigger firing, foot-side dispatch
│   ├── Helpers/
│   │   └── TriggerCollide.cs           # Unity MonoBehaviour for collision events
│   └── lib/
│       └── MacGruber_Utils.cs          # MacGruber's UI / EventTrigger helpers
├── Sounds/FootstepsSFX/                # all sample audio (each surface in its own folder)
├── .github/
│   ├── meta.template.json              # template baked into the .var as meta.json
│   └── VAM_VERSION                     # current package version (integer)
├── build-release.ps1                   # git archive HEAD → sibling release folder
├── build-package.ps1                   # release → meta-staged → zipped .var → AddonPackages
├── LICENSE
└── README.md

The four Footsteps.*.cs files declare partial class Footsteps : MVRScript — they compile as a single class. The split is purely organizational.

Credits

• SPQR — original Footsteps plugin and all bundled audio samples, licensed CC BY 4.0. Patreon
• MacGruber — MacGruber_Utils.cs (UI / EventTrigger helpers)
• geesp0t — collision-trigger reference (per upstream credits)
• AcidBubbles — collision groundwork (per upstream credits)
• Lapiro — this rework

License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) — see LICENSE for full attribution.