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Possibility of changing verge's sound system? Displaying 1-11 of 11 total.
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adderd
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There's been talks on IRC about potentially changing verge's sound system. FMOD has given some people problems, is limited in functionality, and is non released under an agreeable license. I would like to use DUMB ( http://dumb.sourceforge.net/index.php?page=news) and SDL for the sound system. SDL can access the audio hardware and play WAV files and DUMB will play several music formats. DUMB also supports more advanced functionality than FMOD (at my first glance.) There are talks of using DUMB to do things like smooth fade from one song to another even partway into each song. Switching to DUMB should releave some licensing concerns and provide verge with a better music library.
What do all of you think? Does anyone have any other suggestions?
Posted on 2006-02-06 20:48:55
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G-Flex
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As far as audio libraries go, I heard from a knowledgable friend of mine that DUMB is kind of slow and not that great, although I have no experience in this myself, and he recommends SDL.
As far as what can play what kind of file, that's more a matter of codecs than audio libraries. Granted, I don't know much about this kind of stuff, but I don't think there's any reason that, say, SDL, couldn't be used for just about everything, as long as the appropriate codecs and related things are included.
I'm sure someone here knows about this kind of stuff more than I do and can make some sense out of what I'm saying.
Posted on 2006-02-07 21:00:43
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Omni
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Pardon my ignorance, but isn't Audiere another potential sound library?
Posted on 2006-02-07 21:37:42
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CrazyAznGamer
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FMOD is used a lot for a reason, I believe. I mean, why else would so many games use FMOD...
On the second thought, there's a chance that it's only because they want to copy/paste code from one game to another (note: football games... ahem) and they're just used to FMOD. But I digress.
FMOD does seem more professional, and possibly faster, than most other sound systems.
I'm not discouraging other sound systems though. In fact, I'm happy if it works.
I dunno about the codecs. How exactly does SDK use them anyhow? (If it forces people to install codecs into their computer, then it would be mighty unattractive, at least in my opinion)
Many sound features (take sound fade for instance) should be easily scriptable via VC. In that case, a simple sound library should suffice for most needs.
Posted on 2006-02-07 21:53:16
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adderd
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SDL actually supports playing MP3, MOD, S3M, and I believe IT files. So it can basically play the same file formats as FMOD. Maybe it's not quite as feature rich in some ways as FMOD though. SDL_mixer allows arbitrary numbers of channels so it can be used to help crossfade from one song (in one channel) to another song (in a different channel).
Personally, FMOD has been working for me so I'm not going to go out of my way to volunteer to replace it right now. ;-) I'm just putting some options out there. I hadn't heard of Audiere so I'll have to check it out.
Quote: Originally posted by G-Flex
As far as audio libraries go, I heard from a knowledgable friend of mine that DUMB is kind of slow and not that great, although I have no experience in this myself, and he recommends SDL.
As far as what can play what kind of file, that's more a matter of codecs than audio libraries. Granted, I don't know much about this kind of stuff, but I don't think there's any reason that, say, SDL, couldn't be used for just about everything, as long as the appropriate codecs and related things are included.
I'm sure someone here knows about this kind of stuff more than I do and can make some sense out of what I'm saying.
Posted on 2006-02-07 22:10:20
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Omni
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As an aside, apparently Audiere just recently incorporated DUMB for its MOD-decoding.
http://audiere.sourceforge.net/
Posted on 2006-02-07 23:42:18
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adderd
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Audiere's website has info about their transition from MikMod to DUMB. It seems that dumb has more features but takes 5x the processor power to play a MOD. Also, DUMB can play mods on either endian (and so would work on macs) while MikMod cannot.
I don't like mods and would rather just find stuff for playing MP3's but I know there are probably a lot of MOD fans around here.
Audiere seems nice though. It's something to look into seriously. Plays MP3's too.
Posted on 2006-02-09 10:53:14
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Interference22
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You're forgetting Ogg Vorbis support. Any sound library without it is out of the question these days. Ogg provides superior compression and none of MP3s liscensing woes. I use it excessively.
A new library would need to support:
MOD
IT
S3M
XM
WAV
MP3
OGG
Mind you, support for OGG compressed XM files (.OXM) is fairly nifty too, something which FMOD supports quite comfortably. From your average Verger's point of view, FMOD seems quite adequate.
Posted on 2006-02-09 19:14:23
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vecna
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Well there's ups and downs.
the sound system is pretty much fully abstracted, so it would be easy to change.
However, personally, I don't see why anyone would want to use something other than FMOD.
It supports every format under the sun. It's free for our purposes. It exists on every platform in existence, including MacOS, linux, and PSP, and has BEEN TESTED on those platforms extensively, in commercial products. Its fast and does everything I'd want it to.
If I was going to change the sound system, I guess I might consider changing it to FMOD Ex tho :D
All told, it seems other areas of development would be of a lot more benefit to verge than spending resources changing the sound system to comply with license ideals.
But I'm not inherently opposed to it, as I said, its all abstracted in the win_sound interface so whatever.
Posted on 2006-02-09 22:08:28
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adderd
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Yeah I'm not too sure that changing it would be best I just thought that I'd bring it up to see what everyone thought. It was an idea that got tossed around. Maybe it should be tossed out...
FMOD has seemed to work pretty well for me so far except that it segfaults in linux while playing OGG files.
Posted on 2006-02-10 10:48:02
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Interference22
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Like I said, the sound system is pretty much fine as it is. All VERGE really needs now from my perspective is the ability to blit images onto CHR frames at runtime (paperdolling, as it's known) and it shall reach a state of Zen-like perfection.
...please.
Posted on 2006-02-23 17:46:57
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Displaying 1-11 of 11 total.
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