Threads do go off topic, but they shouldn''t be terminated just because the trajectory of the conversation has deviated.

You asked how do you include MOD''s in games, people suggested you use FMod or BASS. You said they kinda sucked. People said use .mp3 or .ogg; a very usuable suggestion, and the most oft employed method. I only joined in the thread because of the MIDI SUCKS comment - and I couldn''t let that one lie. Just because this isn''t the original focus of the thread, doesn''t mean it isn''t any less valid. If any beginner is perusing the forum then it is important that they get a complete picture of the state of musical applications in order to decide which method to utilize. Don''t want anyone using MOD just because someone said MIDI sucks; by the same token we don''t want people using MIDI just because people said MOD sucks. They need to be informed. Besides which, ANY heated discussion on the Music and Forum board is a good thing Keep it going so someone can make their own choice.

quote: Some of you (JAXX and CB) are confusing the hell out of us by talking about the MIDI potential of highend studios.

That because there is so much widespread confusion about how MIDI functions in the modern studio. This applies to gaming music and other applications, and not only to highend studios. You can get a MIDI sequencer and soft-synths / samplers up and running for free.

Well.. lets talk about games then. What good audiosystems do you guys know in games? How are some working solutions made?

It could be that the effects are made with wavs and bgrmusic with mp3 or ogg or something like that... If you use wavs, the controlling of sounds is easy i think. You dont use much processingtime and you can sound as good as the sounds can be. It depends maybe on quality of samples. With mp3 music / sounds can be packed without so much loss in quality. I understood that ogg does the same...

All you need is a procedure to play a wav. Also you would need a method to play a ogg or a mp3. Then these sounds can be used with happening events and they dont have to be thinked more than that. I wonder if polyphony is a problem with effects and music at the same time. Can all cards handle that?

well how would you Protricity do your audiosystem? If you dont like ready libraries and dont like mp3 and wav, what is left? I propably didnt understand your intentions right, but im interested... I really dont think that using mods that use processingtime are a good option. Lets talk about this, and not about what we should / shouldnt talk about, ok .

Xewren

Thank you! Im glad were of that dead subject.
Anyway. I was thinking of using direct X sound.
I hear it has many options for cool realistic sound. (doppler effect and 5.1) and that its rather efficent. Doesn anyone know any pros and cons for DX sound?
Also, is it possible to use mp3, oggs instead of wavs for soundeffects in games? or would that be slower?

AND i never said I didnt like mp3s and oggs.
Are you just trying to annoy me? or was that just a mistake?
Lets try to all be more polite in the future.

oh, oopss.
sorry keep responding..
Cards should be able to handle sound and music polyphony
If you use midi and wav combo, they run completely separate.
If you are using mod or something similar, the whole song SHOULD be processed on one channel leaving all the rest for sounds.
So, I say any card should be able to handle music and wavs together.
Lives - definately, cause they process alot of it onboard.
Others - well, they use the CPU, but still fast enough

Direct Sound is your best choice for writing your own code; not only is it optimizied to hell, it will support hardware acceleration if it exists and will enable future technologies to be integrated seamlessly with your code. However, writing your own MOD player is far from easy. Your best choice is still MOD->WAV->mp3 ( or ogg ) and use that. Unfortunately, the decompression algorithms for compressed formats are not easy, and if you don''t want to use a third-party lib you may have trouble. Maybe, you could extract each atomic repeatable element of your MOD as WAV and sequence these ... ?

quote: Also, is it possible to use mp3, oggs instead of wavs for soundeffects in games? or would that be slower?

Would be slower because using any compressed format will take more processing power than a straight PCM sample. You could convert all sound fx from compressed to PCM on install / runtime ( assuming hard-drive space is no problem. ) Then, you get small distros and processor efficient effects.

Maybe, you could extract each atomic repeatable element of your MOD as WAV and sequence these ... ?

That would be easy in my opinion. One could make the whole song a wav and use some good wave-editor like cool edit. With that the division is more than easy. Its so accurate that the job would be easy and fast.

I dont try to annoy anyone, lol. Im sad if i do.

DirectSound seems to be a good option. I wonder if there are any good tutorials or urls to study it more... I dont know what those cons and pros ment (my poor english), so cant say about that. I guess though that using doppler and 5.1 needs a very special program where they are added. Difficult features are good to master, but maybe we should start with something concrete like making a somehow working audiosystem that is able to play both songs and samples. What do others think?

Xewren

what I meant about mp3/ogg sFX is, can u take a compressed sound file, decompress it to ram during initialization, then play it as PCM during runtime?
mabye I should ask, is there any way to handel and decompress thses files during runtime without using HD?

Im pretty sure it can be done. Why not? But why would you do that? You could use wavs from zips or some other packing algorithm, but doesnt mp3 lose information on packing? you probably cant extract it back to the same it was...

Xewren