Hi Dark, Well, its definitely not beyond reason to create a true 2d side-scroller in audio. Its more than possible provided that the developer uses the correct API and tools which is kind of the catch 22 from a developmental aspect.
What I mean by that is in Microsoft DirectSound you can modify the stereo pan and volume on sounds which generally lends itself to being very accessible to a blind gamer and it works with no special hardware to get the most out of it. Unfortunately, DirectSound is now deprecated , and only provided on Win 7 and Win 8 for backwards compatibility with Windows XP, and even there DirectSound doesn't work correctly on modern versions of Windows. So we have to hunt for a different sound library for games. First, we have Microsoft XAudio2. Aside for a few bugs it is a very nice library, but it has no simple 2d stereo pan controls. Believing that everyone wants 5.1 surround sound if you want to pan a sound in XAudio2 said developer basically has to write a custom wrapper over top of the 5.1 surround sound audio and fake a 2d stereo pan which isn't quite as good as the one in DirectSound.So clearly XAudio2 isn't for everyone thinking of 2d games unless they want to have 3d audio in a otherwise 2d game. Second, the OpenAL audio library has just about everything an audio game developer could want such as custom DSP effects, virtual 3d audio, pitch adjustments, etc but it does not have a simple 2d stereo pan control. Again if a developer wants one it has to essentially be bolted on top of the existing 5.1 surround sound controls which is overkill, and I've tried doing this and because it uses logarithmic roll-off instead of linier roll-off the panning sounds weird to people use to DirectSound. So while a good option not the best choice for 2d games. Finally, the last completely free option is SDL Mixer. Compared to the other two options it is not as good, generally speaking, but it does have 2d stereo panning. In fact it has the easiest pan control of any API I know of. However, the panning isn't as accurate sounding as DirectSound, is either left or right, meaning you can't really make it sound closer or further away so it works but doesn't work here. In short, we just looked at three alternatives for DirectSound, and can't really get what we need. they either go all the way for virtual 3d and 5.1 surround sound, or have a generic pan control so generic that it really isn't well suited to audio games. At least, not as accurate as we are use too. I'm not really sure what the answer is, but it is something of a problem for me as I have a 2d game in development, and I need to find an alternative to DirectSound in order to handle the audio. Using DirectSound is merely a temporary measure, and won't really work beyond Windows 8 anyway. So looking ahead I want to find something that will make it easier for me to develop 2d games and yet still be up to date. Cheers! On 4/13/13, dark <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Tom. > > well as I have said before, my spacial memorization is pretty cruddy, though > > i find a game like shades of doom playable with my usual landmarks method, > still this is a point to considder. > > that being said, as you've pointed out yourself, there is currently no 3D > game in audio, so it'd certainly be worth trying and it might be that a 3D > system with sufficiently advanced navaids is more workable than it sounds, > and even if it requires effort, as with the 2D fps games it might be that > that effort is worth making. > > i'll also point out however, that a true! 2D game in audio is not beyond > complexity either, indeed I think if a game with a propper 2D layout which > took complete advantage of analogue jumps, a full second dimention and > ledges positioned at many different distances above and below the player, > the complexity factor would rise again. > > for example, in a true 2D game it would be necessary to include an indicator > > for the hight of possible reachable ledges which was variable according to > jump distance. Even in something like prince of persia which only really had > > two possible layouts for jump distance, you'd still have to cope with ledges > > one or two levels above or below your character, and of course in a game > like megaman or original monti there would be considderably more since your > > jump hight could cover a very large vertical distance which would require > similar audio indicators. > > Beware the Grue! > > Dark. > > > --- > Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] > If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to > [email protected]. > You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at > http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. > All messages are archived and can be searched and read at > http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]. > If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, > please send E-mail to [email protected]. > --- Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected]. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to [email protected].
