Hi Dark, Actually, cross-platform audio really isn't a big problem. Not as big as it use to be a few years ago. Thank the developers over at Firelight Technologies for making such a great audio API called FMOD Ex. Right now FMOD Ex is the leading audio API for game developers, and best of all it runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux. There are comercial builds for Play Station, XBox, and other platforms as well but I don't want to know what it would cost to license those special versions for game consoles. Lol!
Anyway, these days cross-platform audio isn't a problem. Slightly expensive, but with the right API like FMOD Ex you can get the same quality of audio output and features as XAudio2, DirectSound, OpenAL,or any of the other audio APIs out there. FMOD offers 2d stereo panning,virtual 3d positioning, and so on. It offers lots of cross-platform DSP effects such as echo, low pass filters, pitch changes, etc. If that wasn't enough to ice the cake it supports a number of file types such as wav, mp3, aif, flak, wma, and ogg out of the box. All be it some proprietary formats like wma are only available on Windows builds not Linux. Of course, since ogg is supported on Mac, Linux, and Windows that's the ideal compression to use for large sound files like music and background ambience. Basically, we've decided to begin using and licensing FMOD Ex for our future titles for this reason. Streemway is nice, but its not cross-platform. FMOD litterally has everything we need and supplies top quality audio for every platform we can see developing games for in the future. Plus saves us time writing a library that wraps OpenAL with similar features to load and decompress mp3s, ogg, wma, etc. FMOD has got it all already. No need to duplicate the work ourselves. So the next generation G3D engine as well as our free open source projects will be based on FMOD Ex for audio. Smile. On 4/18/11, dark <d...@xgam.org> wrote: > I must confess Tom I got this wrong as well, sinse I assumed that as the > game was going to becross platform and textual, sounds and music would be at > a minimum sinse I know there are issues replicating sounds on various > platforms, eg, whether using direct x or some other component in playback, > positioning etc. > > Glad to here it though, it'll add a lot to the games' overall ambience. > > Beware the grue! > > Dark. > > > --- > Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org > If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to > gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. > 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/gamers@audyssey.org. > If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, > please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. > --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. 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/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
