Page 1 of 2
better Sound System
Posted: Wed Mar 01, 2006 9:40 am
by Kazmirzak
Hy,
why is PureBasic so bad with sounds? You can only play one sound at a time!?
I would like to see a *real* sound system be integrated - maybe via openGL or DirectX or whatever. Even MCI would be a step forward!
Posted: Wed Mar 01, 2006 9:45 am
by Trond
You can play 10000 sounds at the same time if you've got enough hardware support.
Edit: The currect sound system uses DirectX. And OpenGL doens't have a sound system. And MCI is fully supported through API commands like mciSendString_().
Posted: Wed Mar 01, 2006 9:52 am
by Kazmirzak
with which version?
Posted: Wed Mar 01, 2006 9:54 am
by Trond
Any version. 3.94. 4.0. 3.72. Whatever!
Posted: Wed Mar 01, 2006 10:11 am
by Kazmirzak
ok, let me specify:
I just found out you can play more than one sound by doing multiple loadings.
But is doesn't work like this:
Code: Select all
sound=LoadSound(-1,"sound.wav")
Playsound(sound)
delay(100)
Playsound(sound)
delay(100)
Playsound(sound)
You should hear an echo effect but purebasic just stops the previous sound before playing the next. Do I have to load a sound 20 times to be able to do a tunnelecho effect? That doesn't seem very memory-saving!?
Posted: Wed Mar 01, 2006 10:18 am
by PB
For Windows, you can use the sndPlaySound API command to do it:
Code: Select all
sndPlaySound_(filename$,#SND_ASYNC)
Posted: Wed Mar 01, 2006 10:18 am
by Trond
With DirectX you need one sound buffer for each playing instance of the sound, yes.
Posted: Wed Mar 01, 2006 10:34 am
by Kazmirzak
No, sndPlaySound does only play one sound at a time (although asyncronious), I just checked out. Additionally this is bad for large files because you can't preload a sound with this command.
@Trond: This can't be true, because BlitzBasic uses DirectX7 and can play one loaded sound multiple times. It is based on channels -> each playing of a sound opens a new channel which can be paused, stopped etc...
channel1=Playsound(sound1)
delay(100)
channel2=Playsound(sound1)
delay(100)
stopchannel(channel2)
this way you have perfect control on sounds, can play them as often as you want, and all this is DX based... I would just like to do this in Pure too as I'm migrating to Pure...
Posted: Wed Mar 01, 2006 11:35 am
by PB
> sndPlaySound does only play one sound at a time
Oops, you're right.
It seemed logical that the async state would allow more than one.
Posted: Wed Mar 01, 2006 12:53 pm
by Nik
The manual says:
PlaySound(#Sound [, Mode])
Description
Start to play the specified sound. 'Mode' is optional and can take the following value:
0: Play the sound only once (Default value when 'Mode' is ommitted)
1: Play the sound continuously (loop). Not available under Linux!
Then you have:
SoundFrequency()
SoundPan()
SoundVolume()
StopSound()
To influence the sound (even while it is playing)
You cann use :UseOGGSoundDecoder()
to play ogg sounds and the music library for mp3 files + you have the API so where is the problem
Posted: Wed Mar 01, 2006 1:38 pm
by Trond
Nik, he wants to play the same sound more than once at the same time.
Posted: Wed Mar 01, 2006 2:01 pm
by netmaestro
I think you can achieve your objective by:
Code: Select all
Enumeration
#firstinstance_MySound
#secondinstance_MySound
#thirdinstance_MySound
EndEnumeration
InitSound()
OpenWindow(0,0,0,320,240,#PB_Window_SystemMenu|#PB_Window_ScreenCentered,"")
CatchSound(#firstinstance_MySound, ?MySound)
CatchSound(#secondinstance_MySound, ?MySound)
CatchSound(#thirdinstance_MySound, ?MySound)
PlaySound(#firstinstance_MySound)
Delay(500)
PlaySound(#secondinstance_Mysound)
Delay(500)
PlaySound(#thirdinstance_Mysound)
Repeat:Until WaitWindowEvent()=#PB_Event_CloseWindow
DataSection
MySound: IncludeBinary "MySound.wav"
EndDataSection
CatchSound() just points to the one soundfile, so this shouldn't add size to the exe or memory footprint. It just creates a separate channel for each instance.
I didn't test but it looks good to me. As long as they are different #sounds they should play concurrently.
[edit] OK I tested it. It works.
Posted: Wed Mar 01, 2006 3:50 pm
by Fred
No, catchsound() will duplicate the buffer. Actually it's a limitation you're right.
Posted: Wed Mar 01, 2006 4:52 pm
by Joakim Christiansen
Would you please do something about this Fred?
In GameMaker we could set a sound buffer for each file...
Posted: Wed Mar 01, 2006 7:38 pm
by dracflamloc
All comparisons to other tools and languages aside, this would be a nice feature. I've run into this issue a couple times making games. It can be worked around but at the cost of quite a bit of memory.
Also fred, please add looping to linux!