Re: [pygame] write sound to file for fast loading?

[Shadd]

I think it would be easier to simply use a loading screen before a part 
of the game (f.e. entering an area) and there load any sounds that might 
come in use into that part. It surely would be nicer to see than lag 
during the gameplay.
Of course this could not be the best solution, but if there are not 
better options, this would be the better to use.
Howdy, folks.

I have a problem I've been studying a while and I can't figure out a 
solution. Pygame or SDL--not sure which--is pretty slow at loading 
sounds. For large sounds, like songs, this means significant pauses in 
your game; or very long loading times at startup if you have a few of 
them to load.

I tried using a thread to load a song, but as expected that only 
resulted in a very laggy game for the duration.

So I was thinking it might be faster to pre-process a song: load it 
via the mixer, write the buffer to a data file, then later load it 
into an array and feed the array to the mixer. I can see that part of 
that idea is implemented in _sndarray.py, but I didn't really want to 
require numpy and I couldn't see how to convert that module's code to 
my purpose anyhow.

I'm strikin' out. Is this even feasible, or is it a hair-brained 
scheme doomed to failure? Has anyone solved this problem, and would 
s/he be willing to share? :)

Gumm