Re: Multiple sounds playing at once - how?

[RCS]

I had four audio clips playing at the same time with only 25% cpu usage (900
mhz pc)...try the 'play audioClip' command.

JR

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Re: Multiple sounds playing at once - how?

[Scott Rossi]

On 12/15/03 3:39 PM, "Karl Becker" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> I believe the subpar (the practically 1980) sound management in
> MetaCard has gone on too long...  I want to seriously get this changed,
> because sound is just horrible right now in MC/Rev.

Fully.


> Should we bring this up on a Revolution mailing list?  Maybe email
> directly instead?

I believe there is an improve-rev mail list, in addition to the feature
request option using the goofiness that is bugzilla.  But yes, it would be
good to post to Rev (though I think some of this has made it over there).

A few years ago, I proposed a channels implementation to Scott Raney for MC.
It may not be the optimal solution, but was intended promote discussion --
maybe I'll try to dig this up and post on both lists (of course, feel free
to counter with other ideas).

Regards,

Scott Rossi
Creative Director
Tactile Media, Multimedia & Design
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Re: Multiple sounds playing at once - how?

[Karl Becker]

Actually I was referring to the state of audio capabilities in Rev/MC, 
even
outside the games arena.  As a point of reference, Director version 1 
(read:
the first version) had two sound channels that could be independently
controlled.  Granted this was on Mac systems only at the time, but I 
would
hope that after 10+ years, multi-channel sound would be somewhat
straightforward to implement.
Yes, yes it should.

If you want a sound to loop seamlessly (often difficult if not
impossible in MC/Rev), you must use an imported sound for this since
players
will not loop seamlessly.
Something needs to be done about this.  It couldn't be too hard - does
the new Revolution take care of any of this?
Scott Raney has always attributed the lag to QT.  If this is really the
case, it's all the more reason to abandon QT for audio support and get 
a
dedicated solution.
I will have to agree here, as well.

  If the Rev folks feel it's too difficult or time
consuming to build, then by all means, license something.  There must 
be a
dozen small companies/developers out there with audio editors capable 
of
playing multi-channel sound.  Why not strike a deal with one of them 
and
save Tuviah and the other development folks some time and headaches?

From my point of view, the workarounds and hacks for managing audio 
have
gone on way too long.  Since before Rev existed, I've been forced to 
employ
externals or dumb down the audio experience in stacks because of 
limitations
imposed long ago.  Now is a good time to get past those limitations, 
even if
the solution provides just a couple of audio channels.
I want to let them know that I strongly support this direction.

I believe the subpar (the practically 1980) sound management in 
MetaCard has gone on too long...  I want to seriously get this changed, 
because sound is just horrible right now in MC/Rev.

Especially since we're moving to a new code base.

Should we bring this up on a Revolution mailing list?  Maybe email 
directly instead?

Karl

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Re: Multiple sounds playing at once - how?

[Scott Rossi]

On 12/15/03 8:45 AM, "Karl Becker" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
 
>> It's a sad state of affairs.
> 
> I might tend to agree... though it is true that MC/Revolution is
> probably not the #1 game development tool of choice  ;-)

Actually I was referring to the state of audio capabilities in Rev/MC, even
outside the games arena.  As a point of reference, Director version 1 (read:
the first version) had two sound channels that could be independently
controlled.  Granted this was on Mac systems only at the time, but I would
hope that after 10+ years, multi-channel sound would be somewhat
straightforward to implement.


>> If you want a sound to loop seamlessly (often difficult if not
>> impossible in MC/Rev), you must use an imported sound for this since
>> players
>> will not loop seamlessly.
> 
> Something needs to be done about this.  It couldn't be too hard - does
> the new Revolution take care of any of this?

Scott Raney has always attributed the lag to QT.  If this is really the
case, it's all the more reason to abandon QT for audio support and get a
dedicated solution.  If the Rev folks feel it's too difficult or time
consuming to build, then by all means, license something.  There must be a
dozen small companies/developers out there with audio editors capable of
playing multi-channel sound.  Why not strike a deal with one of them and
save Tuviah and the other development folks some time and headaches?

>From my point of view, the workarounds and hacks for managing audio have
gone on way too long.  Since before Rev existed, I've been forced to employ
externals or dumb down the audio experience in stacks because of limitations
imposed long ago.  Now is a good time to get past those limitations, even if
the solution provides just a couple of audio channels.

Regards,

Scott Rossi
Creative Director
Tactile Media, Multimedia & Design
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Re: Multiple sounds playing at once - how?

[Alex Rice]

On Dec 15, 2003, at 9:45 AM, Karl Becker wrote:
Also, the fmod external isn't quite what I'm looking for, as Scott 
pointed out.
Karl, did you look at the feature list of FMOD? I think it's just that 
the fmod4rev author was very selective about what parts of the API to 
implement. An external could be written to support more of the FMOD 
features including multiple sounds playing at once. Just a thought. It 
would be better if an external were not called for, obviously.

Alex Rice <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> | Mindlube Software | 


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Re: Multiple sounds playing at once - how?

[Karl Becker]

On Dec 4, 2003, at 3:23 PM, Scott Rossi wrote:
I'm looking for suggestions on how to get multiple sounds to play at
once using MetaCard 2.4.3.
There is no native option other than player objects (which you claim 
eat up
processor time but if you're making a game, I'm not sure why that's a
problem).
Well, not only does it eat up the processor, but it seems to actually 
take away from MetaCard's processing power.  My games cannot actually 
run at full speed - not to mention every other single thing on the 
computer is slow - when running any sort of QuickTime player.  I've had 
this happen to me on multiple computers, so I don't think it's a 
function of a single setup.  This is on an iMac 800, too, so there 
should be no real problems with doing this.

It's a sad state of affairs.
I might tend to agree... though it is true that MC/Revolution is 
probably not the #1 game development tool of choice  ;-)

One thing you might try is using a combination of one player and 
imported
sounds.
I may very well give that a shot.  I'll try setting the filename to 
empty, too, to see if that does anything to alleviate processor usage.  
It's usually the skip that really messes things up though - I used to 
use the "play videoclip" command, but that introduces a horrendous 
pause in MetaCard that totally wrecks the fluidity of my tennis game  
(all action just stops for a quarter of a second, which is horribly 
annoying after about 3 times).

If you want a sound to loop seamlessly (often difficult if not
impossible in MC/Rev), you must use an imported sound for this since 
players
will not loop seamlessly.
Something needs to be done about this.  It couldn't be too hard - does 
the new Revolution take care of any of this?

If you are developing for Mac OS only and for systems lower than OSX
Unfortunately, I want to have it on Windows... and my development 
system is Mac OS X, so, no go  :-)
Also, the fmod external isn't quite what I'm looking for, as Scott 
pointed out.

Regarding players and processor issues, have you tried setting the 
fileName
of player objects to empty in between playing sounds?  Also, are you 
using
the latest version of QT?
I believe so, yes.  6.4.  Though I haven't tried a player object in 
some time, mostly because I know what it'll do to MC... maybe I'll try 
again over Christmas break.

Thanks,
Karl
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Re: Multiple sounds playing at once - how?

[Alex Rice]

On Dec 4, 2003, at 2:43 PM, Scott Rossi wrote:

I may be mistaken but I don't believe the FMOD external inherently 
provides
multi-channel audio support.  The benefit of the external (as 
explained to
me by the author) is support for various file types that would 
otherwise
require QT for playback.
Maybe the fmod4rev author just hasn't implmented very much of the FMOD 
API yet.

Take a look at this

Tons of features including: multiple channels, all kinds of mixing, 3D 
sound.

Alex Rice <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> | Mindlube Software | 


what a waste of thumbs that are opposable
to make machines that are disposable  -Ani DiFranco
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Re: Multiple sounds playing at once - how?

[Scott Rossi]

On 12/4/03 1:36 PM, "Alex Rice" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>>  This will play as many channels as
>> can be accommodated by memory.  Unfortunately, there's no modern day
>> equivalent.
> 
> There is also this new, potentially xplatform external. I haven't used
> it but it looks interesting
> 
> 
>  025122.html>

I may be mistaken but I don't believe the FMOD external inherently provides
multi-channel audio support.  The benefit of the external (as explained to
me by the author) is support for various file types that would otherwise
require QT for playback.

Regards,

Scott Rossi
Creative Director
Tactile Media, Multimedia & Design
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Re: Multiple sounds playing at once - how?

[Alex Rice]

On Dec 4, 2003, at 2:23 PM, Scott Rossi wrote:
 This will play as many channels as
can be accommodated by memory.  Unfortunately, there's no modern day
equivalent.
There is also this new, potentially xplatform external. I haven't used  
it but it looks interesting




Alex Rice <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> | Mindlube Software |  


what a waste of thumbs that are opposable
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Re: Multiple sounds playing at once - how?

[Scott Rossi]

On 12/4/03 1:08 PM, "Karl Becker" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> I'm looking for suggestions on how to get multiple sounds to play at
> once using MetaCard 2.4.3.

There is no native option other than player objects (which you claim eat up
processor time but if you're making a game, I'm not sure why that's a
problem).  It's a sad state of affairs.

One thing you might try is using a combination of one player and imported
sounds.  If you want a sound to loop seamlessly (often difficult if not
impossible in MC/Rev), you must use an imported sound for this since players
will not loop seamlessly.  If you can accommodate a pause between loops,
then players should be fine.  You might also try using WAV formatted sounds
instead of AIFF.

If you are developing for Mac OS only and for systems lower than OSX, you
could use SndChannel, a HyperCard external that was developed in the 90's
and should still work in MC through OS9.  This will play as many channels as
can be accommodated by memory.  Unfortunately, there's no modern day
equivalent.

Regarding players and processor issues, have you tried setting the fileName
of player objects to empty in between playing sounds?  Also, are you using
the latest version of QT?

Regards,

Scott Rossi
Creative Director
Tactile Media, Multimedia & Design
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Multiple sounds playing at once - how?

[Karl Becker]

I'm looking for suggestions on how to get multiple sounds to play at 
once using MetaCard 2.4.3.

I currently use the play command (play audioClip, specifically) to play 
AIFF sounds.  I had used the play videoClip command in many past 
projects, letting my file size be smaller by using QuickTime 
compression codecs to compress my sounds, but I just found out when 
developing my golf game that playing a video clip introduces a 
significant stutter of the MetaCard engine both when I start and finish 
a "play videoClip" command.

I would love to just have a few player objects and have them play for 
different things (one for the bounce of my ball, another player for 
crowd noise, another for the line judge, etc.), but whenever I have 
even one player object in my stack, my stack seems to degrade pretty 
bad over time, eating up more and more and more processor.  That's just 
with even one player.  Even with one player right away, it just seems 
to eat up a huge amount of processor - and this is on a relatively 
speedy 800 MHz G4.

Anyone have any ideas for me?  Any way to reproduce (easily) the 
soundchannels of HyperCard?

(apologies for bringing up HyperCard  ;-)  )

Thanks,
Karl
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