Re: [Adonthell-devel] Back again...

[Micah J. Cowan]

On Mon, Mar 24, 2003 at 09:39:20PM +0100, Kai Sterker wrote:
> On Mon, 24 Mar 2003 09:30:01 -0800 Micah J. Cowan wrote:
> 
> > I'm trying to remember the issue for that one: it seems to me that the
> > difficulty was that you couldn't crossfade two music samples, and that
> > looping within a middle section of the Ogg stream was difficult.
> > 
> > I dunno what you did for Wastes Edge (which I finally got a chance to
> > play, now that I reinstalled gcc-2.95.3...), but I definitely didn't
> > notice anything screwy about the music (I guess you probably just
> > looped it end-to-end?) 
> 
> Yeah, it's done that way. Something better might be nice once we have
> combat running and want more dynamic background music (victory, danger,
> etc.)
> 
> Not sure how the current code for sfx will do, as we don't have any
> yet (except the two GUI related ones). But I guess it will have to get a
> somewhat better interface. Right now it's pretty akward to use: lLoad
> sample into slot, play slot.
> 
> I would more imagine something like: play sample. If sample not in
> cache, load first. If cache full, replace sample that has been used
> least frequently.

I imagine even this could be too slow the first time a sample is
played; I'd prefer to preload samples when a level is loaded, or
something.

> That is only the lowlevel interface. There are other sfx-related issues
> as well. How can one make sure that a water sound is played while the
> player walks near a river, or bird sound in the forest, etc. Then add
> changing volume depending on the distance to the audio source.

Would it be possible to do something like adding invisible map items,
and using the player's proximity to the nearest of them?

> And finally we're currently trying to get more independent from a
> certain graphic and audio library. Sooner or later, the audio code will
> have to be rewritten with that in mind too.

You mean SDL? But why? Isn't the purpose of SDL to be "independent"
from lower-level APIs

> So there are plenty of things on the todo list :).

Know where I could find that todo list? :)

-Micah