hey guys/gals, I am gonna put some sounds/music into my lil game tonight & need suggestions or warnings about what to do (or not do). I browsed through quite a bit of openAL crap last night & it looks fairly easy to pick up, especially because of it''s anology to openGL. Is FMOD superior to openAL in any way? Is it ok to have my sound-data files as WAV''s ? or should I convert to something else for performance??? Anything you can tell me about anything? or perhaps some great links I should check out????????? Thanks, Luke

As for the format, either go with .mod, .mp3 or .ogg. FMod can play .mod (.xm, .it and other tracker formats) all belong to the .mod family. Unreal Tournament used .mod (or some similar track-based format which can be converted to .mod), btw. For a game, providing both mp3 as well as ogg support seems like an obvious choice IMO. Do not, however, go with wav - not for music - it''ll simply take up too much space.

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alright, I''ll check out FMOD then. I assume .mod & .ogg are just sound-data formats & I''m sure I can find out some good stuff about them on google. Any other suggestions or links????

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Original post by Luke Miklos
alright, I''ll check out FMOD then. I assume .mod & .ogg are just sound-data formats & I''m sure I can find out some good stuff about them on google. Any other suggestions or links????

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.ogg is an encoded stream format just like .mp3 or (compressed) wav. .mod, however, is a tracker format that contains instrument and track data. These two are essentially non-comparable. Just go with mp3 - that''s the safest bet in your case.

Regardless, if you check out fmod, be sure to read the licence agreement - it''s not free for any kind of use!

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Original post by Crispy

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Original post by Luke Miklos
alright, I'll check out FMOD then. I assume .mod & .ogg are just sound-data formats & I'm sure I can find out some good stuff about them on google. Any other suggestions or links????

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.ogg is an encoded stream format just like .mp3 or (compressed) wav. .mod, however, is a tracker format that contains instrument and track data. These two are essentially non-comparable. Just go with mp3 - that's the safest bet in your case.

Regardless, if you check out fmod, be sure to read the licence agreement - it's not free for any kind of use!

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According to FMODs license page it is free to use if you plan on making no money with your app.

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www.fmod.org license page

Yes that's right, if your product is not intended to make any money, and is not charged for in any way, then you may use FMOD in it for FREE!

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Anyway, I have used fmod, and it is easy to set up. Can do 3D sound pretty easy, and streaming of music is also easy. I believe that i've heard that ogg format is of better sound quality then mp3. Plus, using mp3 requires an additional license; whereas using ogg requires no additional license.

OpenAL is supposedly not bad, but I have never used it. Tho, I might if I don't feel like paying that license fee for using fmod


[edited by - pjcast on December 9, 2003 7:33:56 PM]

Maybe try audiere - not sure how far it supports 3D sound (never worried about that) but it supports nearly all formats FMOD supports (Sadly not midi but FMOD only features that for Windows).
It''s uses the GPL so it''s free aswell.

So if I put my "product" up for shareware... than FMOD is not allowed? Hahaha... ShareWare doesn''t work anymore anyways... so I might as well make it FreeWare.
Quick question on sound qualities....
If I start with the same WAV file... & convert it to mp3 & to OGG, won''t the mp3 & ogg have the same sound data in it? or is some lost in one of those conversions????
Maybe I''ll really dive into openAL & let everybody know how I like it.

it depend''s on how mutch you comprss it.
But if you stick to a more reasonable compression you shouldn''t be able to notice the loss.

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Original post by Luke Miklos
So if I put my "product" up for shareware... than FMOD is not allowed? [...]

Quick question on sound qualities....
If I start with the same WAV file... & convert it to mp3 & to OGG, won''t the mp3 & ogg have the same sound data in it? or is some lost in one of those conversions????
Maybe I''ll really dive into openAL & let everybody know how I like it.

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It''s true that you have to pay for a shareware license, but I''m pretty sure that it''s only a hundred dollar license for one PC platform (Linux, Win32, or Mac). But, there''s a discount if you purchase multiple platforms. Anyway, you should be able to get the same functionality out of OpenAL, just might take more time.

As for sound quality, when you convert a wav to ogg vorbis, supposedly, the sound quality is alot higher then the same wav to mp3. (Though, I doubt you could really tell on pc speakers, unless you had a couple hundred dollar pair )

As for an mp3 license, I believe if you are making an independent game, you can get away with a free license so long as you don''t sell more then 5000 copies. If you need to sell more then that, I believe it is $500 dollars.....

http://www.mp3licensing.com/royalty/games.html

WAIT A MINUTE! I just checked the site again, it''s $2,500 dollars... ouch! I now really think that ogg is the way to go.

I think I''m going to convert all my mp3 files to ogg today, damn copyrighting of commonly used formats


www.wreckedgames.com

I was just about to ask if openAL supports ogg, but I checked their site first... so I wouldn''t be a TOTAL wank... & 5 days ago they release a beta version that supports Ogg Vorbis.