Hi all, Was just wondering if it wouldn''t be a problem to use mp3 format for both music and SFX sound in games. Is there a better format for SFX? Are there any drawbacks of mp3s?

Use mp3 if you like, you''ve got to pay the license fee of course if you sell your product. Checkout www.mp3licensing.com. For playback, I''d recommend FMod (www.fmod.org). It can''t be beaten.

I''m not sure about the legitimacy of the whole MP3 licensing thing. Some say you have to pay a license to use any part of MP3 in general, others suggest it''s only if you use a certain encoder/decoder, etc. I seriously doubt anyone will come after you if you don''t license the technology anyway... not that I recommend ignoring that side of things as a business plan

Technically speaking, decoding MP3s is not trivial and requires significant processing time. If you want your game to run on a P133, you''re not really gonna be able to decode multiple MP3s simultaneously (eg. music + 1 or 2 sound effects) as well as performing all the other game logic. So it depends on your target platform, really. And the only way to know for sure is to test it.

Personally I have no problems using .WAV files for sound effects, which on average are about 10x the size of a similar MP3 file but requires no decoding to send to the sound card and therefore virtually no processor overhead. As for music, I don''t use digital music yet but I will probably be using .XM or .IT format, which for the uninitiated is a hybrid of MIDI and wave technology that requires specially written music (ie. no Wave -> XM conversion is available.)

An alternative to wav''s is AUD
AUD will give you 4:1 compression of 16bit audio, is easy to write a decoder for, and is ffaaasssttt....takes like 0.2% cpu time on my comp (roughly equals 2MHz)...on a P133 with no MMX this figure would be around 3-5MHz a file...leaving around 120MHz for you to play around with...now that aint bad
One the the most usful parts of AUD is it is entirely integer processing...so Cyrix and old AMD processors won''t be hammered by the subs, adds, ors and negs (about all AUD uses...all 1 cycle each )

just search AUD or goto that wotsit site i cant remember the url of right now.....also known as ADPCM (Adaptive Differential Pulse Code Modulaion) and IMA-ADPCM (intel''s varient..abreviation may be wrong)

You might hear of this being a bad format...we''ll when done right it''s hard to differ from the original wav

Westwood use this in all theyr C&C series, too...

eh?