Archive for the ‘Sound’ Category
Good (Audio) News
Monday, December 8th, 2008
There’s a lesson here: read the docs, read more docs, read the forums, go back to the docs, read different docs, find a link to a doc you hadn’t read before and read it. It turns out that I can indeed compress my music tracks using something reasonable, like AAC.
Here’s what the confusion was:
I’m using the SoundEngine code that comes with one of Apple’s example projects. They provide you with a way to play background music along with sound FX. I thought that the whole system was using OpenAL for the audio layer, but it turns out that it’s actually using two systems. It uses OpenAL for the sound FX and it uses something called the Audio Queue Services for the background music track.
If you read through the iPhone documentation on OpenAL it tells you that you may only use PCM or IMA4 for the audio format. I thought this applied to the background music (which it does NOT). The problem I thought I had is that IMA4, while it is compression, doesn’t compress a whole lot. However, if you use Audio Queue Services you get two advantages: 1) you can stream audio off disk 2) you get access to a whole bunch of hardware decoders.
There are limitations: you can only have one hardware decoded track running at once. Which is why the music uses Audio Queue Services but the sound FX do not.
So, the end result is that I’ve compressed the audio tracks using AAC and even at a good sampling rate the tracks are about 1MB each. That’s much more reasonable. So it looks like things are back on track audio-wise. Now I just have to deal with all the other stuff that’s going on…
Owen
Naming the Beast
Monday, December 8th, 2008
Why do Mondays suck so much? I’m feeling a little overwhelmed with everything that’s going on with the game. This is the usual state of mild panic that creeps up on you as you start to get close to Alpha (yes, that’s right, I said it: Alpha).
I’m hoping to have the game in an Alpha state by the end of December, go Beta in mid-January, and ship by the end of January. That’s the plan. There’s a lot of factors that might play with that date, though. The main one being the length of time it will take to get Apple approval.
At any rate, back to the matters at hand. I still haven’t picked a name for the game yet. I’ve gone through dozens of names and I’m finally down to two names I like. It’s just a matter of picking the final one. Once I do that I’m planning to update the Games page of the site with screenshots and information about the game. Real info, like how it’s played and what it’s all about.
And in the category of Mondays sucking, I’ve made a disappointing discovery. My composer has created some really kick-ass music tracks for my game and now I’m starting to wonder how many of them will fit. This is the problem with not trying out my audio stuff sooner. I just tried compressing the music files and they’re between 5-10MB each. For four tracks in the game, my game just got 25MB bigger! On a mobile platform, that’s massive. I looked through all of my favourite games on my iPod and all of them are under 10MB for the whole game. I also noticed that none of them include any music.
If I still end up doing a Mac/PC version of the game I’ll definitely be able to use all the music tracks. But now I need to find a solution for the iPhone version of the game. Do I compress the hell out of the music? Do I pick one or two tracks? I feel really stupid about this.
Owen
Decisions, Decisions, Decisions
Monday, November 10th, 2008
I’ve been looking through the example OpenGL-ES project that comes with the iPhone SDK trying to get an idea of how much work it’ll be to get things up and running that way.
The most frustrating thing right now is trying to find enough information on my two possible paths so that I can make an informed decision. I’ve been digging around and no one’s sharing information on how they’ve chosen to implement their games on iPhone. I get it: people want to protect their secrets. The iPhone isn’t really old enough yet to have a huge base of experts to draw from either. So I’m following the path that most other devs have probably followed and kind of diving in with what little information I have.
I’ve decided to pursue the OpenGL-ES route, as it looks like it’ll be the most flexible. The biggest problem with is that I’ll most likely end up writing all my own UI stuff, instead of being able to leverage the Apple UI widgets. Maybe there’s a way I can use both, I just need to get into it further.
In other news, it’s been really valuable having my prototype running on my iPod. I’ve been able to get a lot more people to play it, as I always have it with me. It’s great. I’m getting some great feedback, especially from new players.
I’ve got some emails and art asset lists out to a few 2D artists and I’m waiting to hear back with quotes at this point.
I’m also starting to work with a sound designer and composer at some early stuff to do with sound effects and music. That’s very exciting, as even the early work that’s coming in has me really pumped about how good it sounds.
Things are moving along…
Owen