Hi everyone, I'm workin on a pc game and they may want to export the game on ipod touch. I did some research about the tracker softwares like renoise, and how to do music with limited size. Do I really need to learn such a program like renoise? I'm on Cubase 4 and I can do .ogg files who are really small files. But with all the sounds and music, will it be too big sized? Usually, how much is the size of a game? And I saw a thread talkin about OpenAL, is it a tracker software too? Again, is it essential for me to learn it? Like you already see, I'm a little lost, and just want to know what do I have to know before the day they will decide to export the game on Ipod touch lol! Regards, Dom
OpenAL is a an API for 3D audio, not tracker software. If you don't require 3D audio, then simply using AVAudioPlayer should be sufficient. Although I'm not familiar with any tracker software myself, it shouldn't matter which program you use to generate the audio. When developing for the iDevice, typically .mp3 format is suitable for background music (as it is hardware accelerated), while .caf format (uncompressed) is suitable for shorter audio clips (i.e, sound effects).
FMOD is a music library for tracker-style music. Bejeweled uses it for one. It lets you cram a lot of music into a small application, but you have to pay for it ($500 per title). http://www.fmod.org/index.php/fmod/more/28
Music file size depends on a few things- the overall size of the game and how many different tracks you want in the game. We have 5 different songs in our game, and we were able to keep the entire game under 10 megs (8.5, I think). We used standard MP3. I'm not sure if you would see any benefit by using FMOD. I have used it in the past, but with current hardware and decoding of MP3s, I think it is obsolete.
We used FMOD in bitFLIP to do event based effects on the music. If your not looking to do anything fancy I would agree but FMOD is far from obsolete .
I would certainly not say MOD files are obsolete. Like most things it depends on your needs. Bejeweled includes over 40 minutes of music, plus the actual game itself in 9.4MB. Assuming the game and images take at least 3MB, try to shrink 40 minutes of music into MP3 format in 6.4MB and retain any kind of quality. If you have a lot of music that uses the same set of instrument samples, then something a MOD format can help significantly. If each of your tracks uses different samples then the benefit is reduced.
I am considering FMOD for my next game just because of the event-based music system. I guess I have to go try bitFLIP now to see how it worked out for you.
Obsolete doesn't mean useless. It simply means that it lacks the gains that it had in the mobile industry a decade ago (when I first developed games). We used FMOD because MP3 decoding was just too CPU intensive (something like 40%?) and we had extremely limited memory and file storage way back then. FMOD definitely has its uses, but I am not prepared to just throw that out to anyone as a viable option. Too many people use FMOD to produce 'crappy music that can play for hours'. I'm not saying anyone here has done that (I hope). Just as any other tool out there FMOD is awesome when put into the right hands. And like any other tool, it isn't a miracle machine that will turn crappy music into great music. I would consider using FMOD again, but only under certain circumstances and only if there are substantial gains.
Wow, what a nice thread!!! Thanks a lot guys for your answers. But, now that I have answers, I have more questions The first thing I did is downloading that FMOD thing, and what a big surprise...no application button. I was like ok, what the f*ck is that?! Then I did some researches, and read the manual instructions, and they say at the begining: • /api • • The files you are interested in for your own projects are held here • This holds • • FMOD.DLL, • The import library (fmodvc.lib, fmodbc.lib etc) you need to link (for C users), and • The header (fmod.h, fmod.pas, fmod.bas depending on language) you need to include. • • • C Users • MSVC - #include "fmod.h" into your source code and link fmodvc.lib by putting it into your link section/makefile/project. • Codewarrior - #include "fmod.h" into your source code and link fmodvc.lib by putting it into your link section/makefile/project. • Watcom - #include "fmod.h" into your source code and link fmodwc.lib by putting it into your link section/makefile/project. • Borland - #include "fmod.h" into your source code and link fmodbc.lib by putting it into your link section/makefile/project. • LCC-WIN32 - #include "fmod.h" into your source code and link fmodlcc.lib by putting it into your link section/makefile/project. • Mingw and CygWin - #include "fmod.h" into your source code and link libfmod.a by putting it into your link section/makefile/project. • Linux / GCC - #include "fmod.h" into your source code and link with libfmod-X-Y.so (i.e gcc file.c -lfmod-3.5) Note there is no DJGPP support. If you ask for this you are looking in the wrong place. DJGPP is DOS only and to find a similar free WIN32 compiler try LCC-WIN32 or CygWin. Delphi Users • You need to have uses FMOD in your source code somewhere. If delphi cannot find the FMOD header you need to have the path to fmod.pas in your library path. Go to Tools\Environment Options\Library. Add the path, eg. C:\fmodapi340\api\delphi (of course, use the path that you have on your system), to Library Path and it should be happy. Visual Basic Users • Add fmod.bas to your project. ooooooookayy...now I need an other program to run fmod?! I didn't know i had to do programation..but don't get me wrong, I want to learn it if I need too. Saying that, with all your answers I really don't know if I have to learn it lol, but what I know is that we will have like 15 songs plus the sound effects, so that's why I'm not closing the door on this programation adventure haha. And I saw they used that program for big games like World of Warcraft and Bioshock....I'm kind of impressed...lol. So what's the best program to begin with, visual basic looks pretty easy compared to other C/C++ sh*t Do I really need to have a big programation knowledge base to understand how to finally do a song with those softwares? Well, not to do a song actually, it will be more an exportation duty cuz all the pc version soundtrack will be done. Ohh woww so many things to learn and so many things to do my head will explode haha! Thanks in advance for your futur answers Dom
So there are two parts to fmod. The sound designers tools which look like are your alley and the API which depending on your platform need to be integrated into your application All due respect to everyone here because it's a smart bunch but the best place for learning about fmod socially is on the fmod forums. GL!
