quote:Original post by a person
4. ANY api under GPL requires you to release your code under GPL if you link to the code. this is why most opensource apis tend to be LGPL, make sure you check the liscence. (SDL is definatly LGPL).

I guess OpenAL is LGPL as I''ve not seen source for SoF2 or UT2K3 about the place

is there a library like devil but for 3d object formats?

OpenAL is all well and good, but I have discovered a problem with it . If you use 3D sounds with it, and try to load more than 32 3D sources at once, it decides to stop generating sources, and you start running into problems (even if your sound card supports more than 32 hardware channels). This means that you have to decide manually which 32 of all your sources are most important and then play them, but this can generate more problems. Thats why I switched to FMOD. Also, it only contains a loader for PCM wave files, while FMOD supports many different formats. I will probably go back to it in the future and try to make a really good wrapper, but not at the moment, just thought that I should warn you.

- Weasalmongler

I think part of the point of OpenAL is that you decode your own audio and pass PCM data to it (I''m pretty certain UT2K3 uses ogg decoding and probably passes PCM data to OpenAL)

As for the 32 sound channels, that could just be a restriction of the compiled verison you have or maybe DirectSound related, I''ve not had a chance to look at that althought I''ve heard about it before now, just means you have to do sound management for yourself.