what are the typical number of simultaneous sounds in a game?
Author
being a bit of a sound virgin heres a question to those of you with a bit of experience.
whats the number of sound channels that a typical modern game uses 4,8,16?
also does anyone have any links to general info about incorpurating sound into a game engine, as in how to structure it etc, so i dont want info on howto setup + play a sound in sdl_mixer,directsound,openal etc but more of a general broarder jist.
http://uk.geocities.com/sloppyturds/kea/kea.html
http://uk.geocities.com/sloppyturds/gotterdammerung.html
zedzeek,
I've only got experience as a sound programmer on consoles, not PCs, but the PSX2 has 48 voices, GameCube 64 (or 48) and Xbox 256 (64 are 3D). It is possible with DirectX to query the number of hardware voices provided by a PC sound card so you know what you have, or you can use software mixing and use as many voices as the CPU can handle.
I understand your questions about the basic engine design - so many tutorials and tools show you how to play A SOUND, not all the sounds you need in a game, nor how to tie sound effects to game events. Think first about what features you need - will you need to dynamically load and unload groups of sounds? Are you streaming audio for music? Can you layer sounds together in a psuedo-random fashion to make more depth to the sound? Also think about seperating the concept of the sound data for playback from the voice that it is playing back with -- with software voices this doesnt' really seem to make sense, but I think you'll be happier in the long run if you can control the voice allocation scheme. Designs may vary and experementation results in some interesting results.
Good luck!
[edited by - Sphet on December 7, 2002 12:21:22 AM]
I've only got experience as a sound programmer on consoles, not PCs, but the PSX2 has 48 voices, GameCube 64 (or 48) and Xbox 256 (64 are 3D). It is possible with DirectX to query the number of hardware voices provided by a PC sound card so you know what you have, or you can use software mixing and use as many voices as the CPU can handle.
I understand your questions about the basic engine design - so many tutorials and tools show you how to play A SOUND, not all the sounds you need in a game, nor how to tie sound effects to game events. Think first about what features you need - will you need to dynamically load and unload groups of sounds? Are you streaming audio for music? Can you layer sounds together in a psuedo-random fashion to make more depth to the sound? Also think about seperating the concept of the sound data for playback from the voice that it is playing back with -- with software voices this doesnt' really seem to make sense, but I think you'll be happier in the long run if you can control the voice allocation scheme. Designs may vary and experementation results in some interesting results.
Good luck!
[edited by - Sphet on December 7, 2002 12:21:22 AM]
This topic is closed to new replies.
Advertisement
Popular Topics
Advertisement