Win Me sound testing with BMax
BlitzMax Forums/BlitzMax Programming/Win Me sound testing with BMax
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| OK I've done some BMax sound testing on Windows ME (Duron 850, 256MB RAM, Sis on-board sound, Radeon 9250) and can report the following: FreeAudio: - has a noticeable sound lag especially when dragging a mouse over a button that has a mouse over noise, or clicking a button. This lag seems to be the same value (delay) once the game has loaded, but if I load the game, the lag may be different (longer/shorter) but it's always there. It's not there in XP at all. This sounds like some of the problems reported with Vista. - sometimes there is no sound at all! - sometimes the sound cuts out then cuts back in. Normally if the disk is doing some activity I think (the drive is pig slow). Conclusion: NOT RECOMMENDED DirectSound: - No lag at all. - Sounds a bit louder or sharper or something. - On XP I found it a bit crackly sometimes, like when the music first starts in my game. - haven't noticed any cut out but that's because... - when I go into my game screen in WinMe, the game just bombs to the desktop. The does NOT happen with the same exe and data on XP. Weird. Conclusion: NOT RECOMMENDED OpenAL: - I have put the dlls in the game folder. - I actually tried plain OpenAL and later on OpenAL Generic Software (due to reports on this forum that plain OpenAL didn't support more than 6 channels on some sound cards). Both worked. - No lag at all. - sounds a bit different from the others (quieter than DirectSound). - Game didn't crash (like with Direct Sound). - Did get occasional sound cut out but it seemed to go away after a little while. So not sure if the cut out is due to drivers or the actual sound card in the machine. I HAVE heard reports of Win98 users having their sound cut out (when using FreeAudio) before, several times, including for my own games. Yet other games on the system work fine. Could it be a BMax thing? Who knows... Conclusion: NOT PERFECT (due to cut outs) BUT THE ONLY REAL CHOICE (unless you invest in FMod). One thing that's not great is that if I have to use the software mixer version of OpenAL (OpenAL Generic Software) to get >6 sound channels, this is fine for Vista which is on a powerfull PC, but a WinME or even Win98 PC is likely to be less powerful. However, faced with a choice of lagging sound (FreeAudio) or crashing sound (DirectSound), I have no choice. Why do we have to jump through all these crappy hoops as game developers? My framework has so many tweaks and fixes and workarounds for different OS/Driver problems it's nuts. I want something STANDARD that all games work the same on. But that'll never happen, sniff. |
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| "I want something STANDARD that all games work the same on" A Mac? :) |
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| A Mac? :) There's absolutely no need for a smiley there. At what point do the kind of issues mentioned, along with the extra inconsistencies brought about by Vista, add up to a compelling reason to drop Windows?Due to time constraints I develop at glacial speeds, putting me much more firmly in the hobbyist bracket even though I do hope to get some shareware out of the door. I'm already minded that Windows wouldn't be worth the trouble (I'll develop on it, sure, but it's the Mac sector that attracts me from a publishing perspective -- a more standardised platform and less of a warez culture = win win) and I'm curious about how far the more established shareware devs might (or might not) have succumbed to this particular rationale. |
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| I'll be making Mac versions of all my games from now on. |
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