Audio Help

I just added voice over support to Game Slate and wouldn’t you know it, the darn thing steals entirely too many FPS. We’re talking along the lines of losing 50 frames a second trying to play audio.

I’m fine with ditching voice overs during game play, possibly using it only during static image cut scenes. But I’d really like to be able to have background music or some level of sound effects.

Any suggestions? Perhaps using the MusicModule’s MIDI capabilities? I’ve never used it so I’m not sure if I can just set a sequence and make it loop or not without having to continually send commands.

Nevermind. Looks like if I drop it down to 64kbps @ 44.1kHz I can sustain 30FPS. I’d like it to be a bit higher considering more sprites would equal a lower FPS but current demo has 18 + 3 layer collision on a single screen so that should be relatively good enough.


MIDI appears to drop it to 2 FPS or less.

facepalm

So games without music then? There’s got to be some where to get basic sounds going without absolutely trashing the FPS. :wall: :wall: :wall:

You will need special module for that. DL music module. It will have its own processor. I am interested to try it. Shouldn’t be hard.

That would be amazing! I’m sure everyone would appreciate it. In the mean time I’ll bugger on with the low quality MP3 encoding.

If you [italic]do[/italic] make a module…2 channels would make you my hero. 1 for background sound/music and a second for effects. Mmm, 2 channel goodness.

Ok. Let me do a research I’ll update you soon.

VLSI makes a chip that works perfect for you. It plays 2 sounds, one from midi for background music and one WAV for effects.

If maybe same pknout so you can place it in current module :wink:

A better option maybe in adding propeller chip.

New module? :slight_smile:

MIDI is not an option, it brings the frame count down to 2 per second or less. Eep.

Prop chip would be better.

Let’s see what the amazing Architect comes up with. ;D

What is the maximum size of all audio data in a game?

I have not set a max size since currently everything streams. I’m sure we could work with any reasonable constraints.

Aren’t MIDI files smaller in size? Why does it drop to 2 FPS since there is less data to be streamed to the audio decode chip?

Size depends on the compression of the MP3 and the number of instruments in the MIDI.

A 58 FPS drop is simply what I experienced in my test of playing a MIDI 0 file. I didn’t look too far into the cause of it.

Now that I’ve managed MP3 playback with only a 28FPS drop (still leaving me at >30FPS) there isn’t much cause of me to investigate.