Basic Info:
Programming Language - C++
Platform - Windows
Audio Formats - wav and mid
I recently finished a game and was fooling around with figuring out the best way to upload it to a file hosting site. I eventually decided on using 7zip's self-extracting feature. However, I think the mistake I made was that instead of just copying what I needed to another folder and zipping that up for the distribution (i.e., not copying source files, etc.) I rearranged the actual folder that held all of my source files etc. and split it into 2 sub folders for the C++ files, and then everything else (that folder being the one that got zipped up.)
I tested downloading it and playing it and it worked fine. However, I went back because I decided to change the background music and that's when the problem started happening.
To sum the problem up, Mix_PlayMusic() is being called and is working correctly. However, for some reason no sound is playing (and neither are any of the sound effects called from Mix_PlayChannel()). The odd thing is that you can hear the music when Mix_FadeOutMusic() is called. I also have a sound toggling feature, but after thorough testing I've come to the conclusion that it isn't the problem.
I finally decided to create a completely new project and just bring all of the files I needed into that project in the same "organization" that they were in originally. However, the problem is still there.
I have no idea what's wrong. The files are being loaded in fine, it's just that when the music is supposed to be playing (and according to testing it is), it's not playing. This also applies to sound effects.
Edit: I actually wrote a test for each game loop for whether the music is playing and apparently the music is playing. It's just that for some reason it isn't being heard.
This could be a number of things. It could be an issue with the SDL_Mixer library you have, so you could try getting it again to rule that out. Your volume may have somehow got set to zero somewhere, so I would check the volume as a test. And the final thought would be that the source sound file you are playing is incompatible in some way (not likely if you can play it in another sound player, but possible). Besides those suggestions I don't believe I can help you any further with the data you have provided.
Related
In the Xbox 360 game Project Sylpheed: Arc of Deception. There are secret sub objectives for each level. On stage 11 "Flaming Clouds" there are 4, I have found two sources claiming they know each of them, but is actually untrue. One is still hidden. This is a very unpopular game, and no one has investigated it, and I want to know what it is. I have a disk image file of the game (ISO file). How would I go about finding the level trigger for the sub objective? I have already attempted to extract the 7gb iso using 7zip and Winrar, but each yielded the same 12mb files that contain nothing relevant what so ever. Obviously the core of the information is hidden and remains unextracted. Please advise.
https://wincdemu.sysprogs.org/ or linux/mac mount -o loop /path/to/my-iso-image.iso /mnt/iso
from there you're going to need a reverse compiler probabably but I don't know what your game is written in. You might luck out and find the levels coded in lua or something though.
Something else that can be happening is 7zip is actually opening the iso right, and the 12mb could be instructions to go download the actual game code from somewhere else. That sometimes happens with consoles.
I'm currently working on a video game project in C++ using Allegro 5 as my graphics library. I store my graphic and font assets in subfolders within the root folder of the .exe. To use them in the program, I have an initGraphics() function that loads all the required assets through al_load_bitmap(), and then later free up the memory with al_destroy_bitmap(). This means however that when I eventually distribute my game, it'll be super easy for anyone to go into the install folder and just edit the graphics to be whatever, and I'm having trouble finding any kind of help regarding how to prevent this.
What I was thinking maybe is some kind of program that I'd run on my own computer before distribution that loads the appropriate graphical assets, and somehow converts them into a .txt file, then changing the main game executable's 'initGraphics()' function to load and use those instead of just the raw .png files, but I'm not sure if this is possible. Any information about this type of conversion would be hugely appreciated, or alternatively a more reliable tested method that achieves the same effect. Thank you very much in advance!
While researching the internet I've found interesting solution:
Allegro5 uses PhysicsFS library to handle file archives. It does not support password protected archives, but you can calculate md5 for your assets archive and hardcode it into your program and then compare it on runtime (source - see more here).
See this part of documentation of Allegro5.
Example explanation of md5 implementation is here
I created a book app and used Cocos2D and physics engine (Chipmunk) to create it. I would like to add "read aloud" feature to it.
So far I found instructions/books and tutorials how to add read aloud feature when book is created with iBook Author (but I couldn't use iBook Author due to some limitations) using Epub3 and SMIL.
I also found a good tutorial from J. Shapiro how to make narrated book using AVSpeechSynthesizer. This helps, only that I would like to use recorded voice, rather than synthesized sound. I don't know if this approach can be modified to do so?
I also know how it can be done in Sprite Kit framework.
The only info that I couldn't find is how to add "read aloud" feature to the app written using Cocos2D. Could it be done within SimpleAudioEngine, or it can be combined with some other engine (possibly from Sprite Kit framework)?
I would appreciate very much if somebody can give me some references/pointers or tutorial links where to look for some answers how to add this feature.
Thanking you in advance.
I would like to use recorded voice, rather than synthesized sound
Good. Add your voice recording audio files (caf, wav or mp3 format) to the project. Play it back at the appropriate time using:
[[SimpleAudioEngine sharedEngine] playEffect:#"someVoiceRecordingFile.wav"];
Define what read aloud means to you because I find that a lot of terms, especially semi-vague ones like this, are used differently depending on who is using it.
When you say read aloud book do you essentially mean a digital storybook that reads the story to you by simply playing narration audio? I've created dozens of these and what you are asking has multiple steps depending on what features you are going for in your book. If you mean simply playing audio and that is it, then yes you could do that in cocos2d using SimpleAudioEngine (as one option) but I assume you already knew that which is why this question has a tab bit of vagueness to it. Either way you probably wouldn't want to play narration as an effect but rather stream it. To do that along with background music you'd stream background music via the left channel and narration via the right. You can easily add a method to SimpleAudioEngine to make this nice and neat. To get you started something similar to this can be used to access the right channel:
CDLongAudioSource* sound = [[CDAudioManager sharedManager] audioSourceForChannel:kASC_Right];
if ([sound isPlaying])
{
[sound stop];
}
[sound load:fileName];
Also use the proper settings and recommended formats for streaming audio such as aifc (or really all audio in general). Although I believe you can stream mp3 without it being decompressed first, the problem is with timing. If you are using highlighted text or looping audio then aifc is the better option. Personally I've never had a reason to use mp3. Wav with narration is something I'd avoid even if just for the file size increase. If the mp3 is decompressed even for streaming (which I'm not sure if it is off the top of my head) then you'd have a huge spike in memory that will be both highly unwanted and at times down right bad.
There are many other things that can go into it but those are the basic first steps. If you want to do things like highlighted text, per-word animations, etc then that will take more work of course and you'd need to be comfortable with cocos2d, SpriteKit, or whatever you decide to use. I'll be doing a tutorial series on it one day soon so I'll cover all of that stuff.
On the other hand, if you are talking about recording someone's voice and having it playback i.e. a mother recording herself reading the story so her child can hear her voice whenever they are using your app, then you'd simply record the audio like you would any other piece of audio, save it to the device, and play it back when the page is displayed in the proper reading mode (or whatever you personally call it). One place to look is the AVAudioRecorder that is part of the AVFoundation framework. Simply Google "iOS audio recording" for examples if you need them.
I'm interested in creating a drm type program. I want to put code into an mp3 file that checks online to see if it is licensed out. The online aspect is not something I'm concerned with at the moment, but I've looked online for some resource on doing this, but I've found nothing really that useful. There are people talking about viruses, but I want this to be intentional and not malicious. Simply when you play the the mp3 it quickly checks online to see if the license is actually allowed to play. If it is it plays if it isn't it gives an error and says either you need to log on or buy the song.
I'm pretty sure this is impossible. mp3 files can't contain executable code. They could contain byte data that could represent code, but the mp3 player would need to interpret it as such and execute it instead of trying to play it as music, which no player does. You would have to program your own player to do this, but since there's no way to constrain an mp3 file to only one player (again, because they can't contain code), you'd have to create your own competing standard. Further, there would be nothing preventing someone from converting this mp3 to a normal non-constrained mp3 and sharing it.
From a less technical standpoint, as a user (who despises DRM) it would irk me to no end if an mp3 was checking up on whether I was "allowed" to have it, and even more so if I was required to be online in order to listen to it, to the point that I would just delete it and never buy/download/steal anything in that format again.
(Does this count as an answer? It was too long for a comment.)
Its surely possible but very difficult. Im not very experienced in coding but using discord i was able to turn an mp3 file into a txt file, But the problem is that it becomes strange characters
I am currently creating a game. My game will use music from an mp3 file that the user sends in in order to make decisions on where to place things, how fast the level moves, etc. I am fairly new at this, I have been reading information about mp3. Currently I have found all the frames in the mp3 file that I am using. I don't really know where to go from here. What I want to do is measure the frequencies of the sound wave of the music at certain times (like every sec) and then based on that frequency, do what I need to for the game. I don't know whether I should decode the mp3, that looks like a lot of work and I don't want to do that if I don't have 2 or if I can just read the bytes in the frame and convert them without decoding anything. I am developing this in c#, using the game engine FlatRedBall. I am not using any libraries. I am also planning on selling this game so I would like to avoid using other people's code if I can avoid it. Please someone help me, I just need a direction to go from here. I know how to parse the header and calculate the framelength, I just don't know the next step in what I want to do...
Convert your music to .ogg format which is free and use free library to play it.
Note: I was going to post this as a comment but it quickly grew too big. :)
Writing your own MP3 enconder/decoder is probably going to take a good ammount of effort; effort which would probably be better spent on your game itself. Therefore, is possible, I would be all means try to use an open source library.
That said, most good MP3 libraries are LGPL/GPL licensed. This means you can use it in a commercial setting, as long as you dynamically link to it. Also the SDL Mixer library, as of version 1.2.12, supports MP3s and is under a more permissive zlib license, but since you mention C# I don't know if stable and up-to-date bindings are available. Also since your project isn't written in SDL to begin with, it might be hard to integrate it.
Also, as #pro_metedor hinted, perhaps using a more open format could help in licensing issues. In general, OGG achieves better compression than MP3, which is a plus for things like download size, bandwidth/resource usage, etc.
Just shop around for a while, and try to be a little flexible. I'm sure you'll find something nice! :)