sciAudio is here! Check out the "LockerGnome Quest Redux" demo game to see it in action!
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Features
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- Playback of WAV and MP3 files
- Unlimited number of sounds playing simultaneously
- Fade in/out, looping and volume control
- Classification of sounds for playback management
- Multiple commands may be issued simultaneously to the 'controller' file
- Multiple controller files to avoid resource contention
- Runs hidden in background & will terminate itself shortly upon game close
- Calls to sciAudio are performed very similarly to the built-in SCI sound calls
- Poor man's encryption (MP3's only) - simply rename your .MP3 to be .sciAudio
- Log file for troubleshooting sound playback ('sciAudio.log' located in same directory as sciAudio.exe)
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Limitations
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Works only in Windows (requires .NET framework)
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Setup
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1) Place the 2 nAudio DLLs & executable into a subfolder within your game named 'sciAudio'
2) Create subfolders within sciAudio for your playback files. Something like this
<gamedir>\sciAudio\effects
<gamedir>\sciAudio\music
3) Include the sciAudio.sc script & 'use' it in any script you wish to have sciAudio playback in
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Available commands
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command <playback command>
play
Begins playback of a sound
stop
Stops playback of a sound
change
Changes playback of a sound. Used primarily for volume & loop control, very limited usefulness.
playx (play exclusively based on sound class)
This behaves just like the 'play' command, but will stop any currently playing sounds with
the same sound class as the specified class.
fileName
Filename to playback, including the path.
soundClass
Sound class to assign this sound. This is simply a string to assign to the playback
for the purpose of potentially changing or terminating all sounds with the same
sound class at a later time.
For example, you might have several sound effects playing simultaneously in a room.
Upon leaving the room, you want to stop all the sound effects. To to this you would
issue a stop <soundclass> command, which would stop all currently playing sounds with
the specified sound class.
If no sound class is specified, a default sound class of "noClass" will be used
volume
Playback volume of sample. Default is 100 (100% volume of sample). Range: 0 to ~300?
fadeInMillisecs
Number of milliseconds to fade in the sample
fadeOutMillisecs
Number of milliseconds to fade out a sample. Can be issued with a play or stop command
loopFadeInMillisecs
Number of milliseconds to fade in a sample between loops.
loopFadeOutMillisecs
Number of milliseconds to fade out a sample between loops.
loopCount
Number of times to loop the sample. Default is 0, -1 is infinite
conductorFile
'Conductor' file name used to place commands into. This is how commands are passed between
the SCI virtual machine & the sciAudio application. The sciAudio application constantly polls all
conductor files, looking for changes & executes them. These files must have extension of .con.
The default value for this parameter is command.con.
Utilization of this parameter is useful in the event you have many near-simultaneous playback
commands issued from within your game. Multiple different conductor files can mitigate the
issue of potential file contention of just using a single file. Most game developers will
probably not need to use this option.
playXFadeOutMillisecs
Only used for the 'playx' command. Upon terminating any currently playing sounds for a
sound class, this value will be used for the fade out.
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Examples
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(use "sciAudio")
(local
snd
)
(instance aud of sciAudio
(properties)
(method (init)
(super:init())
)
)
...
= snd aud
// basic playback
(send snd:
command("play")
fileName("effects\\score.sciAudio") // important: note the two backslashes in path name!
volume("35")
loopCount("0")
fadeInMillisecs("3000") // fade in beginning by 3 secs
fadeOutMillisecs("2000") // fade out ending by 2 secs
init()
)
// looping playback example
(send snd:
command("play")
fileName("effects\\loopedSound.sciAudio")
volume("100")
loopFadeInMillisecs("2000")
loopFadeOutMillisecs("2000")
loopCount("-1") // loop forever
init()
)
// stop with 5 second fade out
(send snd:
command("stop")
fileName("music\\introMusic.sciAudio")
fadeOutMillisecs("5000")
loopCount("0")
init()
)
// change currently playing volume for a sound class
(send snd:
command("change")
soundClass("myMusicSoundClass")
volume("50") // set playback to 50% volume
init()
)
// stop looping a particular sound file
(send snd:
command("change")
soundClass("music\\introMusic.sciAudio")
loopCount("0") // stop looping
init()
)
// exclusive playback (starts new playback of sound
// & stops any already playing sounds (with fadeout) for same soundClass
(send snd:
command("playx")
soundClass("narration")
conductorFile("speech\\narrate.con")
fileName("speech\\newNarration.sciAudio")
playXFadeOutMillisecs("1500") // will fade currently playing "narration" sound class sounds
volume("200")
init()
)
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Notes
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If you decide to re-use the same sound instance for multiple sounds, it's up to you
to reset any previously specified properties, otherwise they will be carried over
into the next command
Use the sciAudio.log file (located in the same directory as executable) for troubleshooting sound playback.