sciAudio - a new way to put sound in your games!

[MusicallyInspired]

Hacking ScummVM for what? It already supports sciAudio. Nothing would change.

Huh? Since when?

Also some of the SVM supported games that people did "enhanced" digital sound tracks to replace the original internal MIDI.

Ugghhh.....don't remind me.

[Kawa]

Since a while. Supposedly it can handle conductor files but I never got it to work.

(I might misremember, it's 2:57 AM.)

[troflip]

I've never actually tested it, I just saw logic in the source code that handles sciAudio.

[MusicallyInspired]

All I remember was asking them to support it and not getting an answer. I guess they just did it quietly...?

[OmerMor]

Apparently support was added 2 years ago.

On an unrelated note - I lately contributed a ScummVM patch to fix a bug in QfG3 which prevented getting full score. If you're a QfG3 fan you might find it interesting.

[gumby]

Troflip, I'm working on reworking sciAudio script to be integrated into the Sound class.  I've hooked into the existing commands (play, stop) and check to see if SOUND.XXX file exists (renamed from .mp3) in the sciAudio directory and if so, it'll fire up the sciAudio logic. 

End result is what you were referring to, just simply drop in the sciAudio assets & replacement mp3 files and the existing commands to play sounds should 'just work' and sciAudio will handle the playback.

[troflip]

Very cool! Glad it worked out

[Collector]

In trying to track down why Doan's installer broke the sciAudio I found an issue with the program. At first I thought it was a bug in the Publisher plugin, but it turned out that by changing the name of the launcher from 'RUN' to the game's name was causing sciAudio to prematurely exit, so no sound. I have been mulling over solutions, but some of them seem more like workarounds or hacks.

It seems like the best way would be to get sciAudio to look for the launcher regardless of the file name. Easy enough to change the sciAudio source to look for a different specific name than RUN, but that would require the user to edit and then recompile the program. I would rather not have to have the user to install VS if they do not already have installed. Perhaps have it look for an INI file with the game's launcher?

Any other ideas?

[gumby]

Yes, in order to not have sciAudio become a zombie task upon game exit, there is a thread that is periodically looking for a known application running (RUN or SCIV?), if it doesn't find it running it kills itself.

An INI or config file makes sense.  I'm kicking myself for not considering that, I think it's hard-coded in the application itself.

[Doan Sephim]

Yes, in order to not have sciAudio become a zombie task upon game exit, there is a thread that is periodically looking for a known application running (RUN or SCIV?), if it doesn't find it running it kills itself.

An INI or config file makes sense.  I'm kicking myself for not considering that, I think it's hard-coded in the application itself.

How do you think I should proceed at this point?

EDIT:
Yup, after installing, if I change the name of the executable "Betrayed Alliance" to "RUN" sciAudio works.

[gumby]

I'm looking into making the changes now.  Would it work/make sense to put another section in the game.ini file for this?  Input welcome.

[gumby]

Changed my mind, I'll have read it's own sciAudio.ini file in the same directory as the executable.  Keeps things clean/unpolluted.

[gumby]

New version attached here and also put all this code into a git repo, apparently it wasn't before:  https://bitbucket.org/nellisjp/sciaudio/

Now there is an sciAudio.ini file (needs to be in the sciAudio subdirectory of your game) that is read in and used for monitoring a list of (5) possible applications to monitor to determine when to kill sciAudio.  It's a bit hacky, and 5 applications might be overkill but it gives a little flexibility and is backward-compatible with the previous versions which monitored either 'RUN', 'DosBox' or 'ntvdm'.  I also improved the logging around all of this so it's a bit easier to troubleshoot.

Here's what the included INI file looks like, modify it to suit your needs:

Code: [Select]

[sciAudio]
GameExecutableName1=RUN
GameExecutableName2=DOSBox
GameExecutableName3=ntvdm
GameExecutableName4=
GameExecutableName5=


[Doan Sephim]

New version attached here and also put all this code into a git repo, apparently it wasn't before:  https://bitbucket.org/nellisjp/sciaudio/

Now there is an sciAudio.ini file (needs to be in the sciAudio subdirectory of your game) that is read in and used for monitoring a list of (5) possible applications to monitor to determine when to kill sciAudio.  It's a bit hacky, and 5 applications might be overkill but it gives a little flexibility and is backward-compatible with the previous versions which monitored either 'RUN', 'DosBox' or 'ntvdm'.  I also improved the logging around all of this so it's a bit easier to troubleshoot.

Here's what the included INI file looks like, modify it to suit your needs:

Code: [Select]

[sciAudio]
GameExecutableName1=RUN
GameExecutableName2=DOSBox
GameExecutableName3=ntvdm
GameExecutableName4=
GameExecutableName5=


Fast work! Thanks for the update!

[Collector]

Yes, in order to not have sciAudio become a zombie task upon game exit, there is a thread that is periodically looking for a known application running (RUN or SCIV?), if it doesn't find it running it kills itself.

An INI or config file makes sense.  I'm kicking myself for not considering that, I think it's hard-coded in the application itself.

I remember when this first came up and the solution. I was looking through the code earlier to refresh my memory of the fix.

Agree that its own ini is best. The game.ini is more for Companion and may not necessarily be distributed with the game unless it includes the source. If the user selects the sciAudio template I can have Publisher make the entry in the new ini. Don't think that Companion should be changed to accommodate this. Not sure how many new sciAudio games we will get with SCI1.1 being available unless someone really wants the SCI0 graphics.

Doan, give me a little time and I will make adjustments to Publisher to add the EXE name to the sciAudio ini.