[Kde-games-devel] Unavailable, Tagaro progress, sound APIs (again)

[Mauricio Piacentini]

On 9/9/10 6:34 PM, Parker Coates wrote:

> Phonon abilities and suitability for game programming seem
> to vary considerable depending on the Phonon dev one is talking to and
> the backend being used. (I'm not really criticising Phonon here. For
> one, I'm not really qualified to criticise it. For two, it seems to
> meet the needs of a great many KDE apps, just not our games.)

Chiming in, after a long hiatus...
According to Vir (main designer of Phonon) this was by design. Phonon
was never designed for games, or other situations where low latency and
the ability to store and play multiple sounds (some very short) quickly
and under precise control of timing. This is what I recall from a
conversation we had during Akademy 2008.
We, of course, know about this from experience as well. Phonon gives KDE
applications a simple way to add sounds and video, and plugable
backends. But something has to give in order for this flexibility to be
achieved, that is the reason Phonon is not really designed to be used in
games or to produce a music sequencer or a really advanced media player.
So, in short, it is not Phonon's "fault". It is good for what it was
designed to be, and we need to find an alternative for our specific use
case. OpenAL seems like a candidate, although it brings its own set of
requirements (and shortcomings) as well.

Regards,
Mauricio Piacentini