[Kde-games-devel] Re: KGoldrunner now uses TagaroAudio, OpenAL and SndFile

[Ian Wadham]

On Tuesday 10 May 2011 7:54:15 am Mathias Kraus wrote:
> Ian Wadham schrieb am Montag, 9. Mai 2011:
> > I have just committed a version of KGoldrunner that uses a clone
> > of TagaroAudio (from Granatier)
> 
> Did you have problems with the wave sound having a wrong speed?
> I just noticed, that I needed to devide the sample rate by 1.5 to get the
> sound played right.
> 
My code is an exact clone of Granatier's, including the division by 1.5.
I guess I need it because the pitch of my sounds seems right.

> > Question: Do I need to tell the Release Team about the new
> > dependency?  I'd hate to have KGr going out without sound
> > because someone in the chain does not have dev versions
> > of OpenAL and SndFile.  OTOH Granatier is already dependent
> > on OpenAL, etc., but will revert to Phonon if they are not present.
> 
> If you want to make OpenAL and SndFile a hard dependency for KGoldrunner,
>  I'd also make it a hard dependency for granatier because the sound is so
>  much better and I think if two games use it, it might be a good reason for
>  a hard dependency.
> 
Sound is not essential in KGoldrunner, so it can build with none at all.
I need to check that I can achieve that without linking any sound libraries.

If there is no OpenAL, KGoldrunner will go silent, at present, and will not
fall back to Phonon.  This is because KGoldrunner with Phonon is simply
not working at all on my setup and has been that way since last year.
I released KGoldrunner into KDE 4.6 with sound silenced.  I am still
trying to get help on this at kde-multimedia.

I think I really *would* like to make OpenAL a hard dependency for
KGoldrunner, because as you say, Mathias, the sound is so much
better.  Phonon has not been able to play the very short footsteps
files for quite some time and does not in the latest anongit version.
Its play is not well synchronised with game action, the sound seems
muddy and overlapped sounds do not work properly.

OTOH OpenAL plays game-type sounds perfectly, does not have any
of those problems and is much easier to program and control.

For all these reasons, I would like OpenAL as a hard dependency.
How do we proceed with that?  Dependency freeze (for libraries?) is
on Thursday.

http://techbase.kde.org/Schedules/KDE4/4.7_Release_Schedule#Thursday.2C_May_12.2C_2011:_KDE_4.7_Dependency_Freeze
says only that we have to have committed by then.
http://techbase.kde.org/Policies/Library_Code_Policy#External_Dependencies
gives some policy for libraries, which presumably apply to TagaroAudio or
libkdegames(2?).

All the best, Ian W.