OpenAL and SndFile as hard dependency for Granatier

[Sebastian Kügler]

Hi,

On Thursday, May 12, 2011 00:39:37 Mathias Kraus wrote:
> as some of you might know that Phonon is not really good for games because
> of the high latency and some other issues.
> Granatier used therefore for some time OpenAL and SndFile, first with
> GluonAudio then with a copy of TagaroAudio, as optional dependency.
> A few days ago, Ian Wadham ported KGoldrunner to TagaroAudio (a direct 
copy
> from Granatier) and also want to declare OpenAL and SndFile as hard
> dependency. He will soon contact you regarding this.
> For Granatier and KGoldrunner there is a difference like day and night
> regarding to the sound quality and because now not only one but two games
> use it, we think a hard dependency is justified. Also, Tagaro is supposed
> to be the successor of libkdegames, so there eventually will be more games
> using it.

It makes sense to not rely on Phonon in this case. As others have already 
pointed out, Phonon is really an API designed for "most" use-cases, and that 
means that an apps' needs can 

You might want to check wether openAL is also available on other platforms, 
such as Windows and Mac OS, and provide clear information about the added 
dependency to make it easier for packagers to get it right. They might have to 
create and track a new package, then as well, so keep in mind that an added 
hard dependency often causes a lot of extra work. Before incurring that, it 
would be good to look around in other applications, and see if there's a more 
common denominator for those cases. You've already done that across Granatier 
and KGoldRunner, maybe there are more around?

I can't really judge the technicalities, but I think we can use this thread to 
collect more feedback and find out if there are issues with this added 
dependency. It's also a good idea to not break the build right away, but have 
CMake issue a clear warning that from now on, if you want sound, you need 
openAL, so keeping it optional for a while for people to catch up with that. 
(I know I find it pretty annoying to see new deps pop up somewhere when I just 
want to rebuild some stuff.

Which release are you targeting with the new sound backend?

Cheers,
-- 
sebas

http://www.kde.org | http://vizZzion.org | GPG Key ID: 9119 0EF9