Streaming audio support

#1 @Jason - There will be streaming support for SFX... its just a matter of getting time to finish it up... port it to all the other sfx devices... and running it thru some QA.

The project if fairly big... but not impossible if you target a single SFX provider and limit features.

For instance if all you need is Theora support then you just need to create a dummy sound source... grab the provider specific SFXBuffer object and push your sound data thru.

Now if you needed data streaming support for all the different providers and also need streaming of audio data from disk... then you have a much more complex problem to solve.

#2 Tom,
We are in much worst situation than Jason. We bought TGEA 1.7.1 3 months hoping that it will have all basic features that TGE had, or will have in near future... Unfortunately now, just 6 weeks before deadline, we are facing several problems with engine, for example lack of streaming and theora support... This is huge problem for us. So, Tom, can You give us info when we can expect that TGEA will support ogg streaming and theora? Or we must just do it for ourselves?.... In that case can You give us some tips how to do this?

#3 @marius:

Since you are on 1.7.1, and presumably supporting windows only, you could you not in an emergency convert your video to AVI and use DirectShow to display your video?

#4 @Jaimi
Yes, we could. But this is only the partial solution of our problems. We still need to play music files through the gameplay. It that case we still need some kind of streaming in TGEA... ;)

#5 Sorry, posted to wrong thread!

#6 @Tom

thanks for your reply. I decided, based in part on the info you supplied, to use TGE for my project. Sorry it took so long to reply.

#7 What's the ETA on this?

#8 www.garagegames.com/community/forums/viewthread/88613

As noted here by Rene (a GG employee), apparently its going to be applied in the T3d Beta 3. There are a few folks that are still waiting on official fixes for theora and streaming, and a few other SFX items... Rene has suggested that we should just be able to take the T3d code and replace the files. Just hope its that easy for folks that arent T3d owners.

#9 Yeah I saw that post. However we don't have (or plan on getting) T3D so have to hope for a patch into TGEA.

On a sidenote, when is the T3D Beta 3 due?

#10 the blog post is pretty much as much as any of us know. GG pretty much will release it when its ready.

www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/17455

#11 Late next week is what I heard

#12 Thanks for the info guys.

It would be very nice if we could get some official feedback on this issue.

#13 I will point out Colossai that this fight for things non-graphical is usually not responded too. All posts that i know i have asked for some official attention have resulted in months of silence, or a pretty much if you want it fixed, use something else suggestion, rather then actually stopping and making the fixes. Yesterday as noted in my post, Rene suggested that we just back port T3d Beta3 code back to TGEa, which seems like a really poor method for customers. SFX needs to be finished for TGEa users. Having half a sound layer (with no documenation still) has truly been a fight thats is now drawing out since 1.7 has been released... Now do we blame T3d for taking up alot of time? Yes, but do we have to wait 6 months - 1 year before we get a fully working sound layer, that should have been working in the first place. Why do i beat it over the head every time a post is made. Becuase there is a game of cat and mouse being played over there. Who in GG is in charge of QA? Check out the SFX posts. Were not talking about a Beta project. Were talking about TGEA thats gone through how many upgrades 1.7 to now 1.8.1, and we still have a half of a Sound Layer with minumal support.

and deferring it to other folks like the FMOD guys or just simply saying TGEA folks can backport it (which seems like a license violation somewhere) from T3d (still in beta, or why did we pay X dollars?).

I have alot of respect for Tom and Mike, but now that Rene has chimed in, 3x is the charm, And confirmed a general lack of attention to this issue. Saying that is coming up in Beta 3, is it a diversionary Tactic? will it be there after over a year of waiting? Will TGEa recieve the update? Id like David or Deborah to maybe comment on this topic. This humming and hahhing has to stop, and QA needs to step up.

#14 So I am not the only one that feels like we're being politely-forced to upgrade to T3D to get the fixes that TGEA needs.

#15
This is in no way anywhere near being official feedback, but I guess that thoughts will be given to what TGEA sees next when Torque 3D is out the door and the people in charge (most notably Matt) actually get a chance of coming up for air for a sec.

I personally don't see a reason not to merge back some of the changes from Torque 3D into TGEA and do a maintenance release also including some improvements developed to existing systems within Torque 3D (e.g. like the SFX changes).

I can understand the need for more documentation, albeit at the other hand in my own eyes Torque's SFX has such a simple and straightforward interface that one does not need much documentation to know how to use it.

Out of my own work with SFX I cannot second the "half a sound layer" statement. As always, I found Tom's work to be absolutely great.

Video playback is being worked on.

BTW: For the sake of being completely accurate, I am *not* formally a GG employee.

#16 points taken and noted, thanks for the clarifation. The tags pretty much are the same.. so cant tell anymore. (im on 56k, so i dont usually click the tags unless i need to look at something)

#17 Thanks Rene. The problem is that without streaming support you can barely have any music in a game without swamping your RAM usage. Unless it's crap quality or 1 minute loops.

#18 we have "solve" problem with music in our game by adding audiere library (very simple to do) to torque and enable few functions to script ;)

#19 Thanks for the tip Mariusz, I'm looking into different workarounds and audiere looks promising.

#20 If anyone is interested, we built a very simple music player that works directly against FMOD to come around the problem.