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Audio > Stereo/pseudo 3D sound for GBA

#572 - Vortex - Wed Jan 08, 2003 9:31 pm

I am wondering is there a point to create a true stereo or pseudo 3D sound engine for GBA game development ? For example in an RPG game when the character moves left/right the sound following him/her... Or when entering a big room to simulate a reverb to emphasize the space ?

I don't know are there any commercial GBA games supporting such kind of sound.

Creating a delay/reverb and spatial effects for GBA is probably not a big deal.

The question - is it worth to develop that idea considering 99% of the players use the build-in speaker ?


Your input will be appreciated.

Thanks

#675 - sgeos - Thu Jan 09, 2003 6:15 pm

Vortex wrote:
The question - is it worth to develop that idea considering 99% of the players use the build-in speaker ?


I've played some of my GBA games with headphones and I'm convinced that that is the the GBA is meant to be played =) (Except the waterfall area in Golden Sun. The water sound is just noise on my headphones.)

This really depends. Will *you* enjoy playing it with better sound facilities? If yes, then is it worth the trouble? (If you enjoy working with audio, then probably yes.) Just drop a note in the documentation to the effect of 'better played with headphones'.

Semi-related: Metroid Fusion had a mono/stereo option.

-Brendan

#1053 - tepples - Tue Jan 14, 2003 5:37 am

Vortex wrote:
I am wondering is there a point to create a true stereo or pseudo 3D sound engine for GBA game development ? For example in an RPG game when the character moves left/right the sound following him/her...

That's easy and has been done in PC and Super NES games since forever. Simply give each sample a "left volume" and a "right volume" and run your mixer twice, once for each channel. However, stereo mixing does tend to take more CPU time than mono mixing (not quite double because some optimizations are possible), so take this into account if you're doing some heavy 2.5D or especially 3D graphics.
Quote:
Or when entering a big room to simulate a reverb to emphasize the space ?

Reverb is harder. You need to know how to build a convincing reverb out of multitap delays.
Quote:
The question - is it worth to develop that idea considering 99% of the players use the build-in speaker ?

I asked this very question on Slashdot and several people responded that they usually play with headphones. Heck, some hook their GBA units up to a real stereo system.
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#3527 - fl0w - Wed Feb 26, 2003 5:33 pm

of course stereo has been done ! what a shame it would be to have those 2 nice digi channels and don't use them...

stereo dramatically improves the quality of a music, giving it more "space"... if used correctly by the composer, of course.

obviously, fx would benefit from stereo as well.

http://maso.r0x.free.fr is stereo ;)
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#4394 - SmileyDude - Sat Mar 29, 2003 7:05 pm

tepples wrote:
Heck, some hook their GBA units up to a real stereo system.


I've done this before -- but with 8-bit output, it seems pretty "tinny" to me. Nothing at all like how the SNES or any other modern console sounds through the same stereo. I just hope that the next iteration of the GameBoy has some beefed up sound hardware (16-bit, more channels, etc, etc).
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