#159076 - Chilo - Wed Jun 25, 2008 3:40 am
Hi all, I am new here, as you can tell from my post amount.
I have a few questions regarding music/sound development for the DS, that are rather newb, and was hoping a knowledgeable person might be able to answer a few of them for me.
Basically I am totally newb to sound/music development for the DS and would like more information regarding what file formats are excepted (and which are most commonly used), if the file formats depend on the engine used (if thats even applicable), the average amount of space that is set aside for audio assets (sounds and music) and basically anything there is know about the audio side of DS development.
If someone would be so kind to enlighten me I would be in their debt. If someone even has time, please PM so if it is not asking too much we could converse over a chat client, like msn.
Cheers!
#159124 - josath - Wed Jun 25, 2008 9:13 pm
1. Most common is raw WAV audio for short sound effects, and a tracked music format like MOD or XM for music.
2. Yes, the formats you can use depend on the software used. The hardware itself only accepts uncompressed raw or a specific adpcm compression, and it has 16 hardware channels which can be panned / volume adjusted.
3. "Space set aside" is whatever you feel is a reasonable amount of space. In commercial games it probably ranges from a couple hundred KB to tens of MB (rough guess).
#159130 - silent_code - Wed Jun 25, 2008 10:15 pm
There is also the possibility to use one of the premade audio libs that include .mp3 support, e.g. ASlib. ;^)
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#159138 - eKid - Wed Jun 25, 2008 11:52 pm
Use IT format (the bestest tracked format which supports virtual channels) :P
You can play them nicely when the next libnds comes out. :D
A [pretty good] IT module loaded into memory should take around 100-400kB of memory.
#159191 - Chilo - Thu Jun 26, 2008 5:54 pm
Thanks for the information!
So I reckon most of the music, not sfx, I am hearing is in MOD (tracker) format?:/
| Quote: |
| There is also the possibility to use one of the premade audio libs that include .mp3 support, e.g. ASlib. ;^) |
How many developers, do you reckon, are using actual mp3 formats? And at what sample rate, if you happen to know. Is the any .ogg support?
#159198 - josath - Thu Jun 26, 2008 9:04 pm
I've heard that Guitar Hero DS uses OGG for its songs, the numbers I heard (from someone trying to hack it to put their own songs) were ~25kbit/sec average bitrate, 14961Hz sampling rate, mono. I'm a little surprised they were able to squeeze enough CPU time out, since they play at least 2 tracks at a time (the background music & the guitar track), might be more (does the game allow multiple instruments for multiplayer or something?). I think 90%+ though use tracked formats like MOD/XM/IT and not a sampled format like MP3/OGG, mainly because the former takes less space, less CPU, and can actually end up sounding better (since you can use higher samplerates).
#159201 - tepples - Thu Jun 26, 2008 9:23 pm
| josath wrote: |
| I've heard that Guitar Hero DS uses OGG for its songs, the numbers I heard (from someone trying to hack it to put their own songs) were ~25kbit/sec average bitrate, 14961Hz sampling rate, mono. I'm a little surprised they were able to squeeze enough CPU time out, since they play at least 2 tracks at a time (the background music & the guitar track) |
I'm not surprised. DSOrganize and MoonShell routinely decode tracks with two Vorbis channels at 44100 Hz and 64 kbps per channel. Even the GBA can handle a GSM track at 18157 Hz and 30 kbps, using 60% of CPU time.
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