Sound and music

Sound plays a crucial role in computer games. Sounds are added to your game in the form of sound resources. Make sure that the names you use are valid variable names. As you will have seen you can indicate four different types of sound: normal sounds, background music, 3D sounds, and sounds that must be played through the media player.

Normal sounds are used for sound effects. In general wave files are used for this. Many of them can play at the same moment (even multiple instances of the same normal sound). You can apply all sorts of effects to them.

Background music typically consist of midi files but sometimes also wave files are used. Sound effects can be applied to it. The only difference with normal sounds is that only one background music can play at any moment. If you start one the current one is stopped.

3D sounds allow for 3D sound effects which is described below. They are mono sounds (wave or midi).

Finally, if you want to use another sound type, in particular mp3, these cannot be played through DirectX. As a result the normal media player must be used for this. This is much more limited. Only one sound can play at the same time. No effects can be applied (not even volume changes) and the timing for e.g. looping sounds is poor. There can also be delays in playing these sounds. You are strongly encouraged not to use them. (Some computers might also not support them)

Information on sound and music can be found in the following pages:

Basic sound functions
Special effects
3D music
CD music