From: brianp AT ic DOT owatonna DOT mn DOT us (Brian Peterson)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject: Sound effect problems with MikMod under DJGPP
Date: 8 Feb 1997 20:48:53 GMT
Organization: Internet Connections
Lines: 40
Message-ID: <5diorl$rug@oak.Internet-Connections.net>
NNTP-Posting-Host: s15.ic.owatonna.mn.us
To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
DJ-Gateway: from newsgroup comp.os.msdos.djgpp

I've been having problems with sound effects under MikMod. I'm wondering if
this has something to do with the fact that MikMod was morely designed as
simply a player module for demos rather than for use in games, as there
really isn't any direct and easy way of using sound effects, so I could just
be doing something wrong.

Actually, I've had a few problems with MikMod, but this is the only one I
haven't been able to work around. That is, on SoundBlaster cards, the sound
effects lag by anywhere from half a second, to nearly a full two seconds,
depending on the computer, the card, etc. This is definetely annoying, and
ruins the atmosphere of the game.

At first I thought I was just calling the sounds wrong, but on my GUS the
sounds don't lag at all. So, my next thought was that the delay was caused
by too large of a DMA buffer. The default, however, is 8k, which is rarely
longer than 1/5 of a second. Changing the buffer size had no effect on the
sound lags.

I'm using DJGPP v.2.0, with MikMod v.2.09b; I realize MikMod v.2.1 is out,
but the only difference seems to be drivers for other sound devices which I
don't need. This is the sound playing code I'm using:

  MD_VoiceSetVolume(chanl,64);
  MD_VoiceSetPanning(chanl,128);
  MD_VoiceSetFrequency(chanl,sfx[efc]->loopend);
  MD_VoicePlay(chanl,sfx[efc]->handle,0,sfx[efc]->length,0,0,sfx[efc]->flags);

I modified the WAV loader routine to place the WAVs frequency in the LOOPEND
variable as you can see, since we shouldn't be using looping sound effects,
and it was the easiest way to handle that situation. However, the lag was
present before I made that modification as well, so I don't think that's the
problem.

Yes, I am calling MD_Update() correctly. :) The project this is for is an
RPG engine I'm developing. You can find it's homepage at
http://www.inlink.com/~vecna/crs.html, or download the beta RPG.ZIP at
/~vecna/beta.html to see what I'm talking about. If anyone has any idea what
could be causing this lag and how to fix it, I would REALLY appreciate it.

If you wish to reply by email, please send it to vecna AT inlink DOT com.