PocketMatrix

Hi,

many posts have been written about the problems regarding sound libs for the PocketPC game development. Many of you guys use MikMod, since it's the only real alternative for "cash sensitive" game productions. But MikMod seems to add significant noise, thus decreasing the quality of your productions. Most of us can't afford the other, commercial players out there (fmod and co).

Yesterday i talked to the CEO of the Xiph.org Foundation, the guys responsible for the Ogg Vorbis CODEC project. Currently, there is no freely available ogg vorbis decoder for PocketPC, due to the fact that the decoder uses floating point math, which would be too slow on a PocketPC. Nevertheless, there is a fixed point version of the decoder, but it is commercial and will not be released under the GPL. After my yesterday's phone call i have the impression that Xiph.org would be willing not only to sell the fixed point decoder for a very competitive price (or much better, for a percentage of your sales), but would also create a complete mixer for the PocketPC that plays different formats and of course, ogg, thus being a real alternative to the existing players/mixers out there.

My question is, are you guys interested in this? How much would you pay or what percentage of your revenues would you be prepared to give away?

The development of the mixer would cost some money, but if we all show interest, we might be able to arrange a deal.

Of course, it is up to anyone with enough time and energy to adapt the existing, open source ogg decoder to use fixed point math and compile it for the PPC.

And no, i am in no way related to the xiph.org foundation



cryo

The problem is that Ogg Vorbis takes more CPU power to decompress than MP3s (or so I've read)... so if you're thinking about using it during a game, I'm not sure Vorbis is what you want.

It'd be ok to use to play "intro" music or something though.

i don't know abot that, but i would have to see the fixed point version running. In fact, it can be seen running on the Sharp Zaurus, as theKompany's tkcPlayer licensed it. Anyone with a Zaurus here?

cryo

I love the Zaurus, it's so much faster than the PocketPC OS... I don't have one though, thinking about getting it, however. And it comes with Go preinstalled! Like 6 games are on it to start you off! I'm sure PocketQuake could be ported in no time, there is Linux source for it. I should start a Zaurus fan club or something, get a riot started, force some developers into make software for it.

Doesn't pocketdivx play .OGG files? At least it lets you register that file type.. I've never tried playing one.

mmm,

maybe PocketMidi is an idea?
It uses soundbanks, thus it would be very large.
Maybe one could make out of it a midi codec for Pocketpc.
Once installed, every game could use it.
Or we could try Adplug (used in Scummvm).
It doesnt require soundbanks(it emulates OPL2).

I think that using Adplug as a base someone should
make a midi driver for pocketpc.