A fast, easy to use, free, and community supported 2D game engine
Ricardo1980
Member
Hello all!
Have some general questions about Deshion...
-How can I prelaod and effect and get their id to play it later? playEffect returns an id, but preloadEffect doesn't.
-Does stopEffect unload from memory the sound?
-How can I unload an effect using unloadEffect and an id? It seems only accepts a string.
Thanks a lot.
Ricardo.
Steve Oldmeadow
Administrator
If you use SimpleAudioEngine then never use ids, always use strings. In the old days you had to use the id for some things but now in any of those circumstances you should get a CDSoundSource object and use that. For example if you want to fade out a sound with SimpleAudioEngine then you use a CDSoundSource.
stopEffect doesn't unload the sound from memory. You could have 32 instances of the sound playing, just because you stop one doesn't mean the sound data should be unloaded. If you are using SimpleAudioEngine and want to stop a sound you should use a CDSoundSource object and call its stop method.
If you are using SimpleAudioEngine then you don't unload an effect by its id, like I said use strings. There is a string version of unloadEffect in the SimpleAudioEngine API.
Maybe you aren't clear that there are 4 APIs for CocosDenshion - SimpleAudioEngine, CDAudioManager, CDSoundEngine and CDCA which is in beta.
Ricardo1980
Member
Thanks a lot for reply.
I didn't know there were 4 different APIs.
I'm reading http://www.cocos2d-iphone.org/wiki/doku.php/cocosdenshion:faq and now is clearer.
I read:
"However, there is some extra functionality that is dependent on cocos2d - for example, fading out sounds using cocos2d actions. Classes that have cocos2d dependencies are kept in the CocosDenshionExtras directory."
Can I fade out background music and sound effects if I use SimpleAudioEngine?
Does SimpleAudiEngine manage memory automatically? Or how should I manage memory with sounds and SAE?
What is exactly CDCA?
Thank you very much, you are very helpful.
Ricardo.
Steve Oldmeadow
Administrator
Yes, you can fade out background music and sound effects using SimpleAudioEngine. The FadeToGrey demo which demonstrates fading uses SimpleAudioEngine. However, the class that does the fading (CDXPropertyModifierAction),isn't installed by default - it is an optional "extra" so you need to add that to your project.
SimpleAudioEngine doesn't manage memory automatically. I don't really see how it could as it doesn't know when you are finished with sounds. You manage memory by using unloadEffect to remove sounds that are no longer used. If you try to play a sound that you have previously unloaded it will be reloaded into memory but there could be a noticeable delay depending on the size of the sound.
CDCA is a new API that I am working on. It is basically the next generation of SimpleAudioEngine and addresses many of the problems that I have found people have with SimpleAudioEngine. It is still in beta at the moment so I wouldn't recommend using it yet.
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