Irrlicht Engine

Hello, I'm fairly new to the whole development area of games, programs,

and etc. Really when it comes to C++, as I really used to hate it, but it

kinda grew on me recently, so I started using it.

Anyway, I was wondering, when it comes to Audio, what do you guys usually do?

I've tried using OpenAL++, but it seems to use functions OpenAL no longer uses.

I also don't WANT to use IrrKlang because of the prices it breathing down

my neck, but I'm open to it if its really recommended.

Also, sorry about my spacing, I like to space things to make it more readable.

Thanks for all responses,
Zac

Well, for audio, networking and input i use SFML, but CAudio (a OpenAL wrapper) is also a pretty good idea.

Thanks, Kalango, those look pretty darn promising.

Plus I was worried about networking(if I want it for something) so SMFL
might cover that for me.

Pretty bare-bones naked OpenAl does the trick for me... It is true some features might not be consistent across different builds& distributions such as OpenAL soft etc. Just be careful and compile your own libs to do what you want them to do.

I'm using Irrklang at the moment (might change in the future), but I always create a wrapper around anything I use (just a thin one though) so that replacement isn't that complicated (OK, a wrapper for anything but Irrlicht). I like Irrklang however but haven't yet taken a look into other engines.

I started with Irrklang but no longer using it (or can) since they don't offer a 64bit version of their lib even though there is a big petition going on on the forums there.
Anyways, OpenAL pretty much does the same, only on a lower level. It uses OpenGL-like coords so it's pretty easy to bridge to irrlicht (note difference in left-, right-handed coord systems).

irrklang is free for free use. If you are going to use it in a commercial application the license cost is acceptable.

Anyway i'm writing an irrlicht audio wrapper if you are interested look at "A Game Template" at source forge. I have no branches for that since i'm only working on the SVN trunk, but if you are interested you can use it in your game. I have already writed the "drivers" for use in irrlicht 3 different audio libraries
"irrklang" "cAudio" and "audiere"

those are all very good audio engines.
audiere is no longer developed from 5 years (2006 last update on sourceforge)

cAudio is no longer developed from 1 years.

I tried to play audio in all those libraries without problems. so you can choose what you want freely

I use SFML, mostly because I can use threads, network and audio with one library package.

OpenAL is very low level, but once you master it you can write very fast code.

I personally use a modified version of cAudio that supports unicode. But really, anything OpenAL related is your best bet.

I've been using FMOD for a long time, however for my current Irrlicht game I decided to use Irrklang as it's sharing the same file factory loader structure as Irrlicht, it allowed me to load sounds from archives directly with Irrlicht file manager into Irrklang. It may not be thread safe because Irrklang is multithreading however I didn't have any problem for now...

I implemented my own OpenAL wrapper with an interface for easily adding playing/streaming of different file types

I can only play/stream WAV and OGG files atm, but once I need anything else it'll just be a matter of hours to get it implemented correctly

It's far from being actually finished and stable though

I simply use SDL for audio. I've been thinking about moving to cAudio, but it suits my needs.

Sometime simplicity is best.

I know this is a bit of a old post but i would like to state cAudio isn't dead. College life and what not makes it rather difficult to work on it. Should be working on it soon enough.

wildrj wrote:I know this is a bit of a old post but i would like to state cAudio isn't dead. College life and what not makes it rather difficult to work on it. Should be working on it soon enough.

Good to hear, I might use it for my project as soon as I get it up to run with most technical parts. I've heard, and seen a bit that its easy to use and integrate, so it should be perfect for me as I don't really want to spend much time on configuring OpenAl myself.

Maybe cAudio isn't dead but I found a bug and I get no answer in the support forum..