Community > Project / Coder's Corner
Differences between filetypes
pubby8:
Hello, I am new here so apologies if wrong section.
I want to add some sort of module music a video game I am making, however I wanted some insight on the different types before I do so.
First off, how much computer power will playing modules use? What is the fastest format to play, what is the least fast?
Do all mod music play the same on different players? I have heard that .it may not playback correctly, is this true?
What are the sizes of the filetypes? Is .mod the smallest and .it the biggest?
Best library/method for playing?
What format do you reccomend for video games?
Saga Musix:
It would sure help if you told us on which platform (PC/Nintendo DS/whatever) you are actually working on, or else you will get lengthy replies which will not be very useful to you, as there are great differences between the stuff you can use on various platforms.
pubby8:
--- Quote from: Saga Musix on January 04, 2011, 19:52:02 ---It would sure help if you told us on which platform (PC/Nintendo DS/whatever) you are actually working on, or else you will get lengthy replies which will not be very useful to you, as there are great differences between the stuff you can use on various platforms.
--- End quote ---
Windows/mac/linux at least. Maybe BSD.
Also, what are thoughts on .midi music?
Saga Musix:
--- Quote from: pubby8 on January 04, 2011, 20:02:10 ---Also, what are thoughts on .midi music?
--- End quote ---
The overhead for getting proper cross-platform MIDI playback is rather big - you will need a soundfont, and a decent soundfont is often dozens of megabytes in size.
Unless you want your software to run on *really* low-spec hardware (by that I mean anything below Pentium 2-class hardware), you won't have to care a whole lot about the format you're going to use. The best playback library out there is BASS, which is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. It has the more accurate MOD/S3M/XM/IT playback. The CPU usage for these formats is very low, something close to 0% even on not-so-modern hardware - it can increase quite a bit if you use IT lowpass filters, though.
--- Quote from: pubby8 on January 04, 2011, 19:29:51 ---I have heard that .it may not playback correctly, is this true?
--- End quote ---
If you want 100% correct playback, this is true for any of the module formats. IT support is rather mediocre in some libraries like FMOD, however the same is true for many little details of the XM format.
pubby8:
--- Quote from: Saga Musix on January 04, 2011, 20:14:19 ---The overhead for getting proper cross-platform MIDI playback is rather big - you will need a soundfont, and a decent soundfont is often dozens of megabytes in size.
Unless you want your software to run on *really* low-spec hardware (by that I mean anything below Pentium 2-class hardware), you won't have to care a whole lot about the format you're going to use. The best playback library out there is BASS, which is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. It has the more accurate MOD/S3M/XM/IT playback. The CPU usage for these formats is very low, something close to 0% even on not-so-modern hardware - it can increase quite a bit if you use IT lowpass filters, though.
If you want 100% correct playback, this is true for any of the module formats. IT support is rather mediocre in some libraries like FMOD, however the same is true for many little details of the XM format.
--- End quote ---
Ah, bass.dll. I've actually used this before - but never knew if it was "the best"
I will look into it and try it out.
Can I assume that .xm is the best format?
Anyway, the reason I ask about midi is because I want to make songs that of are of the same quality or more (format wise) as AoE1:
like this
I know that these songs are in midi format.
Anyways, I thought OS already has midi soundfonts? Do linux (and mac) have a standard collection of midi instruments?
I don't need something that sounds identical on other systems, as long as it sounds good.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
Go to full version