Playing sounds on Andoird Exporter causes brief drop in framerate

Hey guys,

So I've had this issue for quite a while now. I think I've tried everything. For some reason, my android game runs smoothly when all sounds are disabled. As soon as I have a single sound sample executed during runtime, I get a sudden but brief drop in frames (from 60 to about 30-40). I understand that it isn't a huge drop, but it causes some conflict with some of the game mechanics. Also, it doesn't exactly look nice.

As reference, I'm going to use the Balloon Pop sound effect. The sound effect is a MONO, .OGG, 32HZ, 12KB file. It is run using the +Play Sample balloonPop on Channel #6. It is under an Always condition with an -Only one action when event loops (because it checks when the balloon's Y value is lower than a given value).

"Compress Sounds" Ticked
"Multi-samples" Ticked
"Play Sounds Over Frames" Ticked

Everything else related to sounds is left unticked.

That's about it, I guess.

Any suggestions?

Just wanted to reiterate that the game runs EXTREMELY smoothly without sounds being played. Like butter smooth. 60 fps at all times.

Thanks, guys.

Wow, Jeff, it works! I'm speechless, it's such a simple fix. I even made sure to triple check the fix with all my other sounds and it works. It has gotten rid of all the lag.

But I'm confused, why would it trigger the sound effect more than once? The Balloon is only travelling up, when its Y value is lower than, say, 200 (+only one action when event loops), the sound effect is played and the balloon is destroyed. I don't see how it would trigger more than once?

Of course it works now, so it won't matter really why it does, but the knowledge of the fix might circumvent future problems. :p

Thanks again for your time! You've been a great help -- as always, of course.

Hi Danny,

Yes, of course. Sorry for the late reply.

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Here is how it was before. The other 2 actions are simply a "Destroy" and a "Set internal flag 0 to on".

After inserting the "Is Channel 6 not playing?" condition, the lag went away. Not sure how it fixed it, but it did.

Any ideas?

I don't think that's what was happening, at least -- if it was -- i certainly didn't notice it.

Before the fix, the sounds had absolute no echo and sounded just fine. The structure of the code shouldn't allow for the action to repeat more than once, so long as (+only one action when event loops) is applied. The balloon never re-enters the state of being lower than its alterable value A (in this case named "popPosition").

There must be something else to it. Perhaps it triggers it an extra 2 or 3 times before it stops? Who knows.

Either way, it fixed the lag. So I'm grateful.

Hey guys,

Unfortunately, I'm still having issues with this. Every time a sound is played, there's a slight effect on FPS, dropping to about 45 from 60.

Example:
When the apple collides with basket, play sound "Catch" on channel 1. (Catch is a .ogg file, 44100hz, mono, 32 bit (float), 13.2kb).

This drops the fps to about 45 for an instant. Interestingly, if another collision occurs while the sound (catch) is still playing, the sound restarts but there is no drop in fps. Essentially, the fps drop occurs only when the sound isn't playing and the catch occurs.

"Compress Sounds" Ticked
"Multi-samples" Ticked
"Play Sounds Over Frames" Ticked
Force 'play from disk' for sounds larger than: 5 seconds

Any ideas?

This is getting just so frustrating.

Samer.

Hey Fernando,

The length of the sound is 2.34s. I've tried reducing the "play from disk" to 1 second, but that didn't solve the issue. I've also tried using different sound effects to see if it was the sound file itself, but no luck.

Samer.

Hey Fernando,

I didn't know that about .ogg files, thanks for the interesting info.

Having said that, I've tried your suggestion, I set the Catch sound to "play from disk" instead of "Preload" but that -- unfortunately -- didn't fix the issue.

I've tried converting the file into an .mp3, but I didn't get any luck. I also tried .wav but mmf didn't accept that altogether. Perhaps because it went from 14kb to 353kb...

Any more ideas?

Samer.

Hi Fernando,

I've just posted the bug report. Thanks a lot for your patience in dealing with this problem of mine!

Samer.