Adding sounds to game bloats mfa size

Is there a way of keeping the files external so the mfa file size isn't bloated? There's 3 options in data elements (preload, load on call and play from disk) and none of these seem to reduce the size of the mfa, and if I chose Play Sound File, I have to specify a channel, which isn't a convenient drop-in replacement for play sound. I also would like to ensure there is no lag or delay with using external files (I already get a little lag on playing certain sounds and I'm not entirely sure why). I believe there is an option to make external sounds internal on build, but I'd like to keep things working smoothly during development, I'm just not sure entirely which setting to use to keep my mfa small.

Or does everyone just get used to huge mfas once music starts getting added to the game?

I usually keep sound effects stored inside the file (most of mine are usually <10s), and music external if it's a larger file.

Most of the time whenever I used sound effects I specify a channel as well and just keep track of what channels are being used for what in a text file.

If you really wanted to load from a file but you didn't want to manually play a channel each time, you could do something like this:
Attachment 27622
(press 1, 2, 3 or 4 to play a sample on the next available channel)

This uses a separate object to play sounds - any time you want to play a sound, you set the string to the name/location of the sound file, and it will automatically pick the next channel

You'll have to modify it though if you want looping music that doesn't get played over by other SFX etc

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You can easily play music from external files, using the Sound Player extension by Looki. You can load the track into RAM at start of frame (or whenever you like), and play it at will. It doesn't get included in your binary data or MFA. If you don't want to specify a channel, you just specify channel "0", which automatically chooses the next available free channel.

Though be careful about letting sounds play on any channels that they want. If you plan on making any modifications to any sounds in your game (eg. separate volume for music, randomised pitch for footsteps, left/right balance for sounds on the edges of the screen, etc.) you'll want to control the channels of all sounds explicitly lest the wrong sounds end up getting the wrong treatments.

http://bit.ly/2mItAzD

It depends on your game and your target market -I accept an increase in .mfa but I also work on the assumption that the majority of people will turn the music off so I don't go overboard on putting in a lot of music. It's the download / storage size that people look at - and it's the same whether the music is downloaded external to the .mfa or internal inside the .mfa. Fusion unpacks everything in any event when you play the game in a temp folder.

I use .ogg to keep the size small for music - but .wav for game play sounds so that there isn't a lag -.ogg needs to be uncompressed and .wav is instant. This is something I learnt with other software and I'm not sure if this also applies to Fusion - but I don't have a delay on my sounds doing it this way.

Also on places like itch.io I sometimes get the impression that games are downloaded to harvest their resources rather than to play them. Keeping everything in a single .mfa makes it just a little bit more difficult for people to steal your resources.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Janette5

the majority of people will turn the music off

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Huh? Is this a thing? I never turn music off - I count it as part of the whole experience, with both indie games and commercial games. Do most people really turn music off in games?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Progject

Huh? Is this a thing? I never turn music off - I count it as part of the whole experience, with both indie games and commercial games. Do most people really turn music off in games?

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If you read reviews then you find people complain a lot when the developers haven't given the option to turn the music off and it will be followed by - I had to turn it off via Windows or on my device. There's also a lot of comments like: I never listen to game music so can't comment on that - or thank goodness you can turn the music off. You very seldom see a positive comment about the music.

I turn the music off 100% of the time because I have my own music collection or a streaming service playing music and I prefer that. Also in the mobile market - I observe people around me interacting with their mobile devices and they have all sounds off.

I actually spend quite a bit of time reading reviews on games similar to mine just to see what people like / dislike, what they're saying, not saying ... I definitely got the impression most people are turning the music off - but it's just my opinion.

I don't think "most" people mute the audio on PC/Mac - I've got a game released on steam with *no* audio options in it, and out of the 368 posts in the discussion thread over the last four years there have only been *four* people posting topics for audio/music options.

I mean it's obviously going to be very dependent on the game as well as the person playing the game (I wouldn't play my own music over the top of a competitive multiplayer game where hearing enemy footsteps gives me an advantage, but a casual game I might). On console it's probably similar

On mobile though it's more common to mute audio, here's a short poll from twitter showing about 85% of people on mobile play with the sound off. Keep in mind it's a pretty small sample size of 517 people so it's hard to tell how accurate that estimate is

I imagine though it's people mostly playing games on mobile either on public transport or in front of the TV or something like that.

Either way, it's very dependent on the platform, the player and the game

OK - I've never seen someone go "oh my, I'd better go and turn this music off!" when I've watched them play a game or load up a game they're in the middle of etc. I always think I'm not getting the intended "experience" unless I have music on and many games have music changed contextually depending on what action is going on, so it becomes integral to the game. I can understand with mobile games, but I'm focused on PC... and of course, sound volume options should definitely be a staple in any game.

I agree it would be platform and type of game dependent.

I only play games / make games for the casual games market and the music is mostly just a background tune - often a very repetitive one. However I usually leave the game sounds on (unless they're annoying) - so you hear clicks / activities - just not the music. All the games I play have the two options - music vs sounds that you can turn on / off separately. I write all my games similarly.

I never turn off sound or music in PC games. I have a love affair with games and I want to enjoy them to the fullest. So I'll more likely spend 40 minutes fiddling with settings and ini files to get an extra layer of antialiasing or better anisotropic filtering than I am to start turning off parts of the core experience like music.

But on every single mobile game I've ever played, the first thing I've always done is turn off all sounds (I don't play mobile games any more - free-to-play has ruined the medium as far as I'm concerned - but when I did, I always turned the sound off). If a game didn't have a sound off button, I'd probably uninstall it immediately. So although I would never turn off the sound in a PC game except in specific circumstances (the Fallout games sound so amazing with Tim Hecker's dystopian drone music playing), I can see that some people would treat PC gaming in the same casual 'I'm not in this for immersion, I just want partial distraction while I do other stuff' way that I treat(ed) mobile gaming.

I think most people probably don't realise how much the sound and music in games is adding to their experience. Game music tends to be one of those things that is at its best when you don't notice it. But I still think you need to give people the option to turn it off. You don't know their specific situation, and not giving them the option is just going to annoy them. Kind of like how unskippable cutscenes seem like a bad idea to everyone except the person who made the cutscene.

Thanks so much for all of your help, @Volnaiskra I'm converting over sounds from built-in to Looki's extension right now, is it possible to get the volume of a sound played with the Looki extension via expression?

Ahh never mind, I can just get the sample name using the regular sound expression.

Okay, so I'm currently using it with ogg files at vbr quality 6.0 (roughly 192) and the speed of the music playing is inconsistent, but this is each time it gets played, sometimes too slow and sometimes too fast. I am not setting any playback seeds so why is this happening?

EDIT: apparently if I hard-force each sample to be played at original frequency, it's fine. Why on earth would I need to do this if I haven't changed the frequency at all?