Lag upon music start

**Tinselsnips** · 20th April 2007, 05:33 PM

I've created a simple game, that loads music in three key places:
-Immediately upon loading the application
-At the start of the third frame
-Later in the third frame, when the player reaches the "boss"

The problem is, when the game attempts to load the music track, the entire program stops dead for 2-3 seconds. After that, the game rushes to complete every action that was supposed to occur during the period that the app froze. After that, the game continues to flow normally.

Obviously, this is creating problems with both delays on startup/frame start, as well as syncing issues when the game plows through all the delayed actions.

Example: When the player holds spacebar, the player's ship fires a bullet at a rate of once every 1/30th of a second. When the music loads, all the action stops for 2-3 seconds. When the game resumes, it tries to fire every bullet that should have been fired during the delay as fast as the game can process them. This creates an uber-weapon effect that I don't want. (not to mention the annoyance of having the game freeze for 3 seconds).

The music files are MIDI files, 80-100 KB. I am stopping the previous track when the new track loads, and they are issued on a Frame Start, and When Internal Flag is On conditions.

I'd apprecite any help you guys could give.