iPhones have some major restrictions when it comes to sound outside of an app. There are two that are particularly tough to work around. The first is that no two sounds can be played at once; there is only one sound channel that can be played at any given time. The second is that sounds can not be preloaded. If a sound is to be played, it will always be loaded in that same moment, whether or not it has been played previously.
After a whole lot of mucking about and trying to figure out how to bypass the system, we decided to take a cue from music games like Groov on Xbox Live Arcade and only play a sound when the player is making an action. Actions would include picking up the timetanium, stealing the timetanium from a copy, entering the level, using a portal, and even walking. This way there will be a sound playing almost constantly, at least as long as anything interesting is happening. Since this will be taking the role of background music as well, the sounds will form an abstract musical piece when played in succession.
The solution for the second problem is fairly obvious: since the sounds can't be preloaded, make their file size very very small, so that it doesn't lag whenever a new sound is loaded. So what this all boils down to is that the audio will sound like SNES era wind-chimes. I don't see a problem with this.
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