Suggestion: view preview sounds

[InCreator]

I don't know if this is suggested already, but what about adding sounds to view preview?
It could be useful for synchronising animations when the sound assigned to frame plays too.

Edit by strazer:

AGS v2.72 Beta 6:
* Editor view preview window will now play frame-linked sounds if they are in .WAV format.

[Pumaman]

Well, currently the editor doesn't include the sound engine. I suppose I could add it, but I don't want to bloat the editor too much... depends, what do other people think?

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Weeeeell, I guess it depends. There's a plugin for this sort of thing called MEdia Manager, but at the mo it don't work. This sort of thing COULD be incorporated into that plugin instead of AGS... but since so much time has passed and the thing hasn't been updated or even fixed so it works with the recent versions of AGS...

[Gilbert]

I don't know, because if you want to have sound playing with view preview, it's probably better to incorporate it into the editor itself than using a plugin (unless the whole view preview process is made a plugin, since the editor has to call the plugin to play a sound everytime it's needed while the graphics side is displayed internally, making things complicated, moreover you can't ensure the behaviour is identical in a game), but I think it's probably not worth bloating the editor with the sound libraries (as all libraries for playing AGS accepted sound formats have to be included then: normal WAV, OGG, MP3 at least).

I have a strange idea, but I think it's not really that practical, is that there's an extra view preview method, which is: the editor quickly generate a temp. test game which does nothing apart from displaying an animated view in an empty room, which in turn launches acwin.exe to test it, according to any settings you set in the editor. That way, you can stay away from bloating the editor and you can check how the view will look EXACTLY like in a game.

Well, just some nonsense, forget what I had just written...

[Pumaman]

That is a pretty neat idea about the preview thing, actually. I'll bear it in mind.

[InCreator]

Well, yes.
In 3-rooms-2-characters-no-story MAGS/joke/1st game there's probably really no need for sound testing.

But taking a look at some full-length games here, I can imagine what time waste happened there during development.

WAV support could be enough, since I'm talking only about sound effects here and though I'm not sure, I still believe that any kind of sounding starts from wave format, which is standard nowadays for most sound recording utilities and also internet - where most of samples heard in games come from. And since there's so much to improve, it's quite clear that any kind of improvements go for majorities, rare cases are not that important, such as people who use OGG for everything or so.

So, WAV... which - of course may be converted to OGG or MP3 later. There's only need to test it, speed/size/quality measurements can be always done later.
Which is also very simple, since AGS doesn't care much about sound file extension. Sound3.wav, which was tested and included into a game, can be later just converted to sound3.mp3 for example, more than rebuilding VOX files there's nothing else that has to be changed in game, if I'm not mistaken. Which also rocks.

Anyway, there will be no games not coming out or being worse even if there will never be such improvement, so...
...just and idea here.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

rare cases are not that important, such as people who use OGG for everything or so.

Is this a rare case? I thought almost everyone used OGG.