Re: my intro, and seeking basic tutorials for OpenAL with OS10

On 1/19/13, Alex Hall <[email protected]> wrote:
> Thanks for the video link, that was very interesting and explained a lot!
>
> What I failed to say in my first post is that I am blind (hence the audio
> game project). I looked, but was unable to locate your book on
> http://www.bookshare.org, a website offering those with visual or learning
> disabilities digital versions of books. I realize that other online sources
> may offer the book in digital form, but none of those will allow me to read
> it in braille like bookshare.org will. With any subject involving coding or
> math, braille is essential; imagine having someone read a block of code
> aloud to you, meaning you can't "see" the exact punctuation or quickly go
> back to a chunk of code. Braille eliminates these problems.

I honestly don't know much about how the publishing industry works.
But don't expect Apress will be putting any more money into my book so
I'm not expecting any translations. Their model seems to be based on
pumping new books out as quickly as possible and letting old books
fade into oblivion.

> In any case, I think the Apple-provided example you mentioned, the one that
> lets the user manipulate different parameters, would be a good starting
> point.

I think this is the link to the Apple provided example:
http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#samplecode/OpenALExample/Introduction/Intro.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/DTS10003587-Intro-DontLinkElementID_2

> My main focus for now is on Mac development; once I get Objective-C, Xcode,
> and so on down with that I may consider shelling out the $100 to develop iOS
> apps (remember that Apple's screen reader, Voiceover, is not useable on iOS
> simulators so I would need to sign my apps to test them on my personal
> phone). Much of what I see, though, is specifically iOS, so how much of that
> can I expect to run on 10.8's version of OpenAL?

Two separate points. Point 1: The C-APIs on Mac and iOS are almost
always identical. This includes Core Audio and OpenAL which are both C
(not Obj-C) based APIs.

Point 2: I cheated on my book. Even though it is an iOS book, I
actually used it as an opportunity to write about OpenAL in general.
The concepts apply to all platforms (Windows, Linux, etc.) and I
explicitly call out Creative Labs and OpenAL Soft in the book.

Up until this point, there had not been a comprehensive how-to book on
OpenAL, so I decided I would use/abuse this opportunity to make it
happen because I figured the community would probably not get another
shot at this.

Unfortunately, from a marketing perspective, a lot of people don't
realize what I actually did. Some people did notice that audio made up
the largest portion of the book though. (It was about 220 pages.) And
unfortunately, all the other things in the book are getting out-dated.
But Core Audio and OpenAL in particular haven't really changed at all
in 10 years so all my stuff is still relevant, but the book will
probably fall into oblivion due to the other stuff.


Oh, I almost forgot:
> you never stated in the video what the source limit is on OS10, but I'm
> assuming it is 32 from the discussion you had near the end of the video.

I think the actual chart had Mac there, but I didn't do my
presentation for the sight impaired. If I recall correctly, Mac is 64,
with an extension API to change it if you want. (That extension API is
not available on iOS.)

> To "release" a source, do you literally have to call the
> release method?

OpenAL uses alGenSources() to create sources and alDeleteSources() to
destroy sources.

> If so, does that destroy the source, or (virtually) set it aside?
It is probably best to think about it as actually destroying the source.

-Eric
-- 
Beginning iPhone Games Development
http://playcontrol.net/iphonegamebook/
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