From alsa-devel-owner@alsa.jcu.cz  Sun Nov 15 11:56:55 1998
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	Sun, 15 Nov 1998 11:54:45 +0100
Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1998 11:54:45 +0100 (CET)
From: Jaroslav Kysela <perex@jcu.cz>
To: Talin <Talin@ACM.org>
cc: webmaster@linuxgames.org, alsa-devel@alsa.jcu.cz
Subject: Re: ALSA
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On Sun, 15 Nov 1998, Talin wrote:

> Hi there. I'm a professional game developer living in San Francisco,
> California. I've been looking over your ALSA documents. I have a
> suggestion for you.
> 
> Currently, the standard sound library for commercial games under Windows
> and DOS is the Miles Sound System (MSS), which used to be called AIL
> (Audio Interface Library). Hundreds of games, such as Origin's Ultima
> series, use this library. The library is expensive, about $7000 for an
> unlimited, royalty-free license. But game developers are willing to pay
> this because the library is very easy to use and has just about
> everything a game developer would ever need.

Please, note that ALSA is developed under GPL.

> If you are interested in promoting development of games under Linux, I
> would recommend you take a look at the Miles libraries. You can download
> demos and docs from http://www.radgametools.com. I'm not saying that any
> Linux audio library has to be exactly like MSS, but it would be nice if
> a similar set of features could be supported which would make porting of
> games from Windows a lot easier. For example, MSS has very easy-to-use
> features for streaming samples from disk, setting the master volume,
> playing redbook audio, embedding programmatic events in MIDI sequences,
> etc.

You are speaking mainly about features on "top" of the sound driver and
kernel. For example: Playing redbook audio doesn't have nothing with sound
driver in Linux - this is controlled by CDROM driver.

ALSA driver doesn't want solve problems for game developers only. Our goal
is create full featured sound driver and libraries for access those
features. You need some special library for games. My answer is standard:
You can create one or you should wait if someone other have same requirement
and will do this job... We can help only with ALSA sound driver related
things.. All mentioned features (except MIDI - we don't have stable
sequencer yet - this is our work for near future) from you should be easy
implemented - kernel and ALSA driver have unified interfaces (for example
CDROM audio is controlled by same ioctl command and master volume for ALSA
driver should be set with same way for all soundcards).

I should say, if someone pay me $7000 I can work on ALSA three months at
full job and things will be very accelerated... I'm working on ALSA in my
free time only...

							Jaroslav

-----
Jaroslav Kysela <perex@jcu.cz>
Academic Computer Centre, University of South Bohemia
Branisovska 31, C. Budejovice, CZ-370 05 Czech Republic


