Background music and sound FX for Qt/Maemo

[tamhanna]

Hello Folks,
I have to apologize in advance to all those annoyed by this question - I have been searching the forums like mad, but was not able to find a single result thanks to the new search engine.

Does anyone have pointers to a way to implement a way to play wav files both as looping background music and as sound effects in Qt for Maemo-based games?

With best regards
Tam Hanna

[divanov]

For simple cases you use QSound
http://doc.trolltech.com/4.6/qsound.html
If you want to do something trickier then there is a Phonon
http://doc.trolltech.com/4.6/phonon-...l#introduction

[Dorfmeister]

For pure games you might consider SDL + OpenGL ES2 instead of Qt. Doom3, Quake4 and UT2004 were built on top of SDL for UNIX systems. Take a look at this: http://www.libsdl.org/intro.en/usingsound.html


Best regards,
Dorfmeister

[gnuton]

For pure games you might consider SDL + OpenGL ES2 instead of Qt. Doom3, Quake4 and UT2004 were built on top of SDL for UNIX systems. Take a look at this: http://www.libsdl.org/intro.en/usingsound.html

Best regards,
Dorfmeister

I agree with Dorfmeister.. anyway It depends from the game type (Eg: a card game can be written in Qt without any problem) and about the platform you want to run the game... however is SDL supported by Symbian?

[Dorfmeister]

Yes: http://koti.mbnet.fi/mertama/sdl.html

[tamhanna]

Hi Folks,
thank you so much for your response. The game is already written in Qt, so I can't move it to native anymore.

I already had a "working" Phonon implementation, which unfortunately now compiles but doesn't make a beep. When running on my PR 1.2 N900, all I get is this output:

Lösche übriggebliebene Dateien vorangegangener Ausführungen...
Löschen beendet.
Dateien für Deployment: C:/Symbian/Carbide/workspace/QtBallZ\qtballz_0.1_armel.deb:
Deployment beendet.
Starte Anwendung.

(Reading database ... 20305 files and directories currently installed.)

Preparing to replace qtballz 0.1 (using qtballz_0.1_armel.deb) ...

Unpacking replacement qtballz ...

Setting up qtballz (0.1) ...

"Warning: You do not seem to have the package gstreamer0.10-plugins-good installed.
          Some video features have been disabled."

The code looks like this, and I have also set the application name:

/*
 * BallZPhononEngine.cpp
 *
 *  Created on: 25.01.2010
 *      Author: TAMHAN
 */

#include "BallZPhononEngine.h"

BallZPhononEngine::BallZPhononEngine()
	{
	configureMusic();

	}

BallZPhononEngine::~BallZPhononEngine()
	{
	destroyMusic();
	}


void BallZPhononEngine::configureMusic()
{
	bgm=Phonon::createPlayer(Phonon::MusicCategory,Phonon::MediaSource(":/sfx/rsc/music/bgm.wav"));
	bgm->setTransitionTime(-500);
	bgm->enqueue(Phonon::MediaSource(":/sfx/rsc/music/bgm.wav"));
	connect(bgm,SIGNAL(aboutToFinish()),this,SLOT(playMusic()));


	playMusic();

	lrgboom=Phonon::createPlayer(Phonon::MusicCategory,Phonon::MediaSource(":/sfx/rsc/music/lrgboom.wav"));
	midboom=Phonon::createPlayer(Phonon::MusicCategory,Phonon::MediaSource(":/sfx/rsc/music/midboom.wav"));
	smlboom=Phonon::createPlayer(Phonon::MusicCategory,Phonon::MediaSource(":/sfx/rsc/music/smlboom.wav"));
	lrgboom->play();
}

void BallZPhononEngine::destroyMusic()
{
	bgm->clear();
	lrgboom->clear();
	midboom->clear();
	smlboom->clear();

	delete bgm;
	delete lrgboom;
	delete midboom;
	delete smlboom;
}

void BallZPhononEngine::playSmlBoom()
{
	smlboom->play();
}

void BallZPhononEngine::playMidBoom()
{
	midboom->play();
}

void BallZPhononEngine::playLrgBoom()
{
	lrgboom->play();
}

void BallZPhononEngine::playMusic()
{
	bgm->stop();
	bgm->play();
}

The strange thing is that it worked on Symbian, but doesnt work on Maemo. The N900 is not muted AFAIK, BTW.

Ideas, anyone?

[divanov]

"Warning: You do not seem to have the package gstreamer0.10-plugins-good installed.
Some video features have been disabled."

Do you have GStreamer plugins installed?

dpkg -l "*gstreamer*plugins*" | grep ii
ii  gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad             0.10.14-git265-0maemo10+0m5           GStreamer plugins from the "bad" set
ii  gstreamer0.10-plugins-base            0.10.25-0maemo14+0m5                  GStreamer plugins from the "base" set
ii  gstreamer0.10-plugins-base-extra      0.10.25-0maemo14+0m5                  Extra GStreamer plugins from the "base" set
ii  gstreamer0.10-plugins-camera          0.79-1+0m5                            GStreamer plugins for camera application
ii  gstreamer0.10-plugins-camera-apps     0.79-1+0m5                            GStreamer plugins for camera application
ii  gstreamer0.10-plugins-good            0.10.16-git276-0maemo18+0m5           GStreamer plugins from the "good" set
ii  gstreamer0.10-plugins-good-extra      0.10.16-git276-0maemo18+0m5           Collection of various GStreamer plugins
ii  libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-0       0.10.25-0maemo14+0m5                  GStreamer libraries from the "base" set

[tamhanna]

Hi divanov,
not sure, sorry. How can I check this?

I am not very experienced with Maemo. But I am now worried: if I have to install gstreamer manually, how can I get this done on my customers handsets also?

With best regards
Tam Hanna

[divanov]

How can I check this?

By executing dpkg -l "*gstreamer*plugins*" in XTerminal?

But I am now worried: if I have to install gstreamer manually, how can I get this done on my customers handsets also?

In principle I do not believe that some important plugins are not part of firmware. But you always can include extra packages as a dependencies for your application to make apt install it automatically.

[tamhanna]

Hi Danil,
thank you so much for talking back!

I have now ran the command, and all I get is a list of packages.

All the best
Tam Hanna

P.S. I am using the stock N900 1.2 firmware!

[divanov]

I have now ran the command, and all I get is a list of packages.

That's what dpkg -l results in...
You may consider providing small test application I can investigate.

[tamhanna]

Hi,
I will provide one shortly.

In the meantime: my files are contained in resources. Could that be the problem?

What I have seen, QSound doesn't do resources...

[divanov]

In the meantime: my files are contained in resources. Could that be the problem?

It could. It was working in Qt 4.5.3 and not working any more in Qt 4.6. Somewhere here was a thread about it:
http://discussion.forum.nokia.com/fo...urces-question
it doesn't work on Symbian as well.

[tamhanna]

Hi,
I now moved the files elsewhere, and the playback works - so Phonon and resources is a nogo.

However, I did not get much farther. I want the music to loop, but it stutters like hell. How can I get it to do "gapless" playback?

Tam