Beginning Flash Game Programming for Dummies (ISBN by 0764589628)

Author:0764589628)
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: &NEW
Published: 2011-07-01T01:27:22+00:00

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190 Part IV: Getting Control of the Situation

Controlling your own sounds

Monkeying around with Flash’s audio compres-

yourself and often produce both decent

sion is pretty easy:

sound and effective compression.

1. Right-click the sound file in the Library.

After you change the compression options,

you can click the Test button to hear how

2. Choose Properties from the contextual menu.

your audio effect sounds.

You see a dialog box like the following figure.

Tests take longer to compile when you

ߜ If you leave the compression setting to

choose better compression. (Every time you

Default, Flash decides how to compress the

test a program, Flash rebuilds the sound file

sound. When you run the program, you usu-

at the quality you request.) To keep compile

ally lose too much quality.

times reasonable, use a weaker algorithm

ߜ

while testing your programs.

If you switch the compression type to MP3,

you can play with the compression rates

ߜ Switch to a better (but slower) algorithm for

your final build.

Incorporating sound into your programs

Typically, you break your sound coding into three steps: 1. Gather and configure the sounds in the Flash editor.

2. Write initialization code to set up the Sound objects.

3. Play the sounds in response to events in the game.

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Chapter 8: Keyboard Input and Audio Output

191

Listing 8-2 shows how the soundDemo ties all these ideas together.

Listing 8-2:

Sound Demo

//soundDemo

//illustrates how to add code-driven sound to

//games

//Andy Harris, 4/05

//assumes a file called “crash.wav” has been loaded into library

//with link settings changed to “export for actionscript”

init();

function init(){

//create a sound object

sndCrash = new Sound();

sndCrash.attachSound(“crash.wav”);

} // end init

btnCrash.onRelease = function(){

sndCrash.start();

} // end

If you have many sounds, initialize them all in the init() method. (I often immediately play a sound to ensure it’s working before I move the sound’s start code to another place.)

Getting the most from your sounds

Sound is important, but it can be tricky to work with. Any resource that makes your game larger needs to have an adequate payoff. Here are the most important things to remember when working with sound files in Flash: ߜ Don’t use long songs. Background music can dramatically lengthen your game’s download time, and it gets annoying quickly. Many people turn off background music, so don’t use it unless it’s really important to your game.

If you need music, look for short loops of music that can be repeated.

Audio in Flash games is better used with either special effects or instruction and splash screens.

ߜ Import MP3 files. If you’re pretty handy with audio, you might want to do your own MP3 conversions. If you load an MP3 file directly into Flash, the Use Imported MP3 Quality check box of the Properties dialog box is activated. This setting means

• You do all your tweaking in your audio tool.

• Flash plays your file at the settings you mandate.

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192 Part IV: Getting Control of the Situation

If you don’t enable the Use Imported MP3 Quality check box, Flash tries to optimize your already optimized MP3 file (and often makes a mess of things).

ߜ Flash doesn’t love all rates and settings. If

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