From: Emmanuel Marty <core@suntech.fr>
  To  : ggi-develop@eskimo.com
  Date: Sat, 08 Aug 1998 17:33:07 +0000

Re: Big changes to CVS tree

WHS wrote:

> I just converted most of my stuff but I'm not sure about the keys in
> descent/maelstrom (haven't tested descent yet, haven't even touched the
> maelstrom patch yet). I just removed all the U() and KTYPE stuff and
> converted the key constants and hope it will work :) I'll put some
> thought into it later. I'd be interested in the doom patch when you
> finish it.

The GGI patch against the original doom is rather tiny anyway, so that
won't be much work.. Will give it a try tonight if I manage to finish what
I'm doing (getting ld to produce an executable _with relocs records_,
it works mostly, and no, I won't explain why I need that :)

> WARNING! Offtopic ramblings:

/me puts the offtopic-rambling hat on

> > Wouter's work is awesome, and definitely worth a look. It is of professional
> > quality for usage in games.
>
> :-)
>
>

I meant it too :)

> 0.3/0.4 was used already by a company making a win32/linux game but I
> don't know how the game is progressing (nor if they switched to
> something else ..). An interesting comment was that 'it's
> a joy to use compared to direct sound'. That's what I aim for of course:
> a totally minimalistic, understandable, consistent, simple to use but
> powerfull system giving full access to all features.

I didn't use it for anything serious, just wrote some code to toy with it a
bit, but indeed, it is lean, the number of features is outstanding, and
it works quite well. I am quite impressed. I honestly think it will take
a niche, if you bother releasing it and advertising on slashdork,
freshmeat and such.. (and be prepared to handle a development
mailing list, users and such :). I'm quite sure of that, as sound and
printing support under *nix is really, um, anecdotic, except for a few
proprietary solutions.

> For those interested in gsi, the new version is taking a lot longer than
> I envisioned but I'm getting there. I think another week before 0.7 will
> be released.
> some features:
>         - midi plays on FM, GUS; MIDI pause works (worked around an OSS bug);
> cd playing works on linux/*BSD (tested on OpenBSD); voc files work,
> support for 'ultrasound drivers' almost ready (damn that takes time, the
> docs are incredibly bad/nonexistant for that driver), cleaned up api,
> added direct-dsp api which abstracts the underlying API without adding
> overhead, that could be used by programs like quake that insist on
> direct dsp access (result: you can use other sound drivers than OSS
> without resorting to emulation in those drivers), gsiplay is much
> better, etc.

You have a tester here.. :)

> Also, I patched doom to use gsi, very little code change.

Can you mail the patch to me? I'll merge it with the new GGI api changes ?

> Now I must add
> .MUS support to gsi or convert MUS -> MIDI before sending to the server
> and music shoud be fully functional too. btw, the doom docs talk about
> latency in the sound server that should be lessened by a SHM mixer
> buffer and/or other approaches; this is rubbish. The doom sndserver as
> is uses fragsizes that result in .05 to .1 s delays. No wonder! A small
> change and I get .023 to .035 s delays (just as gsi uses when using the
> recommended values) which isn't really noticeable.

(and that comes in the patch you'll mail me, right? :) What did you
change, fragsizes ? .1s delay is insane :)

> Last but not least, I will finally also make music in descent work (and
> look at making the SW version go, has anyone alse look at making it go
> yet?)

Sad but true, I don't have the descent files (except for the demo levels),
therefore I have never been able to test it.. I could have snagged the
files from some stupid warez thing, but didn't want to.. Else I would have
given it a look, maybe even helped you to optimize.. :)

> Don't know if I'll be at that IRC meeting tonight btw.

I'll be there - if I manage to figure out what is an efnet server and
what is an ircnet one (the two networks used to make one, now they
split, and would you think they advertise what network they are part
of in their motd ? but of course.. not :).

All GGI developers / enthusiasts are welcome there, although it is
only remotely related to our work (we are only a part of their project -
the graphics lowlevel API, namely).

I am convinced that your sound server will become their sound API
if you let them.. What do you think ? It would be a waste of time
to try to come up with a server even remotely as good as yours -
they should really help you on it, rather. (IMNSHO :)

Wouter - if I converted well, the meeting is at 23:00 our time, I
think you should be able to connect at irc.nijenrode.nl ; for french
users, irc.ec-lille.fr looks like it is an efnet server too.

/me removes the offtopic-rambling hat and puts the irc party hat on ..

--
Emmanuel