Learning OpenAL

[Kip Warner]

Greetings,

I am about to start on a large scale project and have selected OpenAL
for our audio API. I have two questions.

(1) Whatever happened to this book?
http://www.amazon.com/OpenAL-Programming-Guide-Charles-Development/dp/1584503831/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1250217314&sr=8-4

(2) Is there a recommended book that covers OpenAL well?

--
Kip Warner -- Software Developer
President & CEO Kshatra Corp.
OpenPGP encrypted/signed mail preferred
http://www.thevertigo.com


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[E. Wing]

I hope I don't jinx it by speaking prematurely (as the contracts were
late), but I am in the process of co-authoring a book on iPhone game
programming. I am writing 4 chapters on audio, with 3 of the 4
focusing heavily on OpenAL. While the book is iPhone and game centric,
OpenAL is OpenAL and I think anybody wanting to learn OpenAL will
benefit from it. I also have tried to mention the other OpenAL
implementations when I felt the implementation differences may matter
so non-iPhone and cross-platform developers may still benefit from the
material.

I am expecting the book to hit the shelves in September/October.

http://www.apress.com/book/view/1430225998

-Eric


On 8/13/09, Kip Warner <kip@...> wrote:

> Greetings,
>
> I am about to start on a large scale project and have selected OpenAL
> for our audio API. I have two questions.
>
> (1) Whatever happened to this book?
> http://www.amazon.com/OpenAL-Programming-Guide-Charles-Development/dp/1584503831/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1250217314&sr=8-4
>
> (2) Is there a recommended book that covers OpenAL well?
>
> --
> Kip Warner -- Software Developer
> President & CEO Kshatra Corp.
> OpenPGP encrypted/signed mail preferred
> http://www.thevertigo.com
>

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[Kip Warner]

On Fri, 2009-08-14 at 00:11 -0700, E. Wing wrote:

> I hope I don't jinx it by speaking prematurely (as the contracts were
> late), but I am in the process of co-authoring a book on iPhone game
> programming. I am writing 4 chapters on audio, with 3 of the 4
> focusing heavily on OpenAL. While the book is iPhone and game centric,
> OpenAL is OpenAL and I think anybody wanting to learn OpenAL will
> benefit from it. I also have tried to mention the other OpenAL
> implementations when I felt the implementation differences may matter
> so non-iPhone and cross-platform developers may still benefit from the
> material.
>
> I am expecting the book to hit the shelves in September/October.
>
> http://www.apress.com/book/view/1430225998
>
> -Eric

Hey Eric. Although I don't use the iPhone and other proprietary software
platforms for ethical reasons, I can see how your coverage of OpenAL in
this book can be useful. Do you have any idea what happened to the
original book on OpenAL? It looks as though it never got to the printing
press.

Thank you.

--
Kip Warner -- Software Developer
President & CEO Kshatra Corp.
OpenPGP encrypted/signed mail preferred
http://www.thevertigo.com


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[David Guthrie]

I'm trying to verify that a device and a context are being closed/
destroyed as part of a unit test.   I can't seem to find a way that  
works on all implementations.  The best I can tell with the context is  
to try to make it current and see if it returns NULL.  It seems like I  
should get an error in that case, but I don't always, and trying to  
destroy it should fail because it's destroyed already.

With the device, if I try to destroy the device again, it returns  
false in some implementations, but in others it crashes.

I know this is like trying to verify that memory has been deleted,  
although we do that with reference counted pointers, but does anyone  
have any ideas?

---
David Guthrie
dguthrie@...
Alion Science and Technology
BMH Operation - A CMMI Maturity Level 3 Organization
5365 Robin Hood Road, Suite 100
Norfolk, VA 23513-2416
[phone], ext 269, Fax [phone]


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[Chris Robinson-5]

On Friday 14 August 2009 11:39:25 am David Guthrie wrote:
> I'm trying to verify that a device and a context are being closed/
> destroyed as part of a unit test.   I can't seem to find a way that
> works on all implementations.  The best I can tell with the context is
> to try to make it current and see if it returns NULL.  It seems like I
> should get an error in that case, but I don't always, and trying to
> destroy it should fail because it's destroyed already.

The spec says that destroying a context can fail if it's the current context,
so calling
alcMakeContextCurrent(NULL);
and making sure it succeeds, guarantees the context will be destroyed. Some
implementations are lenient and will allow you to destroy the current context
(in which case the current context is implicitly changed), but that's the only
way it can fail.

> With the device, if I try to destroy the device again, it returns
> false in some implementations, but in others it crashes.

If alcCloseDevice returns ALC_TRUE, it's as good as gone and the pointer
should be treated as invalid.


I'm not sure there's a way to verify beyond that if devices/contexts are truly
destroyed, since the pointers are not necessarily invalid (there's nothing
stopping it from being statically allocated, or being part of a larger
structure that's kept longer) and passing invalid pointers to alc* functions
isn't safe.

Perhaps if anyone else has other ideas, they can speak up. But I think that's
the extent of it.
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[E. Wing]

On 8/14/09, Kip Warner <kip@...> wrote:

> On Fri, 2009-08-14 at 00:11 -0700, E. Wing wrote:
>> I hope I don't jinx it by speaking prematurely (as the contracts were
>> late), but I am in the process of co-authoring a book on iPhone game
>> programming. I am writing 4 chapters on audio, with 3 of the 4
>> focusing heavily on OpenAL. While the book is iPhone and game centric,
>> OpenAL is OpenAL and I think anybody wanting to learn OpenAL will
>> benefit from it. I also have tried to mention the other OpenAL
>> implementations when I felt the implementation differences may matter
>> so non-iPhone and cross-platform developers may still benefit from the
>> material.
>>
>> I am expecting the book to hit the shelves in September/October.
>>
>> http://www.apress.com/book/view/1430225998
>>
>> -Eric
>
> Hey Eric. Although I don't use the iPhone and other proprietary software
> platforms for ethical reasons, I can see how your coverage of OpenAL in
> this book can be useful. Do you have any idea what happened to the
> original book on OpenAL? It looks as though it never got to the printing
> press.
>

Sorry, I don't know anything about the other book.

-Eric
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