What Is FMOD?
FMOD is a professional audio engine used in most commercial games today, including those for PC and the major consoles, with support for Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox 360, and Sony PS3. Most surprisingly, FMOD is available free for noncommercial use. This is an extraordinarily generous gesture by Firelight Technologies, the developers of FMOD. Beyond the library’s pedigree, it is just plain easy to use and it works great. The website for FMOD is www.fmod.org, and this is where you will want to visit to download the latest version. The current version of FMOD available at the time of this writing (officially labeled FMOD Ex 4.12) is on the CD-ROM in the libraries folder. Let’s talk about what makes FMOD tick.
FMOD can load and play many different audio files, but the two formats we’re concerned with are Windows .wav (WAV) files and Ogg Vorbis .ogg (Ogg) files. You can use WAV files for sound effects and Ogg files just for music, or you can use Ogg files for both sound and music. Due to the compression rate and file size, I recommend against using WAV files for music.
AdviceWe can’t use MP3 because it’s a licensed, proprietary format. To use the MP3 format, you must secure a license! For more information, visit www.mp3licensing.com. Due to this licensing limitation, the alternative Ogg Vorbis format is preferred for distributed games. According to www.vorbis.com, “Ogg Vorbis is a completely open, patent-free, professional audio encoding and streaming technology with all the benefits of Open Source.” |
If you want to convert audio files to Ogg (for instance, music files), I recommend the free but awesome Audacity sound editing program available at audacity .sourceforge.net. Audacity is not as powerful as a commercial tool, but it gets the job done quickly and easily. Among its many features is the ability to convert MP3s to Ogg files.