ogg streaming without directshow filter

Posted By: ulf

ogg streaming without directshow filter - 12/23/07 11:36

right now streaming ogg in gamestudio requires the need of the direct show ogg filter. wich is freeware and can be supplied with your finished game.

however, there are 2 major problems with this filter:

1) a lot of users dislike installing secondary "driver like" software on their computer for a couple of reasons (malware, viruses, bad driver fears...)
2) the filter does not install properly on windows vista!

as a result i would say as a rough estimate, 40% of people installing your game either have no music at all, or dont install and play the game!
this cant be stressed enough, it really is the case, they dont have time to read the explaination wich explains what it does and dont want to install anything apart from the game they just downloaded.
even if they play the game they think 'oh it has no music, how buggy is it?' or if they crash from the installation on vista, they are biased negatively.

purchasing an expensive library wich costs more than the gamestudio engine is no choice imho. also using other sound formats is no real choice...

so is there any possibility that this 'problem' can be solved in the future?

i know for a big company this is no 'problem' as they can easy afford the .dll sollutions FMOD or BASS but the small indie developer can not thus is suffering from this problem.

sign this if you agree or point out possible sollutions. thanks! and have a nice christmas eve!

Posted By: ulf

Re: ogg streaming without directshow filter - 01/04/08 10:53

sorry for bumping, but has really no one ever thought about this problem?

Posted By: HeelX

Re: ogg streaming without directshow filter - 01/04/08 17:32

Other question - how do I remove the OGG drivers from my PC to get a machine for testing it? Then I or zou could look into some of the various open source alternatives.

Posted By: FBL

Re: ogg streaming without directshow filter - 01/04/08 19:21

When I've finished my Wiimote stuff, I wanted to try to build an OGG DLL. But it will still take some time... exams.... and the Wii stuff is taking longer than I expected.

Posted By: ulf

Re: ogg streaming without directshow filter - 01/08/08 10:02

Quote:

Other question - how do I remove the OGG drivers from my PC to get a machine for testing it? Then I or zou could look into some of the various open source alternatives.

another reason why this approach is so bad - this is not trivial for the end user.

to uninstall the ogg directShow filter, start OggDSuninst.exe in the C:\WINDOWS\System32 folder.

now think of the situation this filter screws someones system after they installed it with your game demo |:

Posted By: HeelX

Re: ogg streaming without directshow filter - 01/08/08 14:46

Quote:

now think of the situation this filter screws someones system after they installed it with your game demo |:

I doubt that this will happen but who knows.. who knows..

Posted By: jcl

Re: ogg streaming without directshow filter - 01/09/08 08:39

I can not confirm that the ogg filter by Tobias Waldvogel does not work with Vista. It works well here. However I'm open for proposals when you think another filter is better.

DirectShow filters, such as the ogg filter, must be installed on the end users' machine. But you should do this automatically by your installer.

Posted By: ulf

Re: ogg streaming without directshow filter - 01/09/08 22:42

Quote:

I can not confirm that the ogg filter by Tobias Waldvogel does not work with Vista. It works well here. However I'm open for proposals when you think another filter is better.

DirectShow filters, such as the ogg filter, must be installed on the end users' machine. But you should do this automatically by your installer.

yes thats what i meant and where i see the problem: if you autostart the filter from tobias with your game installer, the end user would have to authorize the installation by clicking the "i agree" button in tobias's installer.

it also shows a copyright notice and long text in a different looking window than your game installer. now the point is, most users are afraid to click agree - cause they dont know what a "ogg filter" is used for and they just want to play the game they downloaded.
so they rather click on "cancel" and wonder why they dont have any music in the game.

shure the advanced gamer knows what it is and installs it, but the average casual gamer mom will hesitate to do so.

the only solution with the ogg filter i can think of at the moment, is to silently install all .dll files (5 in total) in the WINDOWS\system32 folder along with the OggDSuninst.exe in your game setup script.
this way i think you would have to place the copyright notice of tobias's filter in your installer eula.
but i still dont know if this is legal or not...

Posted By: HPW

Re: ogg streaming without directshow filter - 01/10/08 17:12

It's not only the install process. Sometimes I uninstall programms with the windows software deinstaller to hold my system clean (no Googlebar,...) and if I don't know what games use wich additional programs then I can't know that it's needed.
Many gamers don't know what OGG is and eventually deinstall it after one or two month since the installation.

Posted By: HeelX

Re: ogg streaming without directshow filter - 01/10/08 17:52

Quote:

the only solution with the ogg filter i can think of at the moment, is to silently install all .dll files (5 in total) in the WINDOWS\system32 folder along with the OggDSuninst.exe in your game setup script.
this way i think you would have to place the copyright notice of tobias's filter in your installer eula.
but i still dont know if this is legal or not...

Ask Tobias about this and do it.

Posted By: Anonymous

Re: ogg streaming without directshow filter - 01/11/08 18:05

first steps of an ogg-player plugin.

download (zip, 3MB)

You need the plugin usogg.dll as well as Vorbis.dll to call the ogg-player.
Currently there is a big problem with the idle time. It's very very low, so it's not possible to play two tracks parallel.

I'm on it...

mercuryus

Posted By: Anonymous

Re: ogg streaming without directshow filter - 01/17/08 21:36

...nobody seems to be interested anymore, so I stop waste my time on this...

mercuryus

Posted By: ulf

Re: ogg streaming without directshow filter - 01/17/08 22:18

i'm still interested in it and some others as well as far as i know. right now i dont have time to really test something.

so did you wrote the vorbis.dll and is it free to distribute this .dll thats needed for the plugin?

i think doubleplay is not really relevant, a simple start, stop, pause would be enough.

please post if you are interested in this plugin.

Posted By: ulf

Re: ogg streaming without directshow filter - 08/11/09 12:21

i got to bump this up again...

is there any "new" technique known to get .ogg music playing in a7 without the need to install a filter before?