pause sounds or sound groups?

[tuket]

My game has some "battle" sounds that should pause playing when the game is paused. Other "music" sounds should keep playing normally while the game is paused.

My approach to this was to iterate over all the "battle" sounds and call ma_sound_stop on them. When the game is unpaused, I iterate over all battle sounds and call ma_sound_start on them. The problem is that when you unpause the game, some sounds that weren't playing are triggered.

I though of saving a list of sounds that were playing before the game was paused, and call ma_sound_start only on those when the game is unpaused. But I think this could lead to a race condition.

What would be the best appoach?

Cheers!

EDIT:

I have figured out that using a sound_group for this works! I just bundle all the "battle" sounds in "battleGroup" and then call ma_sound_gruoup_stop on the group.

Now the problem I have is:

• I pause the game (ma_sound_gruoup_stop is called). The pause menu pops up, and from there I press "exit".
• That brings me to the main menu.
• From the main menu I start a new game (ma_sound_group_start is called)
• The sounds from the previous game start playing again...

Should I iterate though all the child sounds of the "battleGroup" and call ma_sound_gruoup_stop on each? How can I do it?

[mackron]

You're correct in that you should use a group to do the starting/stopping. Stopping is essentially just a pause, so all your sounds that are linked to the group are still going to exist in their current state. If any sounds are no longer relevant because you've changed the state of the game (exited to the main menu in your example), you need to get rid of the sounds that are no longer relevant.

[tuket]

I was thinking of just calling ma_sound_seek_to_pcm_frame(&sound, 0); for each of the sounds, so I don't need to recreate the sounds, is this also correct?

The problem I have is that I can't figure out how to iterate the children of a group. Is it possible? Or should I store an array of those sounds myself?

Thanks!

[tuket]

EDIT:

Reading the code, I was able to figure out how to iterate though the children of a group. And now everything seems to be working!

This is what I do at the start of a battle:

ma_sound_group_start(&gd.sound.battleGroup);
{ // reset child sounds of the group
    auto& inputBus = gd.sound.battleGroup.engineNode.baseNode.pInputBuses[0];
    auto o = inputBus.head.pNext;
    while (o) {
        auto node = (ma_sound*)o->pNode;
        ma_sound_stop(node);
        ma_sound_seek_to_pcm_frame(node, 0);
        o = o->pNext;
    }
}

I would appreciate any feedback if my code could be simplified :)

Thanks!

[mackron]

I highly recommend you do not do that. That's all internal stuff and could change at any time. There's also subtle thread safety issues with this which are too complicated to go into here.

All applications should have their own list of ma_sound objects with some kind of knowledge of how they're grouped. You need this in order to call ma_sound_uninit(), and also because you're responsible for managing the memory of all your ma_sound objects. If you're doing it right, you necessarily must have your own list of sounds somewhere. You should be able to identify all of your sounds yourself from within your own code for determining which group they're connected to. If you're not managing your own list of sounds, you need to start doing that and then use that list to determine which sounds are linked to the relevant group.

[tuket]

I see, thanks!

I don't really have a list of sounds. It's more like a struct with a bunch of misc sound-related stuff:

struct Sound {
    ma_engine engine;
    ma_sound_group battleGroup;
    ma_sound pistol[cnt::MAX_PLAYERS];
    ma_sound shotgun[cnt::MAX_PLAYERS];
    ma_sound collect[cnt::MAX_PLAYERS];
    ma_sound auch[cnt::MAX_PLAYERS];
    ma_sound playerDeath[cnt::MAX_PLAYERS];
    ma_sound explosion[cnt::MAX_EXPLOSION_SOUNDS];
    ma_sound robotDeath[cnt::MAX_ROBOT_DEATH_SOUNDS];
    ma_sound button;
    ma_sound tick_tack;
    ma_sound electric;
    float electricVolume = 0;
    int explosionInd = 0; // the index of the next explosion to play
    int robotDeathInd = 0; // the index of the next robotDeath to play
} sound;

I guess I could make an array with the pointers to the "battle" group sounds?

You should be able to identify all of your sounds yourself from within your own code for determining which group they're connected to. If you're not managing your own list of sounds, you need to start doing that and then use that list to determine which sounds are linked to the relevant group.

Not sure if you are suggesting to have a list with all sounds, and then use the miniaudio API to ask if the sound belongs to the group. I think I prefer the first option though (having a list per group). However, I think it's a bit weird I have to store that info myself when miniaudio stores it already.

[mackron]

When I say a "list", I just mean some kind of collection of ma_sound objects. I don't mean you necessarily need to have a literal std::vector or anything. What you've got there is totally fine, but it'll just be a bit annoying to do stuff with them all in bulk because you don't have an easy way to loop over them. Just keep in mind that the address of your miniaudio objects cannot change for their entire lifetime, so keep that in mind if you end up using a dynamic list which might do an internal memory reallocation when inserting or removing items.