

However, all messages share the flags MCI_WAIT, MCI_NOTIFY, and MCI_TEST (covered soon.)Ī structure contains the specific parameter for the command message.Īs a result, every command (message) has its name, flags, and structure parameter. Common messages are covered in the next few sections.įlags (options) of the message. You can forget about this argument and just pass the function 0 to direct the message to the default device (selected in the Sound applet in the Control Panel.) As you know, many devices could be connected to the PC. For example, the ID of the input device when recording or the output device if playing. The ID of the device to which to receive the command. This function receives four input arguments: The definition of the function mciSendCommand() is as follows: To send string messages, you can use the function mciSendMessage() which is not covered here. The key function that we will use to send MCI commands is mciSendCommand(). As we have said, you can program MCI using one of two approaches, you can send Windows-messages-like commands, and you can also send string messages to the MCI. This function sends a command to the MCI.
#PLAY SOUNDS IN UNITY WINDOWS#
The key function to Windows multimedia programming using MCI is mciSendCommand(). In the next sections we will talk about the functions and structures that we need to be aware of before digging into coding. Notice that all of the functions and structures related to the MCI are prefixed with mci. To access this library from your C application, just reference the library object file WinMM.lib in your project. That is what the last section of this article is devoted for.
#PLAY SOUNDS IN UNITY CODE#
In order to access this library from your C# application, you will need to create your own marshaling types and PInvoke (Platform Invocation) methods to allow your managed code to communicate with the unmanaged server. NET Framework does not include classes for handling MCI (or multimedia at all,) we will need to dig into Windows SDK, specifically WinMM.dll (Windows Multimedia Library) that resides in the system directory. As we are concentrating on languages C and C#, we will consider the first approach only.īecause. The second approach is preferable in scripting languages. You can control a multimedia hardware using MCI by either sending commands like Windows messages or by sending string messages to the MCI. However, in this writing we will focus on MCI (Media Control Interface) as it is one of the high-level easy-to-use interfaces for controlling all media types. IntroductionĪctually, there are many ways to record and play sound files. Besides this, there are sample applications written by C and C# attached with the article. In the last section we will have a look at.

Our demonstration examples in this writing will be in C. Then we will look on how you can utilize those types and functions in your C or C# application.

We will begin by a discussion to types and functions required to accomplish our tasks. If you need an introduction to MCI refer to the MSDN documentation. Instead, it provides technical discussion of what we will need to use to record and to play sound files. This writing does not involve a discussion or even an introduction to MCI. The only drawback is that it requires many heap allocations.This writing will focus on how you can record sound from an input device and how you can play sound files using MCI (Media Control Interface) in C and C#. I could give "important" sounds more priority (closer to 0 in the corresponding property) as opposed to less important ones, and let Unity take care of culling out sound effects that exceed the channel limit. The drawback of replacing old sounds right away is that there is a harsh transition from the old sound clip to the new one.īut I wonder if I could just remove that management logic altogether, and create audio sources on the fly for new sounds. Otherwise, there can be "silent" moments when an old sound is about to stop playing and isn't replaced right away by a new sound. Sound replacement is necessary since the game can be fast-paced at times, and should try to play new sounds by replacing old ones. Ideally, "big" or "important" sounds should not be replaced by small ones.
#PLAY SOUNDS IN UNITY HOW TO#
If new sounds arrive in the next frame, I have a complex set of rules that determines how to replace the old ones. The sounds that are closer to the camera are given preference. When a new sound is played, it goes through the class, which creates a queue of sounds that will be played during that frame. I've written a custom class that creates a fixed number of audio sources.
