Music routines (MIDI)
Allegro allows you to play MIDI files. MIDI files basically contain notes and
the type of instrument that is meant to play them, so they are usually very
small in size. However, it's up to the soundcard of the end user to play the
notes, and soundcards have been historically known to have poor MIDI
performance (at least those oriented to the consumer market). Few consumer
cards feature decent MIDI playback. Still, as a game creator you can never be
sure if the music of your game will be played as you meant it, because it
totally depends on the hardware of the user.
For this reason Allegro also provides a DIGMID driver. This is a software
implementation of the so called Wavetable synthesis. Soundcards featuring this
store digital samples of real instruments at different pitches, interpolating
those that are not recorded, thus achieving a high sound quality. Implementing
this in software makes you sure that the quality you hear on your computer is
that which will be heard by end users using the same driver.
The disadvantage of the DIGMID driver is that it uses more CPU than simple
MIDI playback, and it steals some hardware voices from the soundcard, which
might be more critical for the end user experience than the background music.
At the Allegro homepage (
http://alleg.sourceforge.net/) you can find more
information about DIGMID and where to download digital samples for your MIDI
files.
