Topic by camlorn 2015-09-30 19:07:43 (edited by camlorn 2015-10-05 23:56:24)

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I'm not announcing this generally via my blog and such for another week or so, but you can get a pre-built Libaudioverse zip here.  I've gotten more than a couple inquiries on building, so I figured' I'd put this up.
This pretends to be a nightly, but it isn't quite yet.  In another bit, once several related things are in order, that link will be rebuilding every night at midnight off whatever the current state of the Libaudioverse repository is.  Officially numbered versions will obviously be on offer, but we're still a few weeks out from that, possibly longer if it turns out that something personal and completely unrelated to technology decides to drop an anvil on my head.
You can find the Github here.  This contains Python and C examples that demonstrate most of the functionality.  The manual included in the above nightly is for C, but it should be fairly obvious how stuff translates to Python after reading the examples.  There are Python docstrings (which will be improving) and there will be language-specific API references.  What exists of the documentation is somewhat out of date, but I don't want to keep delaying and that's part of the implication of nightly builds anyway.  Documentation is one of the big bits that still needs improvement.
In terms of usability, most of the improvements from here on out will be small API changes.  I don't expect any major incompatibilities before 0.8.  Major incompatibilities are very possible after 0.8, but most additions for a good while should be new features.  Judging by Q's recent FPS demo, this is mostly stable as-is, all be it only working on Windows for now.
This is GPL, a copyleft license.  The short version is that if you use Libaudioverse, then you need to be willing to give out your source code under the GPL.  I will be going one of two ways commercially: I'm either going to sell GPL exceptions or I'm going to do a Kickstarter.  I need money to justify continued development time, which has already been very significant and will be for the foreseeable future.  My hope is that I can Kickstarter this and release under the MPL, which says that you only have to publish source code if it's changes to Libaudioverse itself.  I don't particularly want to have to provide support to people for 5+ years if I can avoid it, but I will if I must.

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Reply by ctoth 2015-09-30 22:46:03

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This represents literally years of effort which will directly benefit the entire Audio Gaming community. Thank you for your work on this.

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Reply by camlorn 2015-10-02 15:39:18

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As of last night when it turned out that I was right and my domain name registrar is having a major bug, we also have a google group, here.
You can subscribe directly by just e-mailing [email protected], which works even for non-gmail addresses.  Google doesn't document this; I don't know why.  Post by e-mailing [email protected].  I prefer questions to come by this avenue, because my answers can then show up on Google for others.

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Reply by camlorn 2015-11-17 03:29:52 (edited by camlorn 2015-11-17 03:30:30)

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Because I hate writing web sites and need some demos that I haven't made yet, we still don't have a blog post, but the nightly link in post 1 (here) is now linked to the CI server and has been for a while.
In addition, if you don't need the manual and are just going off the examples in the repository, then Python (32-bit only for the moment, but 64-bit is coming) will now let you pip install libaudioverse to grab the latest snapshot and pip install --upgrade libaudioverse if you've already got it.  I linked these to the CI server a couple days ago, and it's consequently equivalent to the zip (minus all the not-python stuff and the manual).  Using the latter command should be functionally equivalent to redownloading and reextracting and reinstalling.
I'd say that Libaudioverse is usable at this point, but if nothing else it's at a point where I really, really need people to test it.  I prefer to do discussion via the google group (see post 3 or the GitHub readme for info).  I'll be pushing out announcements and info on important fixes and whatnot through that channel; the audience is much wider than this forum.

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Reply by Sean-Terry01 2015-11-17 09:14:10

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Hi, could you explain what does it specifically for? Is it something that anyone can pick up and do?

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Reply by sneak 2015-11-17 11:47:27

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Could we get a guide on how to get set up with this and python to have a fully functioning environment? I myself haven't ever set up one before coming from BGT. I don't know what a wheel is or how to go about installing it into python. I'm going to install python after I write this and hope that it's a specific file extension.

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Reply by camlorn 2015-11-17 21:06:19

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@Sneak
Wheels are just a Python package format.  Install Python 2.7.10 or 3.5, and it also comes with the command pip.  You can pip install the wheel file, or simply pip install libaudioverse directly and it'll handle the download for you (which was the point of post 4).  The zip is still useful for the manual at the moment, though I'm about to go work on improving the Python docstrings and see how close I am to generating Python-specific API references.  It should be pretty obvious how the manual translates to Python once you've read a couple examples from the GitHub repository, and also there's help(classname) and dir(classname) at the Python REPL to help you along.  As I intend to target many other programming languages in the long run, writing the manual over and over for every language is unfortunately not practical.
@GeneWarner
While I appreciate your concern about naming, I should point out that I am blind and consequently do in fact know what my name choice does to a screen reader.  I do not see any reason to write to a synth, especially not in the programming world, where no one else does either.  I do have other problems with the name, but the long and the short of it is that I can't think up a better one and I'm not going to delay the project over something that trivial.
As for getting started, the zip contains a manual and the GitHub repository contains examples.  There isn't more than that yet.  There probably won't ever be lengthy tutorials, though I do intend to have something in that direction; the library isn't hard enough to warrant a book or something on its own, and it's not really my desire to teach people how to write games.
@Sean-terry01
It's a replacement for the old direct sound, basically.  HRTF and good headphone 3D audio and surround sound and all that sort of stuff, plus a lot of things for synthesis of instruments and building effects and whatnot.  Picking it up or not depends on how good of a programmer you are.
@Everyone:
To clarify, this is still alpha or at best beta quality, but it does work and I don't intend to change the API out from under you.  In case I'm making it sound like a super stable rock-solid project, it's not.  I expect there to be problems.  I will fix them, that's the point, but they will be there.

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Reply by camlorn 2015-11-17 22:45:13

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No one else in the programming world does that for you, and this community will be like 1% of my potential userbase.  Synths are so far from my concern that I can't see them with a telescope.  You also run into problems with case-sensitive versus case-insensitive filesystems when importing the package in some languages; including upper-case letters in a package name means that one must sometimes import it under a different name to use it properly.
Still, I really appreciate how the first thing you have to say is that you have a problem with my naming because I didn't go out of my way to make it friendly to synthesizers, in a manner which will not actually work for everyone anyway.  Both jaws and NVDA make the caps thing optional, and it's not like I've spent a year and a half on this project without seeing a single penny for my work or anything.

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Reply by Figment 2015-11-17 22:55:01 (edited by Figment 2015-11-17 22:57:39)

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Sheesh! If you are going to be so hostile about what was supposed to be constructive critisism, forget I said anything.

FYI: I deleted my messages, I hope you are happy now.

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