[z-machine] 1.1 proposal

[David Fillmore]

On Wed, 6 Aug 2003, David Kinder wrote:

> From: "David Fillmore"
> > Personally, I prefer to have less channel, more information and better
> > control than sometimes having more channels. In most cases, the sometimes
> > more channels thing probably won't make any difference.
>
> This is where I disagree. As I see it, you're trying to correct a corner
> case by making the common case worse. The corner case is when a game needs
> to know how many sounds it can play before playing any. I'll agree this is
> possible, but I don't believe it will be all that common.

As I see it, I'm trying to make sure that, no matter *how* many channels
are available, I can plan for this, so my game doesn't end up sounding
crappy and stupid, with important foreground sounds being interupted by
unimportant background sounds. In either proposal, it's possible for there
to not be as many sound channels as I want. You're saying you want to have
as many channels as possible, changing depending on what's already
playing, and just *hope* that it'll be enough and it'll sound all right.
I'm saying I want a system where it doesn't *matter* if there are enough
channels for precisely what I want, because I can just plan around it.

> The common case is that games want to play as many sounds as the system the
> interpreter is running on can support. In your scheme, this could well be
> significantly more than will be available to the game.

I don't see how you can know what people will want to do. You seem to be
basing your argument on an assumption that IF will never need to do
anything particularly complicated with sound. I'm basing mine on the
knowledge that I, at least, do. Sure, I want to play as many sounds as
possible, but I need to know when it isn't possible.

--
Fillmore