Re:Windows file system compression had to be dumbed down
by striking on Tuesday November 01, 2016 @02:50PM
(#12848994)
Often you can predict what effects your scene will need. Sometimes you can't, and in that case you can't compress.
But it's entirely possible that you could decompress some of that audio into RAM beforehand if you're not confident every device can play that audio compressed immediately. Or store back a cache file temporarily. Or just not even worry about the CPU because the vast majority of users are GPU-limited rather than CPU-limited.
Re:Windows file system compression had to be dumbed down
by izacus on Tuesday November 01, 2016 @03:16PM
(#12849193)
Sound effects are almost always streamed in - remember, most of modern games are built for consoles as well, which have significantly less memory storage. Hence lack of compression - it lets you stream in audio from a spinning BR directly without spending more CPU power.
You can stream music. You cannot stream effects; the timing of effects is such that you can't afford a frame's delay or people will notice it's off-kilter. And, as it happens, effects are precisely what are loaded uncompressed; almost every game engine's streaming-music feature uses MP3, OGG, or whatever.