Once you're satisfied with the sound effects or music you have produced, a
programmer has to incorporate it into the title in the appropriate way.
This section explains how sound can be played on the 3DO system. It helps
nonprogrammers understand the principles behind audio on the 3DO system
and gives references to the appropriate sections of the 3DO Portfolio
Programmer's Guide for more in-depth coverage.
Playing MIDI scores
The 3DO system is set up to allow MIDI score playing, which is more
interactive than spooling. You can use the ARIA tool to develop synthetic
patches (instruments) or to attach sample files to MIDI notes.
You can attach MIDI notes to synthetic sounds or AIFF samples, depending
on RAM availability and system resources. Synthetic instruments take the
least amount of RAM, but may result in involve a small processing
overhead. On the Toolkit 1.4 CD-ROM (and later), you can find a library of
AIFF samples to use in your titles. An overview is provided in
AIFF Samples .
You can use hierarchical score structures for dramatic construction; for
more information, see the documentation on the Music Library.
Streaming audio data with the 3DO DataStreamer
You can fade or mix several channels of digital audio samples for dramatic
purposes, but remember bandwidth limitations. The 3DO Data Streamer
Programmer's Guide discusses data streaming and provides manpages for
all relevant functions in the DataStreamer library.