Hi everyone,
As I mentioned in the previous email, I am taking this opportunity to
optimize CocoMUD. One thing that slowed it down (particularly on first
run) was the use of the pygame library. For those who don't know, pygame
allows to create games in Python using a very simple interface.
However, CocoMUD only used it for playing sounds in triggers, and Pygame
is not a light library. So I've decided to drop pygame and find an
alternative way to play sounds.
I have found one, and it wasn't easy. However, this new strategy
doesn't come without drawbacks: although it might work on Windows and
other platforms, and is able to read more formats, the results might be
a bit random. One of the major drawbacks: although the documentation
states that more formats might be available, on Windows, it seems to
read only WAV and MP3 files. Not OGG. OGG is good, since it's lighter
and open, so I can publish it without problem in my demo worlds. It was
supported by pygame (pygame didn't support MP3). So the main question
is: would it be extremely problematic if CocoMUD stopped processing OGG
files, instead being able to read WAV and MP3 files? How many of you
use OGG files for the time being? There are ways to convert, sure, but
it might be an additional inconvenience.
Good day to all,
Vincent
