Stupid questions

[Lightning]

Does OpenAL support al cards ?
Do i have to distribute some library(es) ?
Is this the only 3D audio API available on multiple platforms ?
Any dependencies or other strange things i need to know ?

[Lightning]

Q - Does OpenAL support al cards ?
A - Yes most of them
Q - Do i have to distribute some library(es) ?
A - Probably not included in windows
Q - Is this the only 3D audio API available on multiple platforms ?
A - Seem it is the only 3D audio API crossplatform
Q - Any dependencies or other strange things i need to know ?
A - No, it seems to be able to use whatever support it finds

Thanx anyway guys, maybe someone else will find this useful.

[Sly]

OpenAL seems to be a little-used library, hence the lack of responses I guess. It's good that you found out the answers to your questions anyway.

[TheLion]

OpenAL seems to be a little-used library, hence the lack of responses I guess. It's good that you found out the answers to your questions anyway.

Not entirely true Sly, it's used quite a bit... on the OpenAL website there is an impressive list of commercial games using OpenAL. However it seems to be little-used by the Delphi Game Developer community!

Q - Do i have to distribute some library(es) ?
A - Probably not included in windows

It's not default installed in Windows. There is an installer, but we always simply distributed the DLL (OpenAL.dll) with our application, looking at games that use it like UnReal Tournament 2003 and Americas Army they do the same thing.

Q - Is this the only 3D audio API available on multiple platforms ?
A - Seem it is the only 3D audio API crossplatform

Not entirely true... There is another crossplatform API that (I believe) can handle 3D audio and is crossplatform. It's called FMOD and is one of the best libraries I have ever worked with, unfortunately it isn't free for commercial use, however it is free to use it in freeware. You can find more information on it here:
http://www.fmod.org/

Q - Any dependencies or other strange things i need to know ?
A - No, it seems to be able to use whatever support it finds

Depends what you want to do with it... For SoundFX it basically finds everything it needs, but for music and other extensions like EAX the user will need to extensions installed. However you can query for them so you can write your code in a way that it simply doesn't use a certain extension if it's not available or that it provides the user with an error if it's not present! However for normal playback of 3D SoundFX you won't need any extension and it will indeed use what it can find!

[Lightning]

Thank you Lion, i had a feeling i'm going in the right direction with OpenAL, i can't wait to use it and see what it can do :lol:
OpenAL looks like a verry good API just like OpenGL (i love OpenGL).
Now all i need is a nice initialization library or unit for OpenGL and GLFW seems like a good choice
One more thing, does OpenAL use cdecl on windows too, i looked @ Noeska's headers and all funcs use the slowest calling convention possible.
I don't understand why windows is the only OS to use other calling conventions.
Thanx again guys

[TheLion]

One more thing, does OpenAL use cdecl on windows too, i looked @ Noeska's headers and all funcs use the slowest calling convention possible.

Yes, the official headers also specify cdecl, I checked.

I don't understand why windows is the only OS to use other calling conventions.

No idea why they use it, but it probably has a very dark secret reason!

Thanx again guys

np!