PSS Programming Group

DirectX

As I understand it, Direct X is Microsoft's way of letting game designers break the secure OS rules in a good way. In other words "directly" access resources, that being directly through Direct X. I know NOTHING about any of the graphics features under Direct X, and I only know a bit about Direct Sound and Direct Music. As a system Direct is designed for gamers and game programmers, but many audio application can also use Direct X as an alternative to Win32 multimedia services. A better system for accessing audio resources more directly is ASIO. I started into Direct Sound programming because I know it wouldn't be going away soon and if I am to be employed it would be helpful.

Direct Sound

Direct sound is a system of buffers. You load sounds in to secondary buffers and they are mixed down into a primary buffer and sent via windows drivers to the sound card. The system as I have said has beend desgined for games. It is easier to play a bunch of short sounds then one long one in Direct X. To try to create a streaming buffer the programmer must do a lot of work. The documentation is sketchy at best (compared to java doc). I would link there directly but that is hard. Go to http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp and look under the Platform SDK | Graphics and Multimedia. The examples provided also are indirect since at lot of code is hidden in the DSutil module (but you can use it in your own programs if you want, but then the documentation is less helpful).

DASS

Direct Access Sound System it a little Direct X project of mine. I wanted to make Direct X more object oriented and more stream data friendly, kind of like Java Sound. So I set to work creating a body of classes called DASS. I will release my progress onto this site by the end of April, but work as been slow, but I've been learning a lot. Presently I am developing a DASS_DSStreamBuffer object that can recive data in stream, like a Java Sound line. Seeing how the project is my first attempt at Direct Sound programming it tends to be pretty messy as I fight with strange bug (mostly in my understanding). The classes will have to be overhauled at least once be for they are generally useful, but can act as an example (although maybe a miss guided one).

Projects

With my work term coming to an end I am running out time to develop and release the DASS objects. Basically there are too many bugs in my approach, but I learned about about DirectX, so when I next have some time I should redesign the DASS structure and object and try to reimpliment then and not hack them so much. To bad I don't have any software to post, and seeing how I don't intend to use my source code I will leave it off the net for now. Meanwhile you can check out some of these helpful pages.

Resources