Anyone have any recommendations for books covering OpenAL? It seems the only book dealing just with OpenAL is out of print so I guess I might have to settle for something that covers OpenAL non-exclusively. Any suggestions?
Well I just check and indeed the book from Charles Rive (The OpenAL programming book) seems to be out of stock everywhere . You might want to check the following site with the official documentation : http://connect.creativelabs.com/openal/Documentation/Forms/AllItems.aspx
OpenAL is a small simple API (even more so on the iPhone) so a book is overkill IMHO - the programming guide and the header pretty much cover it. Grab Apple's oalTouch example to see how to initialize OpenAL and load and play sounds, then extrapolate from there if you need more functionality.
Actually oaltouch was my reason for wanting a book. I downloaded the project earlier today and was greeted with no less than 17 errors when trying to compile. I always prefer to approach new API's through a textbook if possible. English is, and will always remain, a foreign language to me, and personally I find it much easier to learn this kind of stuff by first getting a comprehensive overview printed in black on bleached ex-trees. Point taken though especially as it seems there aren't any alternatives to be found. ;-)
That is not normal and I doubt a book about OpenAL will help you rectify those problems. The most difficult aspects of using OpenAL on the iPhone are not generic OpenAL issues, they are things like: how to load different format files, how many sources are supported, how to initialize the context, how to deal with audio session interruption and why the hell doesn't my audio work on the simulator. A generic OpenAL book won't help you with any of that.
Frankly, I would expect a book on the subject to cover every single one of those issues save from the bit about the simulator. (And I still believe Apple's example-project not compiling is making things more difficult than necessary). Thanks though, I guess I just have to bite the bullet and learn things the way you and Frank suggest.
As I said, that is not normal. All the Apple audio examples work fine for me. If you can't get oalTouch to compile it is likely you will have issues with any OpenAL code. What exactly are the compilation errors you are getting? Some people seem to have issues with including the OpenAL framework. See here for example: http://cowboyprogramming.com/2009/03/20/iphone-openal-linking-problem/
Thanks again Steve. I've just been to Apple's Developer Forums and it seems I'm not alone. The error I've receiving is the following: Code: _alGenBuffers", referenced from: -[oalPlayback initOpenAL] in oalPlayback.o _alGenSources", referenced from: -[oalPlayback initOpenAL] in oalPlayback.o etc. It seems the framework could be linking the wrong place(?) It seems I have som digging to do...
OK, I figured it out: I tried to remove the OpenAl.framework from the project and then add it with the "Add existing framework" function in XCode. The framework seemed to be included although I was not allowed to select the "Copy items into destination..."-c checkbox. As my problems persisted I figured I had to try a different approach. What solved the problem in the end was this: I removed the OpenAL framework from the project, then dragged the framework to the project form the finder, allowing me to select the earlier mentioned checkbox. Now the errors are gone I can start actually trying to learn this stuff...
