FMOD | Manual | Castle Game Engine

FMOD

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Activating FMOD in CGE
3. Getting FMOD library and copying it to your project
4. TODO

1. Introduction

Castle Game Engine can use various backends for our sound (CastleSoundEngine unit). By default we use OpenAL which works nicely, is open-source and cross-platform (works on desktop and mobile). However, you may choose to use another backend.

One of the alternative backends is FMOD, using a commercial (closed-source) FMOD library. FMOD works nicely, and is even more cross-platform (in particular it supports also Nintendo Switch). It also supports more sound file formats out-of-the-box.

Note	FMOD is not free, in general. But they have a "Free Indie License" if your revenue and budget are below certain thresholds. See FMOD licensing and pricing for the details.

2. Activating FMOD in CGE

Use CastleFMODSoundBackend unit, and call UseFMODSoundBackend procedure at any point. You usually want to call it early, before any sound was loaded or played, this way the default sound backend (OpenAL on desktop and mobile) will not even be initialized.

The UseFMODSoundBackend will switch to FMOD backend only if the FMOD library (from https://www.fmod.com/) is found. See instructions below about hot to get and where to place FMOD library. If FMOD library is loaded dynamically, and it is not found, then a warning is produced (you can see it in log) and UseFMODSoundBackend does nothing.

3. Getting FMOD library and copying it to your project

To get FMOD libraries create an account on https://www.fmod.com/ , and download "FMOD Studio API". This should include "FMOD Studio API and FMOD Core API" (we actually use only "FMOD Core API" now).

Below we give detailed instructions for some popular platforms. See FMOD platform-specific documentation for more information.

3.1. On Windows

"FMOD Studio API" on Windows is an install package, and when you run it you get C:\Program Files (x86)\FMOD SoundSystem\FMOD Studio API Windows (if installed to the default directory). For Windows 64-bit just copy the DLL from C:\Program Files (x86)\FMOD SoundSystem\FMOD Studio API Windows\api\core\lib\x64\fmod.dll alongside the game exe.

You have to distribute the FMOD library with your application. Currently, it is easiest to add this to your CastleEngineManifest.xml file:

  <package>
    <include path="fmod.dll" />
  </package>

3.2. On Linux

"FMOD Studio API" on Linux is a tar.gz archive. Unpack it anywhere, and from api\core\lib\x86_64 subdirectory (assuming you use Linux on x86_64 CPU) copy the 3 libfmod.so* files (one is actual library, 2 are just symlinks). We advise copying these 3 files to the libraries/x86_64-linux/ subdirectory of your project.

The FMOD library is loaded dynamically (that is, using dlopen / dlsym and friends on Unix). So it doesn’t need to be present at compilation-time.

It of course needs to be present when you run the application, both on developer and user system. Create a shell (bash) script that sets $LD_LIBRARY_PATH to include your local fmod copy, and then executes the application. Like this:

#!/bin/bash
set -e
# Include current directory in LD_LIBRARY_PATH, to find fmod dynamic library
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}:libraries/x86_64-linux/"
./play_sounds "$@" # <- replace this with name of your application

Save this file as run.sh name, do chmod +x run.sh, and now you can execute it like ./run.sh.

You also have to distribute FMOD library, and run.sh with your application. Add this to your CastleEngineManifest.xml file:

  <package>
    <include path="run.sh" />
    <include path="libraries/x86_64-linux/" recursive="True" />
  </package>

(If your CastleEngineManifest.xml already contained <package>, then merge their contents instead of adding new <package> element.)

3.3. On Nintendo Switch

The details are in the Nintendo Switch README inside CGE version for Nintendo Switch.

3.4. On iOS and Android

Both iOS and Android include a service called fmod to easily link with FMOD:

4. TODO

For now, we use "FMOD Core API", which means that we use FMOD as a general sound loading and playback library, which you can use with regular sound files (wav, OggVorbis and many other formats supported by FMOD). You cannot yet use FMOD Studio to design "sound events" that could be played by CGE.
We want to simplify the Windows/Linux instructions above. We will support <service> in CastleEngineManifest.xml for desktop platforms (right now the "services" are only for Android and iOS), allowing you to easily request fmod service on Windows/Linux and point it to the FMOD installation. In general a desktop service will be able to specify OS/CPU specific libraries (aaa.dll on Windows, libaaa.so on Linux etc., in subdirectories named like libraries/${CPU}-${OS}/) and let the CGE build tool automatically do everything that is necessary to use them.

To improve this documentation just edit this page and create a pull request to cge-www repository.