How do you add music?

lescobar94

I tried adding songs but GS doesn't recognize them as music, only as sounds. Then I tried changing its format to .m4a but GS won't play it..

lycettebros

@lescobar94 I use only .wav file when importing and it always asks me do I want the file to be imported in as 'music' or a 'sound'.
I think you can import in mp3 files too and maybe even .ogg but not .m4a

Music files are best to be used if they are 30secs or longer as it states.

tenrdrmer

I think GS has added another audio format in the nightly build for testing. Supposed to fix a lot of the audio issues. But yeah just use .wav or .mp3 and tell it what kind of sound it is and it will convert it to what it needs to be.

lescobar94

I'm using the Windows version and it doesn't ask me what kind of audio I'm importing. It automatically sorts it as a sound and doesn't let me select it from the music drop-down list.

I think GS has added another audio format in the nightly build for testing. Supposed to fix a lot of the audio issues.

^ do I have to download any updates to get these fixes?

jigglybean

Wanted to bump this to see if anyone has a work around? The Windows version just wont detect a .wav file or when you import it, despite it being over 1minute long, converts it straight to .ogg

ester.denham

I am also having this issue. And because of it I have had to play my music using the sound commands. But this seems to make it impossible to pause the music. Please let me know if there is a better work around until this is fixed. Thank you.

ester.denham

I found a work around!

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If you are using Windows and are unable to import a sound as a Music file, Do this:

1. Import as a sound with a name like M-MyMusic
2. Place a music actor which triggers the sound in a loop.
3. Import another SILENT sound file that is about a second long. (You can easily make one of these in Audacity by Highlighting a second of recorded sound and using the silence feature from the Generate Menu.)
4. When you want the music to stop, have the same music actor play the silent sound file. No need to loop it, It will play for 1 second and beautiful silence.

Happy game designing!

----

hm. Does game building in Gamesalad ever make you crave greens? 😏

adent42

Music should be m4a (though I think windows is looking for the extension mp4)

Sound is ogg

The big difference is on mobile.

On mobile devices the streaming decoder chips could only support one track at a time and don't usually support ogg. So music is mp4. By treating music differently, we could take advantage of the decoder chip and save CPU for the game.

Sound is ogg mostly for legacy reasons (back when we started ogg had the least licensing headaches and was well supported cross platform).

uptimistik

On Mac/Windows Creator I always use mp4 for music, .ogg for sounds. I love how tiny ogg's are :)

ester.denham

Yes. I do agree. I am thinking the above post as a temporary solution to the issue of Windows Gamesalad Creator not prompting some user to verify if the file they are uploading is a Music or Sound. The above post would play the music as a sound file. I don't believe apps are required to have Music (M4a) files to upload them to the App Store, but I am hoping this prompt bug is fixed in the next Windows Creator update. It would make music far more convenient to work with in my game.

Of course, I know the Gamsalad Team has a long list of tasks and requests. I do my best to be patient for them.

Armelline

I'll add that if you're publishing to iOS, aiff for sounds work fine and load slightly quicker. Unless something has changed since I did my last exceptionally-sound-file-heavy project. When playing hundreds of SFX in very, very quick succession, there was a marked improvement in performance on iOS with aiff, and it shaved a noticable amount off the loading time too. I can't remember to what extent I had to hack the aiff files in, though.