Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Well around that same time (actually a few years before), something
called the Internet, or more specii cally the World Wide Web, became a
very interesting place for gaming. Folks had these things called modems
that they would use to access the Web. At i rst, internet connections
were not so fast, but over time they became much faster and are getting
faster all the time. You could potentially play a game on your PC without
having to put a CD, DVD, or any physical media into your machine, and
the software could be downloaded directly to your computer, via the
Internet.
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2013
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2008
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2005
2003
2000
56 Kbps
Dial up
Modem
128 Kbps-
ISDN
6 Mbps-
Cable
Modem
768 Mbps-
DSL
1.5 Mbps-
DSL
The increasing relative bandwidths of Internet connections over the years. Bandwidth is an
extremely important criterion for creating sounds for any web-based games. Lower bandwidth
means correspondingly lower audio quality, while higher bandwidth gives much better quality, but
can create issues on older and slower connections.
About this time, a little program called Flash made by Macromedia (and
then purchased by Adobe later on) was catching on as a platform for
game development.
The i rst Internet games that used Flash had on average one piece of
music around 20 to 30 seconds in length, three to 10 sound ef ects and a
handful of voice-over lines, all of which had to i t in the game at around
30-50KB. Sound familiar. . . ?
Flash was able to ei ciently compress its graphic and sound data into a
stream that ordinary users could download without too much trouble.
If Flash was limited to triggering regular PCM audio, this could have
been a problem—even a deal killer, as the PCM audio could potentially
result in huge download times. To get around these limitations, Flash
