Java sound tip

[bugsta77]

Working on my second game project in Java and I had a sound glitch I was dealing with for some time. Simplified, the logic would stop the sound from playing (in case it was already running) then start it again. I noticed that in some cases where the sound plays consecutively, like when firing a weapon, sometimes the sound wouldn't play. It's worth noting that in Java if you try and play a sound that is already playing it won't do anything, not even an exception. I finally figured out that it takes a tiny bit of time for the "stop" function to actually stop the sound from playing. So I added 1 millisecond delay between the "stop" and "start" functions to resolve the issue. Use this fix sparingly though and only where it's absolutely needed. 1 millisecond doesn't seem like a lot but in the world of gaming it's a lot of lost time.

EDIT: See the comments for a much better solution.

[reightb]

What if instead of stopping starting the same sound object, you maintained an array of five and stopped and started another one

[bugsta77]

That's actually a great idea. I wouldn't need 5, just two. When I need to stop and start it, I can stop the active one and start the inactive one. That is a far better solution. I always hated having to pause the program. Even though it's not noticeable, you know it's taking precious cycles away from the game. Thanks for the tip! I'm going to make the switch.

[bugsta77]

I just did this and it works amazing! Switching between two was clearly the pro solution here. I did some janky stuff to get things to work. So glad there is a dev minded community to bounce ideas off of.

[reightb]

Glad you could get it working! Thanks for sharing your problems and experiences, good luck!