skin sounds?
 

I was looking at a couple media player skins and was wondering, is it possible to include sounds in modern skins? Like when you load a skin for the first time, the screen flashes and you hear a little sound... I'm not a coding person, have no clue.

yes but theyre annoying and not considered anything useful ;)

true, they would be annoying if they were used on the cbuttons, I'm just talking about a startup sound.

Can it still be done in WA5?, didn't think it was possible any longer, Media Whore used to speak to you the first time the skins loaded, but due to the old WA2 plugin structure it would never do it in 5, unless someething changed between the beta I tried it on and the final release versions....

so it can't be done in wa5? I'm confused...

I certainly could never get media whore to do it, it originaly had a script in it to play an mp3 that was included in the .wal file, did this on first load.

Never worked in WA5, I think WA3 maki had direct access to the various wac's that made up the build of the player, where as I don't think you do in WA2.

Aside from that it was the one feature of media whore that drew the most critics, mainly because it stopped what was playing at the time when it loaded the sample and wiped your current playlist for you as well.

Good idea, but annoying at the same time.

Media Whore used this function of maki to play it's intro, taken from std.mi

code:


/**

 playFile()



 Play the requested file. Path and filename are required

 with proper extension (example: playFile("c:\music\mp3\file.mp3"); ).

 It also works with URL's (example: playFile("http://myshoutcast.com:8000"); ).



 @param  playitem  The path and filename to play.

*/

extern System.playFile(String playitem);



/**

hm, too bad. :/ thanks for the info Jones, appreciate it

Try the code instructions listed above, I must admit I haven't tried it since the very early alphas of WA5, I scrapped the intro sounds in Media Whore pretty much at the same time, so they might have got it working by now, don't know as I have no other skins that use it, and I can't think of any others that do either for that matter.....

I'll show this thread to my coder when we start working on my new concept.

The most simple way is to test if QuadHelix's Dominator skin coded from FrisbeeMonkey still has those fireguns sounds ;)

hm, url please! ;)

http://www.winamp.com/skins/details.php?id=132341

Dosn't seem to be a right lot of sound coming from it however, unless I'm missing something...

Yeah, in 5.03a don't comes sound at all, but the only bad thing is that the sound loads in your PL and after choosing to "hear it" (I don't hear it at all) you have after to reload your PL.

yeah that stinks. I'm dropping my idea.

Hmmm I have other idea dude883,
Is that possible to NOT load that sounds it's own PL, but to be added automaticaly to the existing PL user has and with the ability to repeat it's self sound only?????

What the coders have to say about this?
cause if this is possible can be a "new era"
in skins, except visual design to have their
own sound themes or narrators to "introduce"
themselves to user at first skin load on each user's
computer ;)

Well? what you Coding gurus have to say about this?

In that case, my sister as the first narrator (Welcome to Media Whore - the last skin you'll ever need) innaugarated this new era. ;)

But yes, it was really the biggest complaint about the skin - I get the feeling a lot of people browse for skins by having a playlist running and just downloading different skins. Obviously that soundbite threw a wrench in that, but you would think more people would have saved their playlist.

Ah well...

dont quote me, but...i remember reading in some dev area somewhere that playing sounds (like on button over etc) was planned for a future release. and, as i understood it, the effect would be part of maki, so should be able to work independant of the current playlist. but, we have yet to see it come about

If I were Nullsoft, and I'm not, I'd be more concerned with fixing some of the more apparent bugs/errors that exist in gen_ff.dll, not adding eye, or in this case ear, candy like playing sounds....

try this beta of a new skin, pull the trigger, also try the timed grenade feature, they should play sounds, this is a test i hope it works in 5.03, hi Jones.

http://www.quad-helix.com/sf6.wal

well there was the buttonsounds.m file for wa3 but that needed to create a new core to play those sounds on button hovers/presses etc but we dont have that atm in wa5

will try the beta Quad ;)

this could be a solution.

why not place the sound on a WAL embedded HTML file. make a tiny browser (0x0 perhaps if possible) that loads the html page which in turn plays the sound. this way it would not erase the playlist and also the sound could play in the background.

embedding an HTML into the wal has some issues though. well, just an idea i have been thinking before to add to Anunaki. :)

Jory nice "cheat" but how about the people that will be offline or will have installed elsewhere their winamp?

I always supported Macromedia Flash media support in Winamp........ if SOMEDAY this will happen then we can have menus/sounds/animation(compressed) and MAYBE actionscript with extra math-based effects with vectors.

I see that Nullsoft afraid to buy/borrow/loan Flash support from Macromedia, why?
If a media player(WA5 or 6) can have embedded the most popular media/animation player on the net, that means ALOT.

Ideas exist around here, but AOL seems to be ok with this state of WA and how it works so far, the only mistake I see, is that they don't look 1 step ahead.......(like I do)

LaterZzz

Think of the licensing issues involved with bundling flash with every player that gets downloaded, that cost would have to be passed onto the end user.

Also consider how portable flash is, if at somepoint down the line winamp ever went multi platform again, like the original intention was with WA3, is flash cross platform?, why else do you think png and xml were chosen as the core of the skinning system?

"is flash cross platform?"

Yeap it is :D

Since you see the .swf movie files on the net from EVERY BROWSER on EVERY OS means that is, also Flash .fla (core files) are able to be done on Windows/MacOS and I think (not sure yet) Linux.

I don't say WA to have .fla files cause this can't happen, but swf files should be easy to be included as menus/sounds/vis/skin parts etc.

To be a Macromedia partner don't needs alot of money ;) just take a look at Macromedia's website.This won't effect end user cause Nullsoft (AOL) earns money from all those advertisments on this site and extra $$$ from Pro versions of WA (Nullsoft could make this feature available only for Pro and skins detecting there is no Pro installed to exclude the Flash part, or even better to be each skin made for 2 versions (Lite and Pro) even more competition for perfect results and more experience will be required to make a skin, than now :)

As I said my friend Jones ;) look forward.....

here's the solution VAG:
http://forums.winamp.com/showthread....hreadid=180150

:D so this can be done!!!

I've done it in my skin after reading this thread :)

<browser id="startsound" x="0" y="0" w="0" h="0" url="file:///@SKINPATH@html/startsound.htm" />

The startsound.htm has an SWF file embedded with the audio. When you load the skin or hit F5 it plays the sound, without affecting your playlist or stopping the currently playing track. It's really cool :D But...

Having the browser layer on the main window means the desktop alpha no longer works :( I don't know how to fix that, any suggestions?

i also think it should be possible to get it working somehow

cool, it works! if you just want the sound effect, you could place the browser in a different container and not on the main player. do a sysregion="-2" on the whole container to make it invisible. this way, no browser is visible and you preserve alpha blending on the main player. :)

really, you got it working, also with the sound?

sorry, can't be bothered reading all this thread, just got to the part about dominator skin, and gun noises... don't know if its the same one, but there was the magnum 44 skin... it had gun noises, but i think it was just a file included with the skin, and when you hovered the mouse over the trigger, it'd play the file, but when you loaded your playlist in, it'd loose the file... when it the noise wasn't there you were just left with an animation

@UUL: Yes, the answer was in the thread, just nobody had tried it before :D Oh and of course the user must have flash installed, but who doesn't nowdays.

I thought of this, but wouldn't the container still show up in the list when you right-click? Hmm actually that may be okay, since you could use the a button for the container as a sound on/off switch... I'll play around later and report back.

Does anyone know how to make a container close itself after X seconds?

place name="" on the container and it wont show up in the list.

maki does it.

code:


Global timer delay

Global container soundcont;



system.onScriptLoaded() {

  delay = new timer;

  delay.setDelay(5000); // 5 sec delay before close



  soundcont = getContainer("someCont ID");

}



soundcont.onShowLayout(layout l) {

  delay.start(); // start timer

}



delay.onTimer() {

  stop();

  soundcont.hide(); // close browser

}

have not tested that code but you get the idea. :)

so when a button is clicked, just let the browser change it's url and it plays the sound? sweeet :D

This didn't work as I hoped, it still shows up in the list as a blank space. No worries though, we could just call the container "Enable Sounds" and the user can right-click and tick/untick it to turn the sounds on/off, I think that's pretty neat.

I made the new container a transparent PNG and it works great, the user can't detect it's there at all, the sound works great, and the main window still has desktop alpha. Wunderbar! :D

Actually it's not needed, I don't know why I thought it was :igor: :rolleyes: It's better the container stays open, because as UUL says...

This sounds really simple but I'm not sure how to do it. The button would have to control the browser in a different group, and still serve it's normal function (unless it's a "fun" button that you just press to make a sound effect and nothing else happens). Would this need scripting? I'll post a basic skin with sounds when I sort this last bit, so ppl can see how good it works.

umm.. try removing entirely the name="". im sure i have done this before.
if still wont work, i guess make the container dynamic.

sure it needs srcipting, and sure it'll work :D

@leechbite: Yeh that worked, thanks :) Now I turn the sounds on/off from a toggle button on the main player instead.

cool!!! this will be in the skin im workin on. :)

Here's a lil' demo skin. I'll replace the SWF file with something else when I get around to installing Flash. Also would like to make the buttons change the URL in the browser, but don't know how yet.

http://www.aonw90.dsl.pipex.com/Sound_Effects_Demo.gif

Download: Sound_Effects_Demo.wal