An audio processing library for game development in flash

Abstract

In recent years, there has been sharp rise in the number of games on web-based platforms, which are ideal for rapid game development and easy deployment. In a parallel but unrelated trend, music-centric video games that incorporate well-known popular music directly into the gameplay (e.g., Guitar Hero and Rock Band) have attained widespread popularity on console platforms. The limitations of such web-based platforms as Adobe Flash, however, have made it difficult for developers to utilize complex sound and music interaction within web games. Furthermore, the real-time audio processing and synchronization required in music-centric games demands significant computational power and specialized audio algorithms, which have been difficult or impossible to implement using Flash scripting. Taking advantage of features recently added to the platform, including dynamic audio control and C-compilation for near-native performance, we have developed the Audio processing Library for Flash (ALF), providing developers with a library of common audio processing routines and affording web games with a degree of sound interaction previously available only on console or native PC platforms. We also present several audio-intensive games that incorporate ALF to demonstrate its utility. One example performs real-time analysis of songs in a user's music library to drive the gameplay, providing a novel form of game-music interaction.