Using MP3's and MIDI's in Blaxxun Contact

Introduction

Blaxxun Contact doesn't support the use of MP3 sound files within Sound nodes. The simple solution is to use a Shape node with a MovieTexture.

MovieTextures play, mpeg, avi and realplayer files and often other formats and the actual files themselves are handled by other programs. MP3 is infact short for MPEG layer 3 and MPEG movie players can also play MP3 sound files. Typical applications which handle MovieTexture files are Windows Media player, Quicktime and others. Which application plays which files are determined by the Internet Browser and operating system.

!!! I recommend anyone using this tutorial works with a copy of their file just in case there are any problems.

Using MP3's and MIDI's in Blaxxun Contact

The changes needs

This is the code you have for a standard Sound node. This will be replaced by the second block of code below.

Sound {
 source DEF xyz AudioClip {
  startTime -1
  stopTime 0
  loop FALSE
  url "sound1.wav"
 }
}

This is the code you need to use MP3 files

Shape {
 appearance Appearance {
  material Material {
   diffuseColor 1 1 1
  }
  texture DEF xyz MovieTexture {
   startTime -1
   stopTime 0
   loop FALSE
   url "sound1.mp3"
  }
 }
 geometry Box {
  size 0.01 0.01 0.01
 }
}

There are four fields which are common to both the "AudioClip" and the "MovieTexture" nodes. Copy the values across. They are :
url  you will need to alter this to suit the new MP3 or MIDI file.
startTime leave as is
stopTime leave as is
loop leave as is

In addition you need to copy the DEF line (DEF xyz in the above example).
For example if the AudioClip node is DEF Sound1 then the MovieTexture node must have DEF Sound1 as well.

Once you have done all the above you can comment out the Sound node by adding #'s to the begining of each line. Another simplier method is to delete the Sound node.

Notes

To simplify things I recommend keeping giving the new MP3 the same basic filename. For example zap.wav and zap.mp3 . While the above example code uses MP3 the same process is used for MIDI .mid files as well just swap .mid for .mp3 .

While the above changes allow Blaxxun Contact to play MP3 and MIDI sound files, they also prevent other browsers from doing so. There are three solutions to this problem. The first is to make browser specific versions of the world. The second is to leave the original Sound node in place and change the DEFed name of the matching MovieTexture and add a second set of ROUTEs. The third is to write a Script or PROTO which checks which browser is being used then dynamically adds the required Node.