SDL sound

I added sound to the puzzle game and it makes a big difference in the experience. I am considering adding a running theme song and some special effects with sound. I recently got a BOSE sound system that contained a woofer and base amplifier which was broken. I fixed it for something to do. I was never a big sound or music person. When I tested the amplifier with some music that included the 1812 overture, I was pleasantly surprised at the quality and now enjoy the music more.

Here is a link to some SDL examples and explanation of how SDL is used. I tried out "simplemixer.c" and it is functional. I got the zip, unpacked it, did "make" and then ran it. It is written in C and so I will look through this and add the methods to my game test program. I was testing with OpenAL, but SDL seems to be a better idea and maintains compatibility across platforms. I will integrate the methods and report anything interesting I encounter.

I also decided to add some animation to the puzzle solution which flips the tiles like on "Wheel of Fortune" with a little sound. It is simple to do with OpenGL and I just change the "Y-axis" size from the size of an empty square to the size of the texture in timed steps and it seems like the object is rotating. The timing requires some real time work with the system and so that can be interesting when dealing with multi-tasking. I suppose I will use a rubber banding technique so that the steps match the real-time state. The problem is that it will jerk if some other task interferes, but that is better than delaying the response. There is no perfect way to deal with delays due to some critical event. On Windeeze it might be very odd, but I think that Linux maintains a good time slicing and so I assume it will be fine, unless I run into some delay due to some system critical activity.