[Freeciv-Dev] sound architecture

[Per Mathisen <permath@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

After a fair bit of coding and thinking, I am becoming rather certain 
that client-side only sound architecture is not going to work very well.

The first problem is that the client does not always know when events take
place, it is too dumb. It receives instructions to do things, but not
what prior action that caused this to happen.

The second problem is that adding sound in the client will hard-wire a
certain implementation (mapping certain units, buildings to specific
sounds), which is exactly the kind of thing what we are moving away from
with rulesets.

My idea, currently, is to make a new packet, a "sound packet", which
is simply the number of a sound to play, and then the server can decide
when a sound should be played. This will, of course, lead to some
additional increase in the number of packets going over the network, but 
this could be controlled by a server-option (sound packets on/off).

To make sounds "ruleset-able", a new column can be added to improvements
and units rulesets that refer to a sound. The sound "4" could, for
instace, refer to an "elephant sound". (Sounds silly, doesn't it?)

Anyone have other ideas or comments?

Yours,
Per