Who is using XACT?
If you are using or considering XACT for your product, could you let us know?
Recently we heard from a developer who was about ready to ship an XACT title, and we had no idea. We try to provide as much direct support to early adopters as we can, help them with any problems they bump into, etc; we can also adjust and prioritize our features based on real-world usage.
So, if you're using XACT "secretly", please come out the woodwork and let us know, and maybe we can help. Thanks!
Dugan Porter - Game Audio Team - Microsoft
This posting is provided "as is" with no warranties, and confers no rights
My team would definitely use it if XMA was available for Windows.
My team is currently porting the game Grogg to the Xact-platform. Grogg was previously a mod to HL2. www.grogg-thegame.com
As an audiodesigner my focus is on the editor. I am also currently
writing my master thesis on tools for implementing audio into games, so
I will probably have a few questions along the way.
Currently working with XAct for a student Final game project at Full Sail.
We would use it, if some compression that sounded better, and compressed more, than MS-ADPCM was available. WMA will do in a pinch; user-supplied decompression would be even better (we prefer OGG/Vorbis for various reasons).
As it is, this is actually a deal killer (we're content size sensitive).
We are porting a 360 game to Windows. The 360 game uses XACT, and porting XACT to Windows was fairly painless. The only real problem has been converting the wav data to properly compress with ADPCM and coping with it's block size constraint when playing looping sounds.
We're using XACT for an unannouced 360 game while maintaining an internal PC version for testing.
I've just updated our project to use the Aug 2006 versions of the 360 XDK and the DirectX SDK. Unfortunately, while the XACT Tool included with the DirectX SDK appears to be newer than the 360 one, its auditioning feature doesn't work with the 360. It's a bit frustrating trying to keep things straight on what works with which version.
copy AudioConsole.xex from XDK to 360. It should help. Of course versions of XDK and DXSDK XACTs should agree. I will use it for my students videogame (XNA) tutorial, at secondary school in Italy.
Toni
I am using it( or better trying to use it now) for an educational game framework.
Is XACT and the C++ SDK going to stay for while? I hope main focus is not gonna be XNA Framework with C#.
The only reason I want to use XACT now is because of that streaming of large files on disk by having a small buffer access large file when it plays and the XACT tool to create sound library for game, plan to have 1 file with all the music and a file with all the SFX.
It needs better file formats though, MP3, ogg vorbis or something like that.
Also for the future I think it needs 7.1 sound, I only saw 5.1 sound (not that important for me though, just saying).
cheers
Nils Widmer
I'm considering XACT, but there's only one blocking issue: file size. I know the network speed has increased a lot over the years, but people would want to download smaller MP3 files rather than WAV which are usually 10 times bigger than WAV. I know for sure Microsoft will not support module formats (XM, MOD, S3M and IT), but I thought I'd mention it anyway. Perhaps some third parties might do it. :)
To summarize the earlier posts for those without time to read everything, it would seem as though the general consesus here is that it is agreed that XACT is a worthy tool, and people do WANT to use it, but a major obstacle to many people including myself is the lack of support for compressed formats.
Our company is using XACT as it's middleware tool and porting to other platforms. I'm the Audio Director so I'm mainly working with it for sound design and working with the audio programmer to get the XACT features supported in the game.
It's working well in a lot of cases but needs to work a lot better for the sound designer.
Alex MacFarlane
