Monogame: Lack of OpenAL DLLs shouldn't be fatal.

[s-m-k]

I don't want to use OpenAL audio at all, so I don't think I should be required to distribute the libraries related to it.

It would be better to make me choose whether I want to initialize the MonoGame audio (and load the libs) or not. It's done in the runtime anyway, so this functionality should be easy to add (e.g. static Game.InitializeAudio = false; before creating the Game instance), especially that my use case isn't really isolated. I believe that many gamedevs choose FMOD or Wwise over solutions native to engines/frameworks simply because their sound designers are used to these tools.

I get that it might be a minor issue to most people, but there's no need to be forced to distribute two audio frameworks simultaneously (which is one of many reasons I don't really like Unity) and it seems to be easy to avoid in case of MonoGame. Give us more freedom :)

[Jjagg]

I thought MG already silently failed when OpenAL initialization throws an exception. Can you post a stack trace?

Should we add an API for this as suggested or just silently fail?

[s-m-k]

It did in 3.6, but I decided to try 3.7.

Stack trace:

Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Audio.NoAudioHardwareException occurred
  HResult=0x80004005
  Message=Failed to init OpenALSoundController
  Source=MonoGame.Framework
  StackTrace:
   at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.SdlGamePlatform..ctor(Game game)
   at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game..ctor()
   at Monster.EngineSystem..ctor() in E:\LocalProjects\Game210617\Game210617\_Main\EngineSystem.cs:line 71
   at Monster.Program.Main() in E:\LocalProjects\Game210617\Game210617\_Main\Program.cs:line 18

I was looking at these sources before creating this issue and it seems that SdlGamePlatform does this:

https://github.com/MonoGame/MonoGame/blob/1a9466ef46b98d9b4ea5818190eaa33df1c5a6df/MonoGame.Framework/SDL/SDLGamePlatform.cs#L77

I think that having an option to choose would be the better thing, at least for me.

[tdeeb]

I'm getting this same error in MonoGame 3.7.0.1129, but I'm using OpenAL. If the user doesn't have sound enabled, I agree that we should be able to handle whether we want the game to run or not. Has there been any progress on this?

[andrekoehler]

I have no audio devices connected to my dev machine and I get a NoAudioHardwareException even tough I do not use or need audio at all for the application I am going to write. There should be a switch to disable the audio engine if I don't need it.

Connecting a headset helps but I don't want to connect a headset because I don't want to hear anything.

Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Audio.NoAudioHardwareException
HResult=0x80004005
Message=OpenAL device could not be initialized, see console output for details.
Source=MonoGame.Framework
StackTrace:
at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Audio.OpenALSoundController..ctor()
at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Audio.OpenALSoundController.get_GetInstance()
at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.SdlGamePlatform..ctor(Game game)
at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game..ctor()
at Game1.Game1..ctor() in C:\dev_Tests\Game1\Game1\Game1.cs:line 21
at Game1.Program.Main() in C:\dev_Tests\Game1\Game1\Program.cs:line 16

[harry-cpp]

This is connected to #4717 so I'm gonna add this to the 3.7 milestone.

[mrhelmut]

Should be fixed, see #6629