iOS All game developers, please read!

[CaptSaltyJack]

Dear game devs,

You guys rock. But I have a small request: please make sure your games use the APP volume, NOT the ringer volume! Too many games fall victim to this, and if we want to play games with our ringer off, we can't do it without losing sound.

Phone sounds, utility apps = use the ringer volume
Games = use the app volume

Thank you.

 

[Pring]

Correct me if I'm wrong but I was under the impression we only had one way to access sound volume, and that's MPVolumeView. We can of course control the gain of our own sound but that's completely apart from ringer/main volume.

Apart from that it's entirely up to the user to manage the volume. I can see why Apple make it this way (apps can't put themselves to full volume and blast stuff out) but it is pretty confusing.

 

[CaptSaltyJack]

Nope.. what I'm referring to is this:

Turn your ringer volume up on the side of your phone. You should see a speaker with the word "ringer" underneath it. Now load up a game that handles volume properly (I think MotionX Dice does.. I was going to install it on my iPhone but now I can't install anything since another app is blocking installs..argh). Load up the game, then use the ringer up/down switch, you'll see a speaker but NOT the word "ringer." This is the app volume. THAT is the volume that games should be using.

 

[Pring]

The buttons on the side control volume if there is a sound playing. If no sound is currently playing then they control the ringer. At least that's how I understand it. The application developer has no control over this, it's an OS thing.

To demonstrate, open the iPod app. If no mp3 is playing then the buttons control the ringer volume. If an mp3 is playing then it controls sound output volume.

 

[CaptSaltyJack]

Not exactly.

I'll post up photos tonight showing what I'm talking about. To sum it up, the iPhone has two different three different volume levels: one for the ringer, one for apps/music/videos, and one for Bluetooth. And I'm not saying all apps should use the music volume control, but for games I think it's quite appropriate.

 

[Pring]

A link to how to control the different types would be useful then as I've looked over the docs and couldn't see it!

 

[sesnir]

Well developers don't have access to change the volume (if I recall), and I don't think we can specify which volume reading to use... I was under the impression that all apps use the app volume.

Rogue Vertex uses App Volume and I never had to set anything to specify that. I think that post is right... if there's a sound playing, the volume switch adjusts app volume. Otherwise, it adjusts ringer volume.

I could be wrong but that's just what I've seen.

 

[Mac Me Up]

I think he might be referring to the difference between using the AudioQueue interface vs AudioServices interface. They use two different volumes for some bizarre reason. Easy example: try playing something with AudioServices when the phone is set to silent, you can't. With AudioQueue you can?

 

[moopf]

It's all about an app making sure that they setup an audio session with the correct category. For instance, my game uses an audio session with the ambient category which means I can use OpenAL to play sound effects, with full volume control, and the iPod can still do its thing if people want to play their own music. And, because of this, the volume switches on the side of the device control the app volume as CaptSaltyJack says.

 

[CaptSaltyJack]

Here's what I'm talking about.

I load up MotionX Poker (you can download MotionX Dice for free, if you want to see this in action yourself). When I use the volume rocker switch, I see this:

Then I quit out of the game, and hit the volume switch again, and notice it says "ringer" AND the bars are way lower than what they just were a second ago! This proves there are absolutely two different volume levels, AND game developers ARE ABLE to control the music/game/app volume separately from the ringer!

So in summary: game developers, please use the app/music volume, not the ringer volume. It's just way better design.

EDIT : Ahh, the search for a good free image host continues. ImageVenue.com just dumped these images for stupid reason... and ImageShack was slow as snails on Vicodin. Gotta find something else

 

[Pring]

Hey, I agree with you. There's no real documentation on how to do so though, which is the problem! Mac Me Up give a valuable snippet of information that people can work from though.