Microsoft MakeCode

SFX in MakeCode Arcade?

#1

I’m poking around a little bit at the internals of MakeCode Arcade. I like the ability to play melodies, but I feel like we’re missing the “pew pew” and “crash bang” types of sound effects that are also typical in arcade games.

Specifically, I’m looking for a way to play WAV file data like what is done in MakeCode for Lego Mindstorms EV3. In Arcade, it looks like music.playInstructions() plays sound from a buffer. Does it work the same way as sounds.play() works in Mindstorms, or is there some other way to hook into the sound system in Arcade to play WAV data?

#2

We still have some work to do around sound. Eventually we would like to have a sound designer similar to the sprite image editor so that kids can “shape” their own sounds.

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#3

Brilliant; thanks for the update, @peli. A sound designer would be super cool! A set of stock sounds, though, would be perfectly sufficient to begin with, similar to the stock melodies list.

#4

Both are related: we need an api to shape sounds in order to define those built-ins.

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#5

I’d like to play wav files too. I would rank wav/sample support higher than synthesis features. Have you conducted user surveys for this?

For comparison, MIT Scratch offers a rich sample library, import of wavs, recording and playback.