irrKlang tutorial: Hello World (C++)

This example will show how to play sounds using irrKlang. It will play a looped background music and a sound every time the user presses a key.

Let's start

At the beginning, we need to include the irrKlang headers (irrKlang.h) and the iostream headers needed to print text to the console.

#include <iostream>
#include <irrKlang.h>

Also, we tell the compiler to use the namespaces 'irrklang'. All classes and functions of irrKlang can be found in the namespace 'irrklang'. If you want to use a class of the engine, you'll have to type an irrklang:: before the name of the class. For example, to use the ISoundEngine, write: irrklang::ISoundEngine. To avoid having to put irrklang:: before of the name of every class, we tell the compiler that we use that namespaces here.

using namespace irrklang;
			

To be able to use the irrKlang.dll file, we need to link with the irrKlang.lib. We could set this option in the project settings, but to make it easy we use a pragma comment:

#pragma comment(lib, "irrKlang.lib") // link with irrKlang.dll

Now lets start with irrKlang 3D sound engine example 01, demonstrating simple 2D sound. Start up the sound engine using createIrrKlangDevice(). You can specify several options as parameters when invoking that function, but for this example, the default parameters are enough.

int main(int argc, const char** argv)
{
   // start the sound engine with default parameters
   ISoundEngine* engine = createIrrKlangDevice();

   if (!engine)
      return 0; // error starting up the engine

To play a sound, we only to call play2D(). The second parameter tells the engine to play it looped.

   // play some sound stream, looped
   
   engine->play2D("../../media/getout.ogg", true);

In a loop, wait until user presses 'q' to exit or another key to play another sound.

   std::cout << "\nHello World!\n";

   char i = 0;

   while(i != 'q')
   {
      std::cout << "Press any key to play some sound, press 'q' to quit.\n";

      // play a single sound
      engine->play2D("../../media/bell.wav");		

      std::cin >> i; // wait for user to press some key
   }

After we are finished, we have to delete the irrKlang Device created earlier with createIrrKlangDevice(). Use ::drop() to do that. In irrKlang, you should delete all objects you created with a method or function that starts with 'create'. (an exception is the play2D()- or play3D()-method, see the documentation or the next example for an explanation) The object is deleted simply by calling ->drop().

   engine->drop(); // delete engine
   return 0;
}

That's it, have fun playing your own sounds now.
Download tutorial source and binary (included in the SDK)