You wouldn't expect to find high-quality game sound on a limited-bandwidth mobile phone. But that's what Faith West's software is providing to mobile game developers. Compact, flexible sound formats - mXMF and mDLS - are making it possible.
We spoke with Haruko Karata, director of Faith West, creator of the mXMFTool development tool. They are a subsidiary of the Japanese company that pioneered polyphonic ringtones, then spun off their content division as Moderati, now owned by BellRock Media.
Karata says that mXMF is used as a ringtone format, but it can do much more. Based on the MIDI standard, these sound files are much smaller than other formats, take up less memory and download faster. Yet they can be as realistic as MP3. With Faith West's software, developers can create new downloadable mXMF/MIDI instruments for each game. We're not talking about ?Grand Piano" or ?Jazz Organ", but unique instruments with names like ?Footstep Grass," ?Weapon Knife Throw," or ?People Evil Laugh". mXMFTool comes bundled with 125 royalty-free mobile game audio sound effects, including animal noises, human actions, sports effects, weapons, vehicular noises, and nature sounds.
The mDLS format allows these custom mXMF instruments to be further tweaked on the fly by the game developer, so that a single sound file - say, ?Footstep Grass" - can be reused to represent the steps of a child or a giant, without requiring additional downloads. An API for Qualcomm BREW handsets allows developers to load a mDLS sound library that is dynamically accessible within BREW while an application is launched. Game developers can access the sound bank as they would a MIDI wavetable.
Says Karata, ?There is much more room for more innovation in mobile game audio? Current handsets are just beginning to accommodate the needs of sound in mobile games." The next generation specifications include Interactive XMF and XMF Type 3. Interactive XMF separates sound control from mobile game programming and allows sound designers, rather than programmers, to create a sound track that fluidly adapts to what's happening on the screen. XMF Type 3 adds support of high quality codec audio clips, such as traditional WAV files, to be triggered in synch with a MIDI timeline.
Most mobile devices aren't quite there yet. For example, many handsets still only support one audio file playback at a time, so they can't play a sound effect and background music simultaneously. But if you carry a mobile device that supports mXMF and mDLS, don't be surprised if you hear howling wolves or clanking swords in the coming months.

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