Finally started playing

[samueljustice00]

OpenGL is a cross-platform graphics API and since Amnesia is also built for OSX and Linux it's easier to just use OpenGL. I wouldn't count on them going with DirectX anytime soon. It would be nice if they dumped OpenAL and went with something like FMOD since OpenAL has its fair share of issues and Creative doesn't seem to be supporting it any longer.

Please don't, OpenAL imo is much better sound API than FMOD for the simple reason that it supports real 3D sound (and also hardware sound acceleration) FMOD fakes 3D sound and is only software based (CPU).

If ditching openAL is even considered then they should at least try OpenAL_soft (not maintained by Creative but by the open source community) or Rapture3D (based on the last OpenAL version before Creative bought the API) this last one is really awesome because it uses binaural sound when listen with headphones (and it works right now with Amnesia because it uses OpenAL).

How exactly does FMOD fake 3D sound? It's just audio that is panned from channel to channel based on player location, the pan size and signal ratio is all controllable. OpenAL is a dinosaur, and hardware sound acceleration is no longer needed these days (in terms of effecting quality, most soundcards use the hardware for encoding different streams for different devices (Dolby, DTS etc) it really doesn't do anything. TDD and Pigs both use the Ogg Vorbis as delivery for audio, OpenAL just has a standard playback system for Ogg Vorbis that allows us to start, stop, fade and loop. Whereas with FMOD we are able to set parameters which dynamically effect the audio, so, through some special scripting we can create some really complex cool logic for audio playback. OpenAL's 3D panning (imho) is pretty poor, I perceive it as the signal either being 100% L or 100% R (for stereo setups), it never sits nicely between the two. We have done a lot of mono/stereo blending in Pigs to combat this, as it was having a detrimental effect on the quality of the sound.