DirectSound - how to tell if a sound is playing?

[Son of Makuta]

Hi
Can someone tell me how to test if a sound (DirectSoundSecondaryBuffer8 object... what a name) is playing in DirectSound? I've tried using something like

If Sound.GetCurrentPosition <> 0 Then

but GetCurrentPosition needs some weird argument - cursors As DSCURSORS - which I've never heard of, don't understand, and can't find on Google.

Also, there doesn't seem to be a Sound.IsPlaying function or anything like that.

Can anyone offer me some enlightenment please?

[Fromethius]

You'd probably create a class that would play sounds for you and keep tracking of the currently playing sound in the class. I'm thinking enums.

[Son of Makuta]

I've got a class, but there's no way to keep track of what's playing without using this, as I don't know of a way to find out how long the sounds are either :/

[CVMichael]

If your using wave files, then it's very easy to calculate the sound length.

Also, there is a way to put events through the buffer, so you can put an event right at the end of the buffer, so it will raise an event when the sound is done playing.

You should post the code you have so I can have a better idea of what you are doing.

[metalmidget]

but GetCurrentPosition needs some weird argument - cursors As DSCURSORS - which I've never heard of, don't understand, and can't find on Google.

Don't use google. Use the SDK documentation, which for me is located at <DXSDKPath>\Documentation\DirectX9\directx_sdk.chm. The documentation is excellent, and you should be able to figure out heaps of functions, datatypes, etc etc just by looking it up there.
According to the SDK documentation, the parameters for the function IDirectSoundBuffer8::GetCurrentPosition are:

pdwCurrentPlayCursor
Address of a variable that receives the offset, in bytes, of the play cursor. This parameter can be NULL if the value is not wanted.
pdwCurrentWriteCursor
Address of a variable that receives the offset, in bytes, of the write cursor. This parameter can be NULL if the value is not wanted.

According to what I've got here, the type of the variables is LPDWORD. If you're not sure about a Win32 datatype, look it up at MSDN and you should be fine. Also, you could try looking up IDirectSoundBuffer8 in the documentation and you'll find a list of all the methods and a brief description, with links to details

metal