Audio

Playing audio is essential for most games, so we made it simple!

First you have to add flame_audio to your dependency list in your pubspec.yaml file:

dependencies:
  flame_audio: 1.3.0

The latest version can be found on pub.dev.

After installing the flame_audio package, you can add audio files in the assets section of your pubspec.yaml file. Make sure that the audio files exists in the paths that you provide.

The default directory for FlameAudio is assets/audio (which can be changed by providing your own instance of AudioCache).

For the examples below, your pubspec.yaml file needs to contain something like this:

flutter:
  assets:
    - assets/audio/explosion.mp3
    - assets/audio/music.mp3

Then you have the following methods at your disposal:

import 'package:flame_audio/flame_audio.dart';

// For shorter reused audio clips, like sound effects
FlameAudio.play('explosion.mp3');

// For looping an audio file
FlameAudio.loop('music.mp3');

// For playing a longer audio file
FlameAudio.playLongAudio('music.mp3');

// For looping a longer audio file
FlameAudio.loopLongAudio('music.mp3');

// For background music that should be paused/played when the pausing/resuming the game
FlameAudio.bgm.play('music.mp3');

The difference between the play/loop and playLongAudio/loopLongAudio is that play/loop makes use of optimized features that allow sounds to be looped without gaps between their iterations, and almost no drop on the game frame rate will happen. You should whenever possible, prefer the former methods.

playLongAudio/loopLongAudio allows for audios of any length to be played, but they do create frame rate drop, and the looped audio will have a small gap between iterations.

You can use the Bgm class (via FlameAudio.bgm) to play looping background music tracks. The Bgm class lets Flame automatically manage the pausing and resuming of background music tracks when the game is backgrounded or comes back to the foreground.

You can use the AudioPool class if you want to fire quick sound effects in a very efficient manner. AudioPool will keep a pool of AudioPlayers preloaded with a given sound, and allow you to play them very fast in quick succession.

Some file formats that work across devices and that we recommend are: MP3, OGG and WAV.

This bridge library (flame_audio) uses audioplayers in order to allow for playing multiple sounds simultaneously (crucial in a game). You can check the link for a more in-depth explanation.

Both on play and loop you can pass an additional optional double parameter, the volume (defaults to 1.0).

Both the play and loop methods return an instance of an AudioPlayer from the audioplayers lib, that allows you to stop, pause and configure other parameters.

In fact you can always use AudioPlayers directly to gain full control over how your audio is played – the FlameAudio class is just a wrapper for common functionality.

Caching

You can pre-load your assets. Audios need to be stored in the memory the first time they are requested; therefore, the first time you play each mp3 you might get a delay. In order to pre-load your audios, just use:

await FlameAudio.audioCache.load('explosion.mp3');

You can load all your audios in the beginning in your game’s onLoad method so that they always play smoothly. To load multiple audio files, use the loadAll method:

await FlameAudio.audioCache.loadAll(['explosion.mp3', 'music.mp3']);

Finally, you can use the clear method to remove a file that has been loaded into the cache:

FlameAudio.audioCache.clear('explosion.mp3');

There is also a clearCache method, that clears the whole cache.

This might be useful if, for instance, your game has multiple levels and each has a different set of sounds and music.