Sound and game get out of sync... How to prevent it?

[wingedadventurer]

Hello, fella GameMakers!

Best way to describe my problem is to imagine making a Guitar Hero clone, where a song plays in the background and notes arrive. The notes are "in sync" with the song in the original Guitar Hero game. This is something I find impossible to make in GameMaker.

Why? Well, the song is one thing and the notes are the other thing. Nothing connects them. They begin at the same time and manage to perfectly sync with each other as long as they both travel at the same speed. But what if one of those two things gets a little lag? They get out of sync.

In GameMaker I haven't found a way to sync the song with some game rhythmical element other than using the method above (to play them at the same time), but GameMaker certainly can cause a bunch of little lags, especially on weaker PC-s, and this is troubling me.

I'm wondering is there a way to fix this? Consider that the lag is inevitable, especially on weaker PC-s. Is there some DLL that can help with this?

 

[TehCupcakes]

This is something I find impossible to make in GameMaker.

This is one of those assumptions that is almost always wrong. While GM:S does have its limitations, there is pretty much always a solution if you're willing to get creative enough. This topic might help you come up with some general ideas on how you might combat this issue:
https://forum.yoyogames.com/index.php?threads/programming-rhythm-games-how.1781/#post-14631

 

[FrostyCat]

If you calculate the positioning of rhythmic elements using audio_sound_get_track_position(), it would stay in sync all the time.

Not exactly what I'd characterize as impossible.