Potential addition to "UC 2: HTML5 game with audio effects, music" regarding playback interruptions.

Hi folks,

Obviously a bit late here but a potential addition to use case 2 comes to
my mind and I figured I'd raise it for discussion.

Somewhere in the use case description it could mention how during gameplay
the player receives a 'phone call and the game pauses all audio whilst the
call is handled. Upon returning to the game/App the music and sound effects
resume seamlessly.

(There is an obvious sibling case for when external interruptions on
non-mobile devices cause the player to manually pause the game.)

Additionally, pausing gameplay explicitly should pause all in-game sounds
but still allow UI interactions to trigger response SFX (button clicks,
etc). Simply muting all audio output is sub-optimal for reasons of
power/memory consumption (app/focus switching may cause virtual memory
purging), audio output contention, and unwanted side-effects if the
gameplay is tied to playback position (for tempo-related games).

Technically, this is likely more a consideration for the host
implementations and/or bespoke game SFX management logic rather than the
raw web audio API itself but I figure this need is worth consideration
nonetheless, particularly given that responding appropriately in these
situations may be an official technical requirement on some platforms.

Thoughts?


Regards,
Anthony.