So, what should we do for music?

[michaelb]

Try a Google search, "I'm feeling lucky" for his full name.
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Thanks for the clarifications, Rman Virgil, about the two different projects. I was rather confused, as I was original posting about the Warzone 2100 resurrection project, and it would seem that others might have been talking about 2200.

Also, random note (I saw someone complaining about this somewhere on this thread): for reading OGGs on (I assume) a Windows machine, I recommend using the free/libre program VLC -- even a vanilla copy can play just about anything. I use it for movies, DVDs, music, anything I need to play on a Windows computer. http://www.videolan.org/
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Regarding the WRP:
@ratarf & @Chojun:
Anyway, since nobody has suggested any alternatives, I still am saying we go with that one play-list I have listed in my first post. Do you guys have anything to add / change? Also, do you have non-lossy compressed versions of your music (wav / flac), so you can re-encode it as an OGG? The MP3 codec is proprietary, and WZ2100 is free/libre, which doesn't work.

Who is most in charge of releases? We should probably ask him/them what they think of the play-list some time before 2.1 gets officially released, and get this moving...

[Chojun]

I really have no preference as far as a playlist goes, so the one you suggested should work out fine

I only have .mp3s for all my music.  I could try to re-render them into .wavs.

Here is my latest WIP: 

http://www.cs.utah.edu/~gilmore/modules ... 20mm-2.mp3

Since it is still a WIP it is somewhat experimental.  The part beginning at 1:03 till the end is me messing around, but for the most part, from the start till 0:45 will likely make it into the final track.

Also, ignore the hissing sound, this is a watermark of sorts and will disappear for the final version.

The track is titled "120mm", after my favorite weapon size in Warzone 

[Rman Virgil]

The part beginning at 1:03 till the end is me messing around, but for the most part, from the start till 0:45 will likely make it into the final track.

* You already know my comments on the 1st part.

* But the "messing around" section is new to me and I think you should save it to build another tune around. To me it has the sound of a "Battle Hymm" that could be a motif for one of the 22k Campaign factions. Which faction ? Up to you, really.

- RV

[Buginator]

Regarding the WRP:
@ratarf & @Chojun:
Anyway, since nobody has suggested any alternatives, I still am saying we go with that one play-list I have listed in my first post. Do you guys have anything to add / change? Also, do you have non-lossy compressed versions of your music (wav / flac), so you can re-encode it as an OGG? The MP3 codec is proprietary, and WZ2100 is free/libre, which doesn't work.

Who is most in charge of releases? We should probably ask him/them what they think of the play-list some time before 2.1 gets officially released, and get this moving...

Most in charge of doing the installers for windows?  That would be Devurandom and or Giel.
I am not exactly sure who does all the packages for linux, I know only 1 person from debian games who does it, and AFAIK, he has no account here, but you can usually find them hanging around the IRC channel.

Perhaps it would be best to post this to the mailing list, that way, you can be *sure* that most all the devs will read it.
https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/warzone-dev/  To subscribe to it, then you can post about it.

[Chojun]

* But the "messing around" section is new to me and I think you should save it to build another tune around. To me it has the sound of a "Battle Hymm" that could be a motif for one of the 22k Campaign factions. Which faction ? Up to you, really.

My kids say that the guitar solo is their favorite part, although it won't fit with the overall feel of the finished track (it could, possibly).

Regarding a faction theme...  I've done that before but I've never considered doing any for wz2200...  An interesting thought.  My "Shaovin" track came from one of Papa Lazarou's faction descriptions of the Shaovin for TWZ (back in the Pumpkin-2 days).  It seemed that the desert, warlike faction should have somewhat of an Egyptian feel, so there we have it 

BTW:  Ratarf, I like what I hear, keep it up (the guitars sound familiar  )

[Buginator]

I listened to some of these, and it seems some could have been part of other games at one point.
I recall something very similar in the C&C/Red alert series...

Don't get me wrong, it does sound good, but I just don't know where that line in the sand is, and if it sound too similar to commercial game tracks, will this (or any other) project get in trouble for having stuff that sounds too similar?


My ears like about 86.4% of the stuff posted so far. 

[A4tech]

Hm, simple question: why we can't use original soundtrack?  ???

[ratarf]

Hm, simple question: why we can't use original soundtrack?  ???

Read the faq/wiki/9999 forum posts about this subject and the videos 

About the C&C series: haven't played any of the C&C games in a very long time - In fact, I have no idea what the music sounds like, although I have a vague idea about the guitars. So it's certainly not done on purpose 

[The Commander]

Now bands in real life today redo old songs done in the past. So why cant some one just redo the originals pretty much exactly how they sound? Surely you cant say that is still breaching some copy right act crap? Althoe I will continue to use the original songs in this version till I here something better. 

[michaelb]

I really have no preference as far as a playlist goes, so the one you suggested should work out fine.

Great! I PMed a couple devs about it.

I only have .mp3s for all my music.  I could try to re-render them into .wavs.

Yes, that would be perfect. Transcoding from MP3 to OGG would be disastrous -- you need to start from a non-lossy format. You could just re-render them into .wavs, and then use a program such as Audacity to export as an OGG (free/libre, check it out if you haven't already: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ ). Maybe at quality 4 or 3? Whichever still sounds transparent to you... I'll probably use 3 for my music.

Also, how do you want them named? I like the "artist-song_title.ogg" format (no spaces, no capitals, has the artist name in the file name), but if you want something else for yours then that's fine.

Oh, and I took a listen to your newest creation. Nice.

I recall something very similar in the C&C/Red alert series...

Ahh... my favorite RTS series ever... they had a totally kick ass sound track too. Hell March...

Surely you cant say that is still breaching some copy right act crap?

You'd be surprised. See: http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/02/24/200714.php

[The Commander]

OMFG  >:( Thats just stupid and idiotic. But then who would really notice a cover of a WZ2100 song and try sue someone over such a thing?

[michaelb]

OMFG  >:( Thats just stupid and idiotic. But then who would really notice a cover of a WZ2100 song and try sue someone over such a thing?

Unfortunately, it doesn't matter. We want Warzone 2100 licensing to be totally kosher. Otherwise, for example, Linux distros might shy away from including it in repositories. And anyway, there are enough musicians hanging out around here to make a pretty good soundtrack -- perhaps even better than the original.

[Giel]

So, has there been any decisions as to a default play list yet? As in, is bundled music still on the menu?

Nope, they're haven't been any decision made on this topic yet. It's still on our (well mine at least) list of things to do, it wasn't very high until you poked me though (i.e. I'm moving it higher up in my personal priority list).

I generally think the lack of soundtrack is still quite an issue with the game, so it would be good to soon start bundling music. We really should start moving this along... and if we can't agree on a play list, maybe a poll for the developers on play list suggestions would be in order?

The playlist seems as good as any to me.

On a side note, my opinion is that it would still be good to additionally release a version of the game that does not have the music pre-bundled, as the download size currently is so slim and sexy.

Sure, providing the soundtracks as a "mod" should be fairly easy to do.

[Giel]

Unfortunately, it doesn't matter. We want Warzone 2100 licensing to be totally kosher. Otherwise, for example, Linux distros might shy away from including it in repositories. And anyway, there are enough musicians hanging out around here to make a pretty good soundtrack -- perhaps even better than the original.

Doing something illegally (which that would unfortunately be, and I can rant on about the dangers of copyright for a long time but I wont) just because we don't expect to get caught is stupid IMO. Simply because only very few people that do things illegally ever expect to get caught, but still they some/most? of them do...

And since we don't have any significant amounts of money, we wouldn't be able to even withstand a trial (i.e. the cost of the trial itself), let alone money we might need to pay.

That said, if we where to use these materials we wouldn't just bring ourselves in a legally dangerous situation. We would also endanger every other distributor that distributes Warzone 2100. So rather than using the originals we'll rather just use the (may I say great quality!) music some of the people in this community create and offer freely.

[Giel]

Great! I PMed a couple devs about it.
Yes, that would be perfect. Transcoding from MP3 to OGG would be disastrous -- you need to start from a non-lossy format. You could just re-render them into .wavs, and then use a program such as Audacity to export as an OGG (free/libre, check it out if you haven't already: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ ). Maybe at quality 4 or 3? Whichever still sounds transparent to you... I'll probably use 3 for my music.

Actually that's exactly what a transcoder does. It first decodes them (usually in memory, without storing back to disk) to WAV (well actually the raw data that's present in WAVs, but without the special structuring and headers), it then recodes them to the target format.

Thus, what you suggest is nothing but a manual form of transcoding. Plus a _very_ smart transcoder might have an intricate about both the source and target formats which it can use to maintain an optimal quality in the target format. That last is something which you cannot achieve with a manual approach (unless you're very good at mathematics and have about a month to spear for every minute of sound).

That said, a degrading of quality is bound to happen when transcoding. The question is: will it be bad and noticeable enough to worry about (and yes I'm thinking about the audiophile as well here, because I consider myself to be one of those). In any case, a slight increase in filesize just to safeguard the quality wouldn't be a showstopper IMO.