So, what should we do for music?

[michaelb]

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).

I believe you misunderstand my use of "re-render". I am referring to re-rendering the audio from whatever audio creation program Chojun is using (Logic, Sonar, Protools, FLStudio, Rosegarden, MUSE, etc) as a WAV (or FLAC) file. That would be a process which would produce true lossless quality sound (assuming that the internal compression formats used by the sequencer / mixer are lossless, which is a pretty safe assumption).

@Chojun: You have kept your original project files, right? Otherwise, if by "re-render" you simply mean converting MP3 to WAV, then I'm afraid what Giel says is completely true -- we're going to have quality issues no matter what.

The playlist seems as good as any to me.

Awesome. There seems to be something of a consensus. Then should we put this in the final 2.1 release? I'd really like to see music in this game... I think it'd make a bigger difference than one might think.

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

Maybe as far as the Windows version goes, we should provide two installs, one with music and one without? This way, a person who wants to download the game with music won't have to manually download two files to install the music as a "mod". I dunno if that's what you already meant...

[Chojun]

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.

But this is all moot and would never go to trial in the United States because the Plaintiff would have a real hard time proving damages (especially since they are not making money on the game, and they released most of the contents to the general public).  Plus, with webservers, project hosting, and membership scattered across several countries with different laws themselves, it would be a costly venture to pursue legal action when the net result would be a few no-name people without a project while they get billed by their high-dollar lawyers.

People sue (and get sued) when money is at stake.

[Giel]

The playlist seems as good as any to me.

Awesome. There seems to be something of a consensus. Then should we put this in the final 2.1 release? I'd really like to see music in this game... I think it'd make a bigger difference than one might think.

I'm all for it, I know you released your tracks under the "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License". I'm not sure what Chojun wants his music to be licensed as. Though I remember him agreeing to the same or a similar license, but that's just a memory.

@Chojun: A confirmation of the license would be nice, I've already packed up a (transcoded) package which holds the above tracks.

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

Maybe as far as the Windows version goes, we should provide two installs, one with music and one without? This way, a person who wants to download the game with music won't have to manually download two files to install the music as a "mod". I dunno if that's what you already meant...

Hmm, maybe instead I could look into extending the installer so that it can dynamically download the musicpack if the user wants to? Currently I've got a "music-michaelb-chojun.wz" mod file which just needs to be dropped in \mods\global\ for Windows, then it can be activated by a "--mod music-michaelb-chojun.wz" parameter. I figure dropping that file in the right directory is doable for most users, but modifying the commandline parameters isn't. And as maintaining two separate installers is probably going to be a maintenance hell I think having a dynamic download option is the next best thing.

Now I'm only thinking about including an autoloading feature for mods (i.e. put them in directory X and they'll be loaded automatically). Currently this kind of feature only works for maps (well, actually all mods requiring to be loaded at map-loading time). But don't let me bore you with implementation details...

People sue (and get sued) when money is at stake.

Some people (and organisations as well) sue just to make a point or set an example, I'd rather not be that example. Either way, we both know that a discussion about this is going to get out of hand. I think we both know what the PoV of the other is, and that probably neither of us is going to have a change in opinion about that. So I suggest a truce (or something along those lines) on this topic.

[michaelb]

Chojun: I know I may seem too sensitive about this transcoding business, but I still think it would be cool if you could re-render (from whatever program you use, ie Pro Tools, FLStudio) as a WAV form and then export the WAVs as OGGs...

Currently I've got a "music-michaelb-chojun.wz" mod file which just needs to be dropped in \mods\global\ for Windows, then it can be activated by a "--mod music-michaelb-chojun.wz" parameter. I figure dropping that file in the right directory is doable for most users, but modifying the commandline parameters isn't.

I can tell you right now that well over half of our users would probably not have either the knowledge to do that or the patience, which is why I suggested having two separate installers. Even if it just means moving files, remember: people multi-task. They are working on a report or stalking little children in chatrooms at the same time as downloading this game, and they're probably too absorbed in whatever else to care about installing extra mods. We have to fight for their attention, and requiring an extra step I think is really too much.

However, rigging up some sort of automatic downloader thingy with NSIS would work excellently, I think. I haven't really messed with NSIS very much, so I don't know how hard that would be. I still think maintaining two packages would be the best way to go, of course I wouldn't be the one maintaining them, so that might be part of it. ;)

On the topic of downloading, could you maybe mirror the releases on a faster (or closer) server, such as Sourceforge? 'cause I get horrible download rates... I have a very fast line, and I end up getting something like 20kbs for most of the download, which means it takes quite a while.
If you want, I can provide a fairly fast mirror for up to 40 or so gigs of bandwidth a month on my http://michaelb.org/ domain. I don't know what sort of traffic we're talking about here, so I dunno how much that'd help.

BTW, I can't personally really hear the difference between the lower quality OGGs and the higher quality OGGs, so you might want to use those instead in the final product.
( http://michaelb.org/music/music/warzone/lq/ for lower quality).

Now I'm only thinking about including an autoloading feature for mods (i.e. put them in directory X and they'll be loaded automatically). Currently this kind of feature only works for maps (well, actually all mods requiring to be loaded at map-loading time). But don't let me bore you with implementation details...

Well, regardless, I still like the idea of having the user only have to download one executable. A separate music pack seems so much more unpolished, even if the mod is automatically detected.

[DevUrandom]

Once in a while even I visit the forums...

Agreed that it would be nice to get a confirmation from Chojun that his files are CC BY-SA 3.0 and get them rerendered as ogg, wav or flac. (or whatever else is lossless)

Mods: We could add a configfile line to list mods and default to loading "music.wz". IIRC that will not hurt on systems who dont have that file downloaded (via NSIS, which shouldn't be too difficult of what I hear), since we don't error out if a mod cannot be found. (Which also makes it somewhat tricky to figure out whether a mod was actually loaded...)

Michael: http://files.warzone2100.de/ also mirrors the files (user/pw). Bandwidth might be better there.

[Chojun]

Before I agree to license my work under the CC BY-SA 3.0, how will the various artists work be attributed to them?  A readme file accompanying the .wz ?

[Giel]

Before I agree to license my work under the CC BY-SA 3.0, how will the various artists work be attributed to them?  A readme file accompanying the .wz ?

The CC BY-SA license (and every other copyright license I know) itself requires attribution already. So we/I _will_ make sure to mention both your name and michaelb's name in an AUTHORS file accompanying (also included in) the .wz file.

This is what I've got currently (names are formatted: "Real Name "):

Code: Select all

The music in this package is made and provided by these people, in alphabetical order:

<Chojun>:
    Collective.ogg
    Collective2.ogg
    Shaovin.ogg

Michael B. <michaelb>:
    tonaldiscrepancy-bufferzone.ogg
    tonaldiscrepancy-grindstone.ogg
    tonaldiscrepancy-reconn.ogg

Please tell me if you want me to expand/change your name in that file.

[Chojun]

That should be fine.  I would prefer to list my website along with my name, but I don't want to create conflicts of interest with this project (unless, of course, no-one minds).

Consider any of my work previously mentioned to be licensed CC BY-SA 3.0.

[00Nobody]

Perhaps we could get this song? http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/127791

I find that it actually fits this game perfectly.

[doom3r]

Do you really think that song fits the game?

We need post-apocalyptic music, not disco...

[Giel]

That should be fine.  I would prefer to list my website along with my name, but I don't want to create conflicts of interest with this project (unless, of course, no-one minds).

Consider any of my work previously mentioned to be licensed CC BY-SA 3.0.

Ok, thanks a lot. As for listing your website, does this look good to you?

Code: Select all

The music in this package is made and provided by these people, in alphabetical order:

<Chojun> (http://www.cs.utah.edu/~gilmore/):
    Collective.ogg
    Collective2.ogg
    Shaovin.ogg

Michael B. <michaelb>:
    tonaldiscrepancy-bufferzone.ogg
    tonaldiscrepancy-grindstone.ogg
    tonaldiscrepancy-reconn.ogg

@michaelb: At the wikipage (Music proposals) I see that you've licensed your work as CC BY-SA 2.5. Would you mind licensing it as 3.0 instead? That way I could just attach a single license to the music modpack (right now it's 2.5 + 3.0).
@michaelb2: if you want I can list your website as well there ^^

[michaelb]

Sure, you can feel free to list it as 3.0 -- and also spell out my full name "Michael Bethencourt".

And sure, you can list http://michaelb.org/ for my website.

Thanks for putting this together!

[Chojun]

Great, thanks Giel

[Giel]

This is the mod itself: music 1.0. And I've built a new TRUNK snapshot which includes it (the installer will optionally download it). warzone2100 TRUNK r4613.

[00Nobody]

Do you really think that song fits the game?

We need post-apocalyptic music, not disco...

Yes, I DO really think it fits the game. Try playing with it in background. Who says that a game about an apocalypse absolutely HAS to have post apocalyptic music?

And also, the correct term would be Techno, not Disco.