Stendhal Development Meeting 2009-11-22/Result Log/Music
TODO: Creation of this page is in progress. This is not a real chat log. Comments have been removed, sorted and edited.
- Meeting
- Result Log
- Raw Chat Log
Introduction (needs summary or integrate below)
- humana: hey... I want more sound in this game, maybe music!... I thought about a new house... for example a jazz house... there are some musicians (is that the right word) which are playing music... you can do there for example a new quest too ... how do you think about this?
- humana: maybe first just one place for music ... it's difficult to write songs for all places in stendhal...
- hendrik: And too many other things to work on.
- vomit: there's a text in the wiki about this
- humana: what kind of music?
- humana: I can do maybe something with cheatdomi
- vomit: chilling tunes
- humana: I like it if there is a jazz house!
- storyteller: humana, I already produced a four music tracks for Stendhal :)
- vomit: maybe ambient or classic with a touch of medieval tunes
- humana: it's difficult to write something for all places vomit
- humana: you want for dungeons for example other music
- humana: storyteller? where can I hear this music?
- storyteller: it is added to the patches tracker
- storyteller: it´s something for ambient/atmosphere
- miasma: we could take midi-files.
- superkym: storyteller's music is really good. but adding to the game it is another thing
- storyteller: I produced it myself
- humana: okay teller I will hear it
- humana: kymi? what do you mean?
- superkym: pepsz, you can write this already
- plassy: maybe we can find some music at jamendo.com... it's creative common
- humana: I like some music for your heart
- humana: like blues and jazz
Types of Music (needs summary)
File Format (needs summary)
- vomit: in the wiki stood something about ogg
- vomit: would flac do it either?
- vomit: i have one ambient track but it's in mp3
- miasma: midi-files can be repeated the whole time aren't so big files and you can make them easy at home
- blackfinix: convert it to ogg
- blackfinix: ogg is open source
- blackfinix: flac is open source
- kiheru: with flac we would get rather large download sizes
- miasma: i'm for midi-files.
- vomit: flac would just be the source
- superkym: i'm pretty sure the wiki says what specifications we have, doesn't it say oggs?
- vomit: you could downsample it then for your own desired size
- blackfinix: a midi composition would work miasma. but i am not sure if he game can handle them
- plassy: midi and linux isn't a good idea
- humana: midi...
- blackfinix: if it was midi it would definitely have a retro sound to the game :)
- vomit: i think it should be ogg
- storyteller: do you think about 8-bit music?
- blackfinix: yes ogg is best bet
- storyteller: retro style? ;)
- plassy: full ack to ogg
- miasma: i think a retro touch like lufia or secret of mana or sth. is not bad for a game like these
- storyteller: thats right miasma
- vomit: but midis are tooooo oldschool
- miasma: i could try to make midi-files. thanks to guitar pro :D
- tigertoes: i dont think you can get the range in midi files as you can in ogg
Other (needs summary)
- storyteller: no, I think we should not take music from anywhere...
- humana: storryteller what do you mean?
- plassy: what do you mean with anywhere?
- storyteller: well, to take it from any other source... Because of the copyright etc
- plassy: its a game
- humana: yes and a game has a background music
- humana: you can mute the music
- pepsz: more for example the people how you ignore can see why you ignore hem when try speak with you
- Oslsachem: music usually adds atmosphere to the game but not gameplay
- humana: so I don't know now... what do you think about a Blues or Jazz house?
- vomit: and there should be a soundtrack file, which you are able to download extra
- blackfinix: vomit yes ... like the sound files now
- superkym: adding music would still be rather a major change
- blackfinix: ok we can put that off for now, or create a ccommittee to look into it
- humana: who wrote music for stendhal already?
- superkym: it's not a minor thing which we can just make happen, it's a major thing needed, as far as i remember
- vomit: atmospheric sounds in ogg would be better
- miasma: but not your ambient music, vomit. i think ulthar isn't a good choice. in dreamscape maybe ;)
- Oslsachem: music should be played adaptively according to the place and situation, to give it more value.
- plassy: whats the problem with music... there is support for sound in java... or am I wrong?
- samson: I don't care about music / sounds as long as I can switch them off
- blackfinix: yes samson.
- plassy: so who did the original sound stuff?
Triggering Background Music (needs summary)
- Oslsachem: there's the question whether music should be played individually for each player or whether it should be associated with the zone...
- hendrik: There should be different music for cities, forest, dungeons.
- hendrik: So it would be zone depended.
- hendrik: We already have some wind like sounds in 0_semos_village_w, but that is very basic.
- plassy: music have to add atmosphere
- superkym: yes and storyteller's music are great examples of this
- storyteller: Thanks very much :)
- superkym: some are very pretty and quiet and suitable for outdoors, a meadow
- superkym: some are dark and scary like for a dungeon
- Oslsachem: but that means that when a player enters a zone the music is not played from the beginning
- superkym: also he made them fairly small file which is important as we don't want to force large downloads, and they loop, too.
- yoriy: if music stay zone dependent it must not be monotonic , so probably there must be 2-3 misic themes for each zones
- blackfinix: osl that wouuld be ok though?
- hendrik: There is this problem:
- hendrik: Player One enters the zone.
- hendrik: The music starts.
- hendrik: 30 second later player Two enters the zone.
- storyteller: Then the music has to be played for every single player
- hendrik: Will he hear the music from the start? Or will it start with 30 seconds into the track?
- tigertoes: if it is a loop, wouldnt that mean it doesnt matter?
- vomit: the music should play for each player
- tigertoes: same concept for when you have music on telephone and they put you on hold
- storyteller: yes, tigertoes... for loops it doesnt matter
- love_puppet: or maybe the player 2 picks up 30s in to the track
- vomit: that should be controlled locally by the client
- plassy: the music should fade in... there is no need to hear it from the start
- hendrik: Always starting at the beginning of the file is a lot easier to code.
- plassy: except if special events arise
- yoriy: id like to have music in client instead server
- plassy: hendrik: i dont see the problem... dosn't java handle this?
- plassy: isn't there any library?
- superkym: why is it a problem if the music starts from the beginning as you enter, for each player? i think that is ok
- jesco: yes it is
- hendrik: okay, that makes things easier.
- Oslsachem: there's an unofficial rule that states that all the players should see the same things in the game though I don't know if music is really a part of the world or just the game interface because there isn't actually a musician playing it...
- kiheru: java does not handle everything. there's still a lot about the behaviour to code
- blackfinix: wouldn't all this music be very resource hungry?
- Oslsachem: you could play with the music tempo, increasing it when a player has low health
- humana: so if you want some music for some maps... I am here, I have guitar pro .. and domi have a better programm
- miasma: like the time-out music in super mario, oslsachem? ;)
- kiheru: maybe eventually osl. first we need something that works
- kiheru: just have a "atmosphere" property for the zones that's send to the client
- superkym: if you really wanted to make it start at the correct place you'd send what moment in the track to start from but not stream
Multiple programs with music
- music should only be played if the Stendhal client is the active window
- so when you have two clients open (for example while testing) you don't get a mess
- a workaround would be to mute one client manually.
- for example when the other music source is not related to Stendhal
Shipping Music Files
- the music files should be shipped with the client, just like tiles and images are, but as a separate package
- streaming is considered to consume too much resources like bandwidth, streaming is not required for synchronizing
- plan: 1. Make mute persistent, 2. include the sound files in stendhal-0.xx.zip, 3. include the music files in stendhal-FULL-0.xx.zip
Volunteers
- storyteller and miasma volunteered to do the music
- hendrik volunteered to fix /mute and include the sound files into the normal stendhal-0.xx.zip download, so that the music files can go into stendhal-FULL-0.xx.zip
- plassy volunteered to do the java coding
- it may be a good idea to join #arianne on irc freenode. Please ask there if you have any questions or issues.