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.

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

there should be different music for cities, forest, dungeons to add atmosphere
- storyteller made some great examples of this
- some are very pretty and quiet and suitable for outdoors, a meadow
- some are dark and scary like for a dungeon
- a jazz room was suggested, does it fit into the world?
need to compromise between file size and loops being long enough not to get monotonic

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

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?

music is played by client
on commands provided by the server
music should depended on zone, "atmosphere" property of zone that is sent to client
synchronization
- there is an unwritten rule that all the players should see the same thing
- problem: player A enters a zone, the music starts to play, player B enters 30 seconds later. For them to hear the same thing the music for player B has to start 30 seconds in
- the music should fade in, there is no need to hear it from the start
- music is not really part of the game world so it may be okay to start at the beginning every time, to make coding simpler for now
other triggers
- there might be special music during a fight against a very strong monsters
- it was suggested that music may be faster when low on health

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

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

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
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