Open Source Music and Audio for Open Source Games

Open Source Music and Audio for Open Source Games

Postby Mute-atioN » 11 Aug 2012, 16:55

Hi,

I'm Mute-atioN and I spend most of my time for the production, reproduction and performance of music. If it would pay of, I would be doing this all day . But unfortunately it isn't so I'm not. But there's one good thing: I can do what I want and what I think is fun. I am really interested in working on a project with some of you developers here. But this is not my point. With this topic I'd like to learn about how audio is implemented into your games or what is the best way to provide people with music for their games. This is really new to me, too. And it is a huge topic to discuss, I guess.
So what do you guys think:

How can the Open Source idea be realized for music - especially in a gaming/game developing context?

What kind of data do you prefer and why? (I'm betting on FLAC, since it is free and lossless and therefore has already two big advantages over .mp3. What about OGG? I honestly don't know)

How does audio work in games or what about audio is relevant for game developers?

I'm really convinced that good audio and a good soundtrack contribute to the quality of the game. I'm also trying to convince other musicians or find people who share my perspective on that.

Really curious about your replies. Regards,

MN
Mute-atioN
 
Posts: 4
Joined: 19 Jul 2012, 18:06
Location: Germ any

Re: Open Source Music and Audio for Open Source Games

Postby Arthur » 11 Aug 2012, 17:18

Well, for SuperTuxKart, we have a media repository where we keep lossless files and "source files", such as .png and .blend files. We also try to get as many lossless files for music as possible, so we store FLAC and WAV files there as well, and export them to OGG for use in-game. Some of our music has been found on various websites with Free licensing, such as Jamendo.com, and thus we may only have .mp3 files as highest quality and then export that to OGG. I guess something similar is done for most open source projects.
Hey pal, I took an oath for justice! "In happy days or tightest tights..." or something like that.
User avatar
Arthur
 
Posts: 1073
Joined: 06 Dec 2009, 00:49

Re: Open Source Music and Audio for Open Source Games

Postby qubodup » 11 Aug 2012, 20:52

(I am unfortunately not a musician.)

When using only one open source tool to create music, for example LMMS or Milkytracker, it seems to be reasonably quick and simple to create and share a "source" file.

OpenGameArt.org has a few tracks that come with .mmpz "source". There are also a few tracks that come with their FruityLoops "source" file. FruityLoops is a proprietary tool, I don't know whether the file format itself is protected as well.

There are many tracker files out there that can be opened and edited in Milkytracker but often come without a (free) license and often contain a comment that they use samples from other tracker files. In a few cases it's not clear whether a track is original or a cover/remix of a pop music track or another tracker musician's work or a game's soundtrack.

Maxstack released his tracks with sources for Renoise (proprietary) and Psycle (lin/win, gpl2, I think a few months ago there was no Linux port yet) under free licenses ( :by: :sa: ).

I believe that the beauty of sharing music sources is that one track might spawn an entire game's soundtrack or series of alterations and remixes. I don't remember having seen anything like that in existence though, except for some .midi files from OpenGameArt.org, which have been rendered using different sound sets.
User avatar
qubodup
Global Moderator
 
Posts: 1671
Joined: 08 Nov 2009, 22:52
Location: Berlin, Germany

Re: Open Source Music and Audio for Open Source Games

Postby Mute-atioN » 12 Aug 2012, 10:43

Thanks Arthur and qubodup!

So what I learned from your replies so far is that you need some place to store lossless audio files in order to convert them into OGG. So it seems OGG is the format of choice for games? I'm kind of surprised that you use .mp3 audio and convert that... although 320mp3 might be not as bad.
The point of music being open source is that other people can use and rearrange the music. But this is where licensing issues start to puzzle me. I am able to create a song and release it with :by: license. Like this one I did for a promotional video of one of my friends:

http://opengameart.org/content/mute-ation-sad-frog-song

I didn't use only samples here or MIDI files. There was lots of EQing and Compression etc. These effects are critical for the sound of the music and should be considered as much "source" as MIDI or single drumsamples. Since I use Logic I am not allowed to let people use apple plug-ins for free. So when I provide you with the "source" file, you would be required to already have Logic yourself... which is bullshit I think. I'm open to be convinced otherwise. But let's keep focussed on the puropse of Open Source Music. This is - right after being listend to - to let the music be modified by other people for their needs.
Music is something relatively exclusive if it comes down to production (playing an instrument, access to serious studio equipment, mastering) - not everybody can do that. Of course more and more people got behind the idea of slicing samples out of completed productions. But (getting to the point right now) I think it would be most appropriate if the music is provided in a way that people can start messing around with it immediately without going through the trouble of the hole production again.

I'm not convinced I made sense. I'll make up an example to illustrate that: Take the song I produced. Right now it's just the song ... ready to get sliced up. In order to let others get creative with my music I'd like to try providing a (e.g.) MilkyTracker file and a folder of samples from the song. It wouldn't be my "source file" but it would work immediately and people would also have audiosamples and stems from the song to get busy.

Is it plausible for you to judge the "open-source-ness" of music by the degree to which you can get creative yourself with it?

I still have no idea how the sound gets into the games... I guess it will be OGG-data. But what happens to the OGG in the game developement?

Regards,

MN


p.s.: can somebody write me a personal message and explain to me how I can write hypertext like qubodup did in his post? please :)
Mute-atioN
 
Posts: 4
Joined: 19 Jul 2012, 18:06
Location: Germ any

Re: Open Source Music and Audio for Open Source Games

Postby mdwh » 14 Aug 2012, 22:06

The reason for avoiding mp3 is due to patent issues: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3#Licens ... ent_issues .

Usually the term "Open Source" applies to software, whilst Free licences (like CC BY) don't say anything about releasing the original "source", such as the data used to create the music, but it's nonetheless interesting to think about, and I agree it seems a good thing to share this data too. (Similarly, it's always nice on OpenGameArt when I see people don't just release a 2D sprite, but also the 3D model it was generate from.)

I don't think it's necessarily a problem if the data is for a commercial program, this seems analogous to writing open source that needs a commercial language or compiler. Although I can see it's easier to port source code if you have the plain text, where as data files for things like music programs may be harder to read.

But what happens to the OGG in the game developement?
Not sure what you mean by this? When I use sounds, I just leave them as files in Wav or OGG format, that are loaded by the game, and played when required by the game.
mdwh
 
Posts: 67
Joined: 13 Aug 2011, 01:53

Re: Open Source Music and Audio for Open Source Games

Postby Arthur » 14 Aug 2012, 22:15

Mute-atioN {l Wrote}:Thanks Arthur and qubodup!

So what I learned from your replies so far is that you need some place to store lossless audio files in order to convert them into OGG. So it seems OGG is the format of choice for games? I'm kind of surprised that you use .mp3 audio and convert that... although 320mp3 might be not as bad.

Well, the storage place is not primarily for actually converting them (though I guess someone could batch-convert it on a server). That can be done just by opening them in e.g. Audacity and export as OGG. It's more a matter of keeping lossless files in case we ever need to re-export for one reason or another (we have had one slightly corrupted file that could cause problems for the game on some systems).
When I talk about mp3 files and exporting as OGG it's not because we want to, but because mostly people just put lossy files on various music sites and tracking them down in order to get a lossless version hasn't been prioritized.
Hey pal, I took an oath for justice! "In happy days or tightest tights..." or something like that.
User avatar
Arthur
 
Posts: 1073
Joined: 06 Dec 2009, 00:49

Re: Open Source Music and Audio for Open Source Games

Postby qubodup » 17 Aug 2012, 23:31

Mute-atioN {l Wrote}:I didn't use only samples here or MIDI files. There was lots of EQing and Compression etc. These effects are critical for the sound of the music and should be considered as much "source" as MIDI or single drumsamples. Since I use Logic I am not allowed to let people use apple plug-ins for free.

So when I provide you with the "source" file, you would be required to already have Logic yourself... which is bullshit I think. I'm open to be convinced otherwise. But let's keep focussed on the puropse of Open Source Music. This is - right after being listend to - to let the music be modified by other people for their needs.

It sounds to me that the project file and a text file saying "you need to install plugin X Y and Z to correctly render/edit this music" would be the "source".
The source would not be "free as in freedom" though, if it requires proprietary software to be edited/rendered to a music file.

We at Joyride Labs are trying to get the open source "version" of Nikki and the Robots into Debian Linux' repository and questions regarding license and "source" are being raised about midi files rendered with FruityLoops and sound files created with bfxr.

Mute-atioN {l Wrote}:I still have no idea how the sound gets into the games... I guess it will be OGG-data. But what happens to the OGG in the game developement?
I am not sure that I understand the question. The .ogg Vorbis files get loaded when the game runs and get just played back in a loop. When the scene or level changes, a different .ogg Vorbis music track gets loaded and played, maybe crossfading is used or layering but I think most games just loop one track at a time.

mdwh {l Wrote}:I don't think it's necessarily a problem if the data is for a commercial program, this seems analogous to writing open source that needs a commercial language or compiler. Although I can see it's easier to port source code if you have the plain text, where as data files for things like music programs may be harder to read.

Since file formats can be patented, it can mean that the source might be lost until somebody (illegally?) hacks the format or uses the proprietary software to convert it (which might be impossible or might result in a loss of data). I think Ryzom had the "problem" that nobody could use their models, because they only provided 3dsmax model files.

EDIT: just a heads up, a retro RPG soundtrack on OGA recently got the addition of its MIDI files and the Noteworthy Composer project files.
User avatar
qubodup
Global Moderator
 
Posts: 1671
Joined: 08 Nov 2009, 22:52
Location: Berlin, Germany

Re: Open Source Music and Audio for Open Source Games

Postby leilei » 18 Aug 2012, 20:49

I know I similarily tried to push for tracker-exclusive formats for OA due to the openness of tracker apps and the source being itself. It didn't work. I still only got submissions that are made with FLstudio :/
User avatar
leilei
 
Posts: 154
Joined: 03 Apr 2012, 02:53

Re: Open Source Music and Audio for Open Source Games

Postby Cacatoes » 31 Aug 2012, 12:58

+ music production sometimes involves "realtime" (not reproducible) steps, so the goal when participating to an opensource game is to release what can be released, anything which is used in the production chain and which can be freed could be. Up to other people then to work out with it and add the other bricks, even if result doesn't sound the same.
It's not a bad idea to give sources, even produced with proprietary software in closed formats. Though that's the reason why it can be nice to progressively switch to opensource production software, even if quality suffers slightly from it, and learn not to be bound to a specific software particularly when it's proprietary. For instance with zynaddsubfx (which is a decent synth running Linux) you can record presets/waveforms, then share the instruments. But if you can't share the presets or the automation, some recorded unmixed track should do it.
And like for any chain you usually want it to be the less destructive possible, so lossless open formats seem like the way to go.
Cacatoes
 
Posts: 21
Joined: 27 Mar 2010, 13:22

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest