FreeGameDev

With the flurry of new & great music here I think it's time to re-open an old discussion.

What if we made a page in the add-ons for music. People can then choose which music they have. Theoretically, you can download STK without music and download those later from add-ons. And if you are upgrading, you don't have to re-download the music as well.

There's just one problem: Downloading music is one, but having it run in STK is another. It requires people to hack XML files, which is undesirable. Hence I have a suggestion:
Isn't it better to have the music define which tracks it's appropriate for, not the (i.e. track names in the .music file i.s.o. music names in the .track file). And yes that means that STK has to scan all the .music files before startup, but I still think this is worth it.

asciimonster {l Wrote}:Isn't it better to have the music define which tracks it's appropriate for, not the (i.e. track names in the .music file i.s.o. music names in the .track file). And yes that means that STK has to scan all the .music files before startup, but I still think this is worth it.

Seems like a good solution.

Well yes it sure makes sense, but with only 2 developers trying to get 0.8 out eventually after months without a release, I'm not sure this is something we can realistically expect to do soon I suggest though that you open a ticket about it, since we often suggest new developers look at the tickets to get ideas of tasks they can work on

asciimonster {l Wrote}:What if we made a page in the add-ons for music. People can then choose which music they have. Theoretically, you can download STK without music and download those later from add-ons. And if you are upgrading, you don't have to re-download the music as well.

We have to include at least some music - people might otherwise just start and discard STK, without giving it a chance.

There's just one problem: Downloading music is one, but having it run in STK is another. It requires people to hack XML files, which is undesirable. Hence I have a suggestion:
Isn't it better to have the music define which tracks it's appropriate for, not the (i.e. track names in the .music file i.s.o. music names in the .track file). And yes that means that STK has to scan all the .music files before startup, but I still think this is worth it.

That feature is already implemented. Having music addons was one thing I already had in mind when implementing the music system. Each .music file can specify a list of tracks the music should be used for.

So the only thing missing is actually a GUI for that, installer, and manager (in STK but also on the web page). Also you wouldn't want to download music if you don;t have any of the tracks it is used for installed. So there is a bit of work to do, but nothing really complicated. Anyone motivated?

But as auria has written: with only 2 developers, and not that much additional music ... but patches welcome

Cheers,
Joerg

I've been doing some planning involving music addons for a couple of months, but I haven't yet gotten around to implementing any of it. Right now, I'm thinking that next time the track compatibility version is changed, package music separately from the track itself on the website. This will prevent breaking old versions, and it means that I don't need to store multiple copies of the same thing online for those versions of the game which can't handle shared music addons.