[split] I don't like the new music.

Higher Game · Post by **Higher Game** » September 1st, 2006, 1:49 am

I want to be able to select my own music during the game, including the old ones, since I don't like the new music.

scott · Post by **scott** » September 1st, 2006, 2:38 am

I split your post, mainly because there's zero chance of that happening, which makes the feedback not constructive.

Also, you are able to select the old music, but as with usually anything else with the game, you have to do it yourself. Copy the old music over from 1.0.2 and modify DEFAULT_MUSIC_PLAYLIST in utils.cfg.

I'm sorry to differ with you, but we like the new music, and it was a conscious decision to not leave the old music alongside it. So, you may not like the answer, but having the freedom under the GPL to change the game any way you want to suit your taste is better than nothing. After all, if you're not motivated enough to do it yourself, why would someone else be motivated to do it for you?

Edit: I want to point out you can do this with any piece of music in .wav or .ogg format. We can't do .mp3 because you have to pay royalties to include an MP3 codec in your software.

RoddyVR · Post by **RoddyVR** » September 1st, 2006, 2:54 pm

not sure this post is neccessary considering scott's reply, but i just had to post it.

i LOVE the new music. I have yet to encounter a piece in there that i dont like. and most of the time it seems to fit with what i'm doing in the game (though that's probably random, but still)

Quitch · Post by **Quitch** » September 1st, 2006, 9:04 pm

Dear Lord the new music is about a hundred times better.

Hurrah for the new music!

Higher Game · Post by **Higher Game** » September 1st, 2006, 9:54 pm

scott wrote: Edit: I want to point out you can do this with any piece of music in .wav or .ogg format. We can't do .mp3 because you have to pay royalties to include an MP3 codec in your software.

Why? The mp3 is such a useful, universal standard. Almost all of my music from CDs is in mp3 form on my computer, and I never had to pay to use them. Is it because Wesnoth has to deal with international laws, like from Europe? It just isn't fair that you have to use either Microsoft wmv or whatever Ogg Vorbis is instead of the tried and true approach.

That said, why was removal of the old music a conscious decision instead of giving us the freedom to choose what we want? You might like it, but not everyone does.

tsr · Post by **tsr** » September 1st, 2006, 10:08 pm

Higher Game wrote:
scott wrote: Edit: I want to point out you can do this with any piece of music in .wav or .ogg format. We can't do .mp3 because you have to pay royalties to include an MP3 codec in your software.
Why?

Because apparently some organisation (read company) decided that it is important to 'protect' 'intellectual property' and the developers of this game have chosen to not confront that philosophy by means of copyright infrigement but by producing a great piece of 'intellectual property' and releasing it under a unfortunatly neccesary free software license that's named the GPL

/tsr

Quitch · Post by **Quitch** » September 1st, 2006, 10:11 pm

If you use the MP3 format you have to pay royalties. Saying you use it so why shouldn't they is rather like saying you've videoed movies in the cinema, so why don't they too. They don't because they'd be breaking the law.

Ogg Vorbis has the advantages of being license free, while producing a higher quality sound (according to every blind listening test I've seen) at a smaller file size.

The old music is jarring against the new, for the most part, and having both simply wouldn't work. Discarding the old was, IMO a wise move.

bioman · Post by **bioman** » September 1st, 2006, 10:28 pm

You could get the thing to use mp3 files, but not as default. Some programs (e.g. Mediamonkey) tell you to install the free lame (whatever) codex - which, due to copyright issues, can't be included with the download unless, of course, you give the people behind the mp3 format money.

And anyway, whats the point in doing this when you can just convert your files to .ogg/.wav format? Mediacoder (a free and open source software) will let you do this. Huzzarh.

Woodwizzle · Post by **Woodwizzle** » September 1st, 2006, 10:56 pm

bioman wrote: And anyway, whats the point in doing this when you can just convert your files to .ogg/.wav format? Mediacoder (a free and open source software) will let you do this. Huzzarh.

Converting from one lossy codec to another causese a large amount of qualityto be lost in the translation. Much more than if you had copied the original CD to ogg directly to begin with. However another solution is to just turn the music off and open up winamp or something. Computers can multitask! =)

scott · Post by **scott** » September 2nd, 2006, 12:18 am

Higher Game wrote:
scott wrote: Edit: I want to point out you can do this with any piece of music in .wav or .ogg format. We can't do .mp3 because you have to pay royalties to include an MP3 codec in your software.
Why? The mp3 is such a useful, universal standard. Almost all of my music from CDs is in mp3 form on my computer, and I never had to pay to use them. Is it because Wesnoth has to deal with international laws, like from Europe? It just isn't fair that you have to use either Microsoft wmv or whatever Ogg Vorbis is instead of the tried and true approach.

That said, why was removal of the old music a conscious decision instead of giving us the freedom to choose what we want? You might like it, but not everyone does.

1. I agree, .mp3 is universal. All the better for the patent holders.

2. There is no cost for YOU to use the MP3 format, but any program that has an MP3 codec must pay royalties. It is identical to the GIF image format (until the patent expired). Photoshop, etc. were required to pay the LZW algorithm patent holders to include GIF capabilities in their software. A programming language I use, IDL, didn't let you write GIF files, but as soon as the patent expired (7/7/04 I think), they released a patch that put GIF writing back in. They pay to license the algorithm, not the file format. We're not going to pay a cent!

2a. As long as the system we set up works end-to-end, we have no reason to care about the fact that we can't support other file formats. We have an OGG codec and a bunch of OGG music. It works great. Anything else is really unsupported, and we have no reason to go out of our way to support something we're not going to use. We don't have a .mov codec in the game either, and if some guy comes along wondering why we can't play his movies in [story] tags, we'll have the same answer. The game is designed to work a certain way. Something can only be designed to do what it's designed to do. I hope that meaningless tautology shows how silly the request is.

3. We probably couldn't use WMV for the same reason. WAV we can use. Ogg Vorbis works just like MP3 except there are no royalties to pay. We want it to become the standard, so we're going to practice what we preach and use it.

4. I liked a lot of the old music. Really. I am generally very resistant to change and was used to the atmospheric effects you get from each piece. As a user-made campaign designer, I had spent a lot of time getting to know each piece of music and what it brings to scenarios. However, the music developers came up with a vision for how music in the game was going to be. Their vision made it different but better. Even I think it's better. Sure, I lament the loss of wesnoth-7.ogg sometimes, with its smooth, fast-moving ambience, but I have gotten over it. The 5 pieces removed really were lower quality, and it clashed with the vision. Imagine putting Honda civic doors on your BMW body. I'm glad over half of the old music remains, and I am confident in the abilities of our music devs to choose when and if wesnoth-1.ogg and wesnoth-2.ogg (the best of the old pieces) will go. The only thing I wish is that we had more of the new style pieces to use. They are professional quality, and we're lucky to have them.

5. You may not like my final point, but it's 100% true and it always has been. I don't mean it to be an insult, so please picture me saying this dispassionately. It is codified in The Wesnoth Philosophy (TWP). The developers are making the game for our own enjoyment, not yours. We make decisions ONLY to please ourselves. If everyone else hates it and stops playing Wesnoth, it is ok. We're willing to live with it. If others like the game, then spectacular. The approach allows individual creativity to trump committee decisions, we like this approach, and we're going to keep doing it that way. We love the user community (most of the devs came from it), but not enough to let them design the game for us. Become a dev and you can design the game too.

kshinji · Post by **kshinji** » September 2nd, 2006, 12:51 am

I guess its easier to whine than to code

Now, Options Are Good, and i dont have any idea why did you remove anything from the game...

scott · Post by **scott** » September 2nd, 2006, 1:16 am

kshinji wrote:I guess its easier to whine than to code

Now, Options Are Good, and i dont have any idea why did you remove anything from the game...

Options are bad.

kshinji · Post by **kshinji** » September 2nd, 2006, 2:06 am

Options are bad.

You are arrested, and suspected commiting crime against ultimate modability. You've got the right to stay silent.

Jodwin · Post by **Jodwin** » September 2nd, 2006, 4:08 am

kshinji wrote:Now, Options Are Good, and i dont have any idea why did you remove anything from the game...

If you had a dial-up, you'd appreciate the decision of removing the old music pieces more.

Post by **irrevenant** » September 2nd, 2006, 4:36 am

This was discussed on the Ideas Forum not very long ago.

I believe the end result was basically that the Devs don't see it as a worthwhile investment of their time to integrate a music-player GUI into Wesnoth. Personally, I think it would be nifty, but I can understand there not being room for it on the priority list.

However I don't recall anyone saying "it shouldn't be done" so much as "we don't want to do it", so if you wanted to code up a patch it might be accepted. (Any Devs want to confirm or deny this?).

Edit:
re: "Options are Bad", I suspect this expression is now being used far more broadly than was initially intended. As I understand it, this expression originated in response to a particular situation in the Ideas forum; if a posted idea wasn't popular, the poster would fall back on "you could just put it in as an option so those people who don't like it don't have to use it.". Given maintenance overhead, etc. the (IMO reasonable) position was developed that, if an idea wasn't good enough to go in whole-hog, it wasn't good enough to go in as an option.

However, I don't believe OaB was ever intended to encourage naysaying against ideas that intrinsically incorporate options. eg. noone would suggest each unit should have only one attack because OaB or that we should be limited to a single save game (though that might solve some problems).

IMO, if creating a music GUI was something that was going to happen, it would be the sort of Option kshinji is referring to; a feature that enables flexibility, not a feature with an on/off toggle.