[Martinus]

Originally posted by penguin
Window Media is not an option, if I have any say.  I have a distrust of Microsoft's so-called "open" protocols and standards that approaches paranoia

Agreed, M$ have an annoying way of reinventing or 'upgrading' existing formats to the point where they are unusable on anything other than a windows shell.

[ZylonBane]

Guys, check Zarax's profile. Microsoft drone alert!

[Bobboau]

well so long as you don't break the WAV suport

[Nuke]

about the dynamic music, would it not be possible, too keep the dynamic stuff, except play from mp3 files instead of wav. you should also have the option to load up a playlist or mp3 file is you get tired of dynamic and just wanna listen to some rage involking gwar. i think using any form of audio compression would allow mods to have more voice acting, more music, more sound effects and so on, all with a much maller download.

and while we are on audio, someone jack up the sound table limits.

[EdrickV]

If you just want mp3's for size/quality reasons, remember that wave files can be compressed with at least one MP3 codec. Might be a little easier to incorperate then actual mp3 file support.

[penguin]

Originally posted by Nuke
about the dynamic music, would it not be possible, too keep the dynamic stuff, except play from mp3 files instead of wav.

It should be... the audio player (which uses the WAV/MP3/whatever codec) is separate from the bits that determine which sound to play.

[ZylonBane]

Originally posted by EdrickV
If you just want mp3's for size/quality reasons, remember that wave files can be compressed with at least one MP3 codec. Might be a little easier to incorperate then actual mp3 file support.

Erm... MP3-in-WAV support is through an installed MediaPlayer codec. Freespace obviously does not rely on MediaPlayer for sound playback.

[Thorn]

OGG
A 92 kbp/s OGG file is the equivalent to a 192 kbp/s mp3 in terms of quality, meaning better quality with less space...

[Sesquipedalian]

(Not talking about mp3 integration, just about changing from the dynamic music structure to a straight-forward playlist structure):

I think we shuld just leave the dynamic music structure as it is .  If ever I want to listen to different music while playing FS2, I just turn off the in-game music in the options menu, and pop a cd into the drive.  Writing up a bunch of code to allow output style switches and all the rest seems like an unnecessary amount of work to accomplish very, very little.  Besides, FS2's dynamic music is one of the coolest bits about the environmentals of the game.

[penguin]

Originally posted by Sesquipedalian
I think we shuld just leave the dynamic music structure as it is .  If ever I want to listen to different music while playing FS2, I just turn off the in-game music in the options menu, and pop a cd into the drive.  Writing up a bunch of code to allow output style switches and all the rest seems like an unnecessary amount of work to accomplish very, very little.  Besides, FS2's dynamic music is one of the coolest bits about the environmentals of the game.

Yes yes yes; well said.
This is something that ain't broke, and don't need fixin'

[Inquisitor]

Anyone looked at either SDK?

Random Tiger is making progress on the (admittedly windows only) movie player, maybe his code could be leveraged for a windows only MP3 player?

I still think fmod is the cleanest implementation for MP3.

Ogg of course is still an option.

[penguin]

Interesting developement re: MP3 licensing:

Slashdot story: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/08/27/1626241&mode=thread&tid=155

mp3licensing.com "Royalty Rates": http://www.mp3licensing.com/royalty/software.html

[phreak]

ugh!.. the only this about ogg is thats its not widely used (and if it is then i don't know about it)

its supported in winamp and goldwave at least

http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/

[Inquisitor]

Actually, I will guess that fmod pays the license, then sells the software to the developers. I will further guess that this type of licensing will only apply to commercial projects.

Worth looking into though.

[Stealth]

use MP3... you can still mix them in-game and everything

[Stealth]

this has got to be my first double-post in the history of HLP

[WMCoolmon]

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/08/27/1626241&mode=flat&tid=155

[Stealth]

who owns the trademark or copyright or whatever to "MP3"?  microsoft?

well we can use one of the 'less known' file types... i mean, just look under winamp's "files supported" list.... the newer versions have dozens and dozens of 'supported file types'... i mean obviously types like MIDIs wouldn't work, but nonetheless,

Inquisitor, do you want me to do some research regarding file types (compression types, decoders, price, etc.)

?

[EdrickV]

Originally posted by Stealth
well we can use one of the 'less known' file types... i mean, just look under winamp's "files supported" list.... the newer versions have dozens and dozens of 'supported file types'... i mean obviously types like MIDIs wouldn't work, but nonetheless,
 

Actually, there used to be some support for using MIDI files in the source code.

Some quotes from EventMusic.h:

 * 11    2/25/97 11:10a Lawrance
 * using text of the mission name to match up which midi file gets played
 * for which mission

 * 5     2/05/97 3:12p Lawrance
 * supporting changes in MIDI system that remove any high-level
 * dependencies

It looks like the actual code to play the MIDI files was later removed though because the MIDI related .cpp files are basically empty.

[DTP]

Oh yeah MIDI the old days, I recall I had to play Tie-fighter in dos to get General midi working. Windows was to stupid then to figure out my then futuristic sound card.

It could simultaneously play 10-15 wave files,

Now guess what happened when I accidentally marked all wav files used by xwing vs. tie fighter, and clicked open. It just played 15 files at a time, until it had run through all wave files in the directory. This took quite some time.

It sounded liked the Endor battle at warp speed.

Now if that wasn’t a laugh, then well, a Jehovah witness knocked on my door in order to "convert" me to there believe.

I opened the door for him while all these sounds came out the loud speaker. Sounds like “BOOM” death screams, laser fire, fighters screaming by, Turbo lasers etc. He said hello, listened, looked weird, and then walked away.

I couldn’t concentrate for the rest of the day because every time I thought of that event, I could think of nothing else. For some odd reason, it was just so dam hilarious.