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Newcomers DBPro Corner / Music - mp3 license, sound wav - too big

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Ralvsen
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Posted: 4th Feb 2010 19:19 Edited at: 4th Feb 2010 19:46
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If you want to sell your game you will get problems when you use mp3 files since mp3 is not royalty free MP3 Licensing_and_patent_issues

dbLoadMusic()
"The music file must be of the MIDI or MP3 format."
is a problem then, because MIDI is no alternative

dbLoadSound()
"This command will load a WAV sound file into the specified Sound Number."
for a sound .wav is not a very suitable format due to size. Is there an alternative like .ogg? (not .mp3)
...and if id go with dbLoadSound() for ambient music.wav is it a performance killer?

the only way around is imho using an external DLL ?
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Neuro Fuzzy
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Posted: 5th Feb 2010 02:03
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the music in mp3 files is not royalty free. It doesn't matter if you have a .ogg, .mp3, .FLAC, or whatever file you want to use. Copyrighted music is copyrighted, period. you can't get around this licensing issue by simply switching formats.

That said, if you absolutely love .ogg or .flac files, you would have to use a plugin/DLL to load and play them.


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Virtual Nomad
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Posted: 5th Feb 2010 04:48 Edited at: 5th Feb 2010 04:53
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i have no personal experience with .ogg in dbpro but i believe torrey's enhanced audio plug-in has been used in a number of projects thus far and doing well. also, i know Dego uses .ogg under the enhancements expansion pack.

now, it looks like you're using dark gdk and i have no idea if either of those dll's will work for you but an alternative is to convert your wav files to ogg and "ship" those with your game/app along with a simple ogg to wav conversion app. that you can call (preferably via command line, and it's use would have to be "royalty free" as well. here's one, but i haven't tried it myself) and have it convert those ogg files back to wav for play under dark gdk. basically, this will pack your large wav's down to a reasonable size and would be a big convenience to the end-user. with that, i haven't heard of large .wav files being a "performance killer", but i don't profess to know much of anything, so...

hope this helps!

Virtual Nomad @ California, USA
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=PRoF=
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Location: Milton Keynes, UK
Posted: 5th Feb 2010 08:56
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This is a good question.

I'd assume DBP uses a royalty free mp3 decoder, but I really could do with someone confirming this.

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=PRoF=
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Posted: 5th Feb 2010 11:54 Edited at: 5th Feb 2010 12:07
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Firstly sorry for the double post.

I did some research when I got back on my PC, and found the following.

A search for MP3 on the forums would have revealed this thread...
http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=69532&b=20

Which is also asking the same question as you. It appears Ogg Vorbis is the prefered game world music format as it is DEFINATELY royalty free.

Torrey's plugin will play .ogg music, and can be downloaded here
http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=74019&b=5

Audacity will convert mp3 tracks to ogg vorbis format.
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Although I notice that your using DarkGDK rather than DBPro? I'm unsure if Torrey's plugin will work for you, but maybe someone on the GDK forums will have a better answer for you.

I'm switching to Ogg Vorbis for my projects right now

>Edit<
Sorry, I didn't notice Virtual Nomad's answer was almost identical to mine :$

>Edit 2<
You might want to try looking here for a c++ compatible Ogg Vorbis playing library.
http://www.libsdl.org/index.php

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KISTech
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Posted: 5th Feb 2010 17:02
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I did check into it a while back. Using an MP3 in any commercial product requires licensing the use of it, and paying royalties. OGG is a better format anyway.

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Neuro Fuzzy
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Posted: 6th Feb 2010 00:52
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Quote: "Using an MP3 in any commercial product requires licensing the use of it, and paying royalties."


Ohhhhh, that makes much more sense... disregard my previous post if that is the case >.>


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Lonnehart
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Posted: 7th Feb 2010 12:09
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Lemme get this straight. So you have to pay to use the MP3 format in your games? Or do you just pay royalties for the music (unless you make your own)?

In the beginning there was nothing. There'll be nothing in the end...
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=PRoF=
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Posted: 7th Feb 2010 12:57 Edited at: 7th Feb 2010 12:59
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I believe its something along the lines of.. If you ship more than 5000 units of your product, then you must pay $2500 for each mp3 file included with your product. For just using their encoding format.

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Green7
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Posted: 7th Feb 2010 16:51
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Quote: "I believe its something along the lines of.. If you ship more than 5000 units of your product, then you must pay $2500 for each mp3 file included with your product. For just using their encoding format."


exactly...

http://mp3licensing.com/royalty/games.html

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Lonnehart
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Posted: 7th Feb 2010 21:59
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Besides .ogg, is ACC also free to use? And what are some other formats out there that are license free... until someone decides to make claims on them, that is?

In the beginning there was nothing. There'll be nothing in the end...
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Virtual Nomad
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Posted: 9th Feb 2010 09:11
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don't quote me but i believe WMA is also "free" (a brief search later and i couldn't find anything to the contrary). tho undocumented, DBPro plays WMA's fine.

Virtual Nomad @ California, USA
AMD Phenom™ X4 9750 Quad-Core @ 2.4 GHz . 8 GB PC2-6400 RAM
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Mew151
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Posted: 23rd Feb 2010 01:27
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You have to pay to use MP3 files?

*Switches to ogg*

I assume that giving a program the ability to run a MP3 files supplied by the user is no problem though?

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