The Rogue Bard unveiling
jice
Mingos and I are proud to unveil the first web site dedicated to music
for non commercial roguelike projects.
http://roguebard.eptalys.net/
Feel free to check the songs from the 2008 roguelike soundtrack
contest if you haven't listen to them yet :
http://roguebard.eptalys.net/contest.php?id=1
and don't miss the 3 new enhanced versions : Nomad's Dream enhanced
version, Unique feeling 2 and Azog's march II.
Two new contests are open in the hope to provide more good tunes to
the community :
The Rogue Bard launching contest : http://roguebard.eptalys.net/contest.php?id=2
Jeff's contest : http://roguebard.eptalys.net/contest.php?id=3
Professional, hobbyist and beginner bards are welcome :)
--
jice
antoine....@gmail.com
> Hello, roguelikers !
>
> Mingos and I are proud to unveil the first web site dedicated to music
> for non commercial roguelike projects.http://roguebard.eptalys.net/
>
I've gotta recommend checkign this out
A.
corremn
Yep, goodluck with the site.
I have been inspired to write a sound module for my engine now.
Jeff Lait
> Hello, roguelikers !
>
> Mingos and I are proud to unveil the first web site dedicated to music
>
> Feel free to check the songs from the 2008 roguelike soundtrack
> contest if you haven't listen to them yet :
>
> http://roguebard.eptalys.net/contest.php?id=1
>
> and don't miss the 3 new enhanced versions : Nomad's Dream enhanced
> version, Unique feeling 2 and Azog's march II.
>
> Two new contests are open in the hope to provide more good tunes to
> the community :
> The Rogue Bard launching contest :http://roguebard.eptalys.net/contest.php?id=2
> Jeff's contest :http://roguebard.eptalys.net/contest.php?id=3
>
> Professional, hobbyist and beginner bards are welcome :)
Looks very cool! A very nice set of inspirational music already there
too...
Now for my niggling suggestions. Feel free to ignore...
- The description for the contest I proposed has lots of bad carriage
returns in it making it hard to read.
- How does one contact a Bard if one likes their music? There should
be some way that one can get a hold of them, either to thank, request
services directly, or alert them to their music being used by a game?
I think this should be acquireable without registering... (Likely
captcha'd though?)
- How can I get a list of all songs, rather than just by tag?
Likewise, if I wanted to download the entire set rather than burning
bandwidth re-listening to different songs, is there a way to do that?
- If I download an mp3, does it have some id3 tags/meta information to
let me recover the identity of the artist & the roguebard site? I'm
concerned about when one downloads some music, then a year later uses
it, and suddenly finds one can't track down the source anymore. Maybe
this just needs to be something that the Bards can standardize on
there?
- Some additional information that is of interest to us pragmatic
programmers.
* Length of the song
* Loopability (in the artists opinion, of course)
* Something that hints whether two songs could be mixed. You don't
want an angry-fruit-salad effect in the music where a programmer
throws clashing musical styles/beats together. There are likely some
simple rules of thumb you could propose for how to mix songs.
Very good site. I also realize I better start researching how to get
sound working.
I think the site *can* include info on how to make songs, for the same
reason that rec.games.roguelike.development can include questions
about C++ vs Python. Obviously these should be always directed to the
task at hand, however.
I think it would also be worthwhile to provide some audiological
pointers. For example, for film you have stuff like:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-point_lighting
What rules are there for musical mixing? Is there info like beat and
tempo that should be exposed in a naive programmer friendly way so
they can select appropriately? Ie, should I only mix 4/4 songs with
other 4/4 songs? Does key matter? Of course, skilled people with an
ear can ignore these rules, but the rules are very useful for
unskilled people without ears to avoid disasters :>
--
Jeff Lait
(POWDER: http://www.zincland.com/powder)
dominik...@gmail.com
> - How does one contact a Bard if one likes their music? There should
> be some way that one can get a hold of them, either to thank, request
> services directly, or alert them to their music being used by a game?
> I think this should be acquireable without registering... (Likely
> captcha'd though?)
Personally, I'd rather not provide an email publicly and I'm sure more
bards feel the same. You know, spam and all that stuff. We might ask
the bards to add contact info in the "comment" tag of their songs, but
we can't oblige anyone and we won't check every song that is sent to
Rogue Bard. Maybe if you leave a message on the forum? Another way
might be creating an email form.
> - How can I get a list of all songs, rather than just by tag?
> Likewise, if I wanted to download the entire set rather than burning
> bandwidth re-listening to different songs, is there a way to do that?
Currently, there isn't. I believe that the song list might get too
long at some point, so browsing by tags seems a more convenient
method. You can also view each bard's songs. There is no way to see
all songs on the server on one screen. I'll suggest an enhancement or
two to Jice this night which may partially solve your problem.
> - If I download an mp3, does it have some id3 tags/meta information to
> let me recover the identity of the artist & the roguebard site? I'm
> concerned about when one downloads some music, then a year later uses
> it, and suddenly finds one can't track down the source anymore. Maybe
> this just needs to be something that the Bards can standardize on
> there?
The bards aren't obliged to add ID3 information. Some do, others
don't. Like I said earlier, we're not going to check for that each
time a song is submitted.
> - Some additional information that is of interest to us pragmatic
> programmers.
> * Length of the song
> * Loopability (in the artists opinion, of course)
> * Something that hints whether two songs could be mixed. You don't
> want an angry-fruit-salad effect in the music where a programmer
> throws clashing musical styles/beats together. There are likely some
> simple rules of thumb you could propose for how to mix songs.
Whereas the first two might be doable (if the bards are kind enough to
provide the information about loopability... currently, only La Belle
Alliance has songs created with looping in mind), the third doesn't
seem clear to me. Do you mean using two different songs in one game?
If so, you can use the tags as a guide, but apart from that, you'll
have to listen to the tracks and decide for yourself.
> Very good site. I also realize I better start researching how to get
> sound working.
Try FMOD.
> I think the site *can* include info on how to make songs, for the same
> reason that rec.games.roguelike.development can include questions
> about C++ vs Python. Obviously these should be always directed to the
> task at hand, however.
This has already been suggested on the RB forum. While Jice was a
little reluctant to add articles to RB, I'm quite enthusiastic about
it. The trick is, someone has to write them. I was thinking about
articles about software/hardware used (sequencers, MIDI controllers),
theory (some "howtos" maybe), tips and tricks, that sort of thing.
We can also provide links to pages of interest, as soon as we find
some.
> I think it would also be worthwhile to provide some audiological
> pointers. For example, for film you have stuff like:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-point_lighting
Absolutely.
> What rules are there for musical mixing? Is there info like beat and
> tempo that should be exposed in a naive programmer friendly way so
> they can select appropriately? Ie, should I only mix 4/4 songs with
> other 4/4 songs? Does key matter? Of course, skilled people with an
> ear can ignore these rules, but the rules are very useful for
> unskilled people without ears to avoid disasters :>
I think such information is basic for composers and useless for
listeners. Key matters not, 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, 5/4, 6/8, 7/4, 12/8 are the
most common beats and it matters not how you mix them, they all sound
well. For instance, Metallica's "Master of puppet" (song, not album)
changes from 4/4 to 7/4 and back - most listeners don't even notice.
You haven't mentioned rhythm, which might prove useful to some. Tempo
is irrelevant, IMHO. As for guidelines for mixing and mastering, I
might try to write an article about it...
Thaks for your comments, Jeff.
Mingos
dominik...@gmail.com
> > tempo that should be exposed in a naive programmer friendly way so
> > they can select appropriately? Ie, should I only mix 4/4 songs with
> > other 4/4 songs? Does key matter? Of course, skilled people with an
> > ear can ignore these rules, but the rules are very useful for
> > unskilled people without ears to avoid disasters :>
It seems that I was too tired to understand fully what you were asking
about. That's what happens when you type and pretend to be working
(the boss was hanging around).
Anyways, I think that mixing songs will just require some ear. If you
don't feel capable of choosing two songs that will fit the game's
setting and at the same time sound fine when one's played after the
other, you'll just have to ask someone's opinion. I think it's quite
pointless to display all this information, since practically no one
will ever use it, imho. Like I said, beat doesn't matter, tempo MIGHT
matter, but you don't have to measure the BPM, even if you're
unfamiliar with music, you can tell whether one son'g much "faster"
than the other or not, and key change will probably go unnoticed (not
that it matters anyway).
Mingos
corremn
Definately list all songs on a list. I would prefer to browse all
songs and have sorting. Sort by rating, mood, length etc.
An example I was just browsing is the The Indie Game Database.
http://tigdb.com/
jice
> On Jan 13, 7:42 pm, jice <jice.nos...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Mingos and I are proud to unveil the first web site dedicated to music
> > for non commercial roguelike projects.http://roguebard.eptalys.net/
>
>
Thanks for your feedback. I'll add more way to browse the songs ASAP.
I'm not sure wether contacting bards is a good thing or not. Maybe a
comment system on each song might do the work. What do you think ? I
don't want the site to encourage creation of music with exclusivity
clauses. We're talking about free games here, so if you get a good
music for your game through Rogue Bard, it should be given back to the
community.
As Mingos said, mp3 tagging would be a pain to implement/maintain. If
we do it, we have to do it automatically. We cant't ask bards to do it
by hand. I'll check if I find a php library that can do that but I'm
not very optimistic.
What exactly do you have in mind with music mixing ? You want to play
two songs at the same time ?? Or is it just chaining two songs with a
fading effect ? Again, bpm information must be generated
automatically, so it seems even harder than mp3 tags...
--
jice