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It's relative. For example: when your binaries and gfx takes 2MB, it's irrational to put 8MB of the music (except acase, that is a musical genre game). I think it shouldn't be more than half size of archive to download. It's my personal feeling.
How much music goes into your games?
To keep things simple for my first production, I'm sticking to mp3 as my music format. This means that I pay for about every minute of music at 128Kbps with around 1mb of disk space. Which means my game size is going to billow pretty fast. Given this, I'd like to get a feel for how much music goes into your games, in terms of aggregate length? A few minutes of music (working off the 10Mb standard demo size) seems pretty low. Of course, I realize that many people use more compact formats or tracker music.
It's relative. For example: when your binaries and gfx takes 2MB, it's irrational to put 8MB of the music (except acase, that is a musical genre game). I think it shouldn't be more than half size of archive to download. It's my personal feeling.
music ¿>>> grogon.com <<<? sound effects
Do you realise that there are certain licencing issues that come with MP3 format? Look at OGG format instead - same quality, better compression, no licencing necessary.Originally Posted by Glen Pawley
Anything with below 5,000 downloads, you don't need an MP3 licence (note this is DOWNLOADS, not SALES). If you get more than 5,000 downloads which use MP3 format, then you must pay a licence fee of $2,500 USD per title.
Thank you, I wasn't aware of that. Well that forces my hand =/.
This is surely incorrect. Microsoft have paid the license fee for you, if you're using their code to play back the MP3s. You only need to pay a license if you actually ship your own decoder.
Cas :)
One of our game has 15 musick tracks - I can't say that helps a lot :)
Well the licensing FAQ says : "Use of our patents is not related to a specific implementation of encoders and decoders, which means that a license under our patents is needed."
So it looks like GFK is spot on to me.
And if you check out the Bass and FMod sites, they also tell you that you need a $2500 MP3 license if you distribute 5,000 copies.
In my game Charlie II, I still use MIDI for the music. The game is only 1.5 MB and has over 35 minutes of music. In MIDI that is only 3% of the size, but in .ogg that would be HUGE!
In Olaf & Elmar, I do use .ogg for the music and that is about 60% of the 8.8 MB download size.
Mike Wiering
Wiering Software - http://www.wieringsoftware.nl/
If I distribute 6000 copies of a Webstarted application I don't need to pay a license, because Java has MP3 support built-in and Sun paid for it. So you're going to need to elaborate here. If my software does not decode MP3s, why must I pay a license fee? Simple: I don't have to.
Cas :)
for my most recent project (Protogem) there were 4 looping songs.
-Each song is about 3 1/2 to 4 minutes.
-At 96kbps OGG (stereo) each song was approx 2.5 MB for a total of 10MB
-The full install of Protegem is 18MB
I believe the webbed version only streams with 2 songs...not sure I've only heard 2 of the 4 songs ever playing there.
Tony
Oh, this is one of those posts where we tell people what they want to hear regardless of whether it's true or not? Ok, you don't have to pay a license fee.
Check out the FAQ and documentation at http://www.mp3licensing.com/help/index.html. Seems to associate the license with both an encoder/decoder AND distributing mp3s.
Do I need a license to use mp3, mp3PRO or mp3surround in games?
Yes. Games using mp3/mp3PRO encoded content are licensed on a per-title basis.I have my own/third party mp3 software. Do I need a license?
Yes. Use of our patents is not related to a specific implementation of encoders and decoders, which means that a license under our patents is needed.
AFAIK, every good Compiler & Linker removes unused functions and modules if they hadnt been used. Therefore, you really dont distribute any mp3 decoding code :)
Gil Zussman
From NPC To PC : Gil’s Guide to life
Let us transcend the philosophy of "right" and "wrong" as it applies to law. Now the question becomes - "if I get 6000 downloads and haven't paid, will I get into trouble?"
To which the answer is "probably not". The expense of tracking you down and suing you for such a minor amount is not worth it. A mere 6000 downloads marks you as a small player and you therefore are highly unlikely to be able to pay $2500 plus court fees if the big bad company was going to sue you.
If you have 6 million downloads... that might attract some attention.
Basically these things are badly worded (as clear from the confusion on this thread!) purely to allow some manouvering space for lawyers. But then you all know that.
(Edit) - I forgot to mention. All the above is only true if you *do* need to pay. And from the above threads I get the impression that only the lawyers can be sure.
A bit off:
Why do anybody still use MP3 when OGG is there? (I use OGG)
Is there any difference in the form in which the end user "hears" the
encoded music? (except the file extension.... ;) )
The thread is interesting though.
My gallery: www.gamesmithy.com
Contact: pszgabor@gamesmithy.com
Current project: Jungle - Centurios board game
yeah. With low bitrates ogg just sounds better...
music ¿>>> grogon.com <<<? sound effects
I use .ogg here also. I like to be able to compose music naturally, and mixing down to an ogg file is the sweet spot for me. I watch file sizes but, for me, music can add so much to a game that sometimes it's worth the extra size. If your game needs the music to complete the "vision" then do it. Add as much music as your project needs but no more. :)
Remember, you don't have to go 128 Kbps, or even 96 Kbps.
Music in games is generally played at a relatively low volume, usually with other sound FX playing on top of it.
In my experiments, I could go to 32 Kbps, OGG, mono (not stereo), and the results were decent. Obviously, there was a difference between that and 128, but in my view, it was worth having 4 times as much music, at the lower quality level.
Do you guys play .OGG "directly" or do you convert it to .WAV on install or first run? Any performance issues on older PCs?
Thanks!
Samples are converted on load and music is streamed (if its short loops you could aswell decode the whole thing once). So far I didnt bother with caching em, but some people do that for shortening the loading time.
The streaming penalty for one low bitrate ogg is like 5% cpu usage on 500mhz machines. With high bitrates there is obviously more to do and it can easily take up to 20%.
I may be showing up a bit late to the party on this thread but it really seems like this link:
http://www.mp3licensing.com/royalty/games.html
...is saying that even if Sun or Microsoft or company X gives you a library to playback mp3s, in your games you have to pay $2,500 per title if more than 5,000 are distributed.
I could be reading this entirely wrong BUT thats what it seems to say; While 2.5K is not a HUGE amount of money; I will really have to look into .Ogg.
For what its worth, I think there is a balance here that only the teaser's players can tell you; We have been struggling with this exact issue with our first PC release
If you have too little music or music that loops too often you may need to add more. How much "more" depends on the game and what the player is doing. This said, I would say right now we are going for about 2-4 MB or music for the teaser.
How much music goes into your games?
For what its worth, I think there is a balance here that only the teaser's players can tell you; We have been struggling with this exact issue with our first PC release
If you have too little music or music that loops too often you may need to add more. How much "more" depends on the game and what the player is doing. This said, I would say right now we are going for about 2-4 MB or music for the teaser.
Actually, I'd have to say that $2500 is an insane amount for a shoestring startup indie gamer to pay for music.
MP3 licensing
You can use the MP3 decoder on Windows without paying the license fee. If you have any questions, you can contact the patent holder, as I did:
To answer each of your questions:
1) For a game, I don't have to buy a license unless 5000 copies are *distributed*. My game is shareware. If I distribute 50,000 copies, but only sell 1000 copies, do I still need a license? I have no way of tracking where the free demo copies go.
A game license is required in any case, however you don’t have to pay until you distribute 5,000 copies of a particular title, whether for free or revenue generating.
2) I'm not distributing any MP3 content. The game allows users to play MP3s using the licensed MP3 player included in Windows. Do I need to buy a license?
The Windows Media Player is a licensed mp3 application, and the mp3 components are "open" to 3rd party applications. Thus, if you do not include any mp3 code in your application, and instead, simply "called" the WMP mp3 components, then you would not need a direct license. We can not guarantee that these components will remain "open", but we have no reason to believe they won't.
I hope I’ve been able to answer your questions, but if questions remain, please feel free to contact me and we can go from there.
Thanks and best regards,
Grant Reeder
mp3 licensing
Thomson
16935 W. Bernardo Drive, Suite 100
San Diego, California 92127
grant.reeder@thomson.net
www.mp3licensing.com
[EDIT: The above contact info is for the person at mp3 licensing who answered this e-mail. ]
Last edited by gosub; 05-16-2006 at 06:05 AM.
Zenix3D, because sometimes you just wanna blow stuff up!
FYI, I'm using Bass to play my music at 48Kbs (quality setting -1). Works like a charm. Sounds great.
http://un4seen.com/
You can use Winamp to convert MP3s to WAV, then use Oggdrop to convert the WAV to OGG.
http://www.winamp.com/
http://www.rarewares.org/ogg.html
-Jeremy
Zenix3D, because sometimes you just wanna blow stuff up!
Does this mean that anyone distributing any kind of mp3 encoded data requires a license to distribute 5000 copies of that data? And how might that be enforced exactly? What if the mp3 files were xor'ed with 10101010, which renders them "not" mp3 files, requiring further processing before they are played?
Cas :)
I believe it does, but you should read this and ask them:
http://www.mp3licensing.com
[EDIT: It's 5000 copies of your game. That's the game license. If you're just posting MP3s on your web site, you'd fall under a different license which allows you to distribute MP3s for free if you don't charge. Try this page: http://www.mp3licensing.com/royalty/]
Xoring it doesn't change the fact that it's an MP3.What if the mp3 files were xor'ed with 10101010, which renders them "not" mp3 files, requiring further processing before they are played?
Again, that's a question you should ask them. They answered my e-mail within a day or two.And how might that be enforced exactly?
-Jeremy
Last edited by gosub; 05-16-2006 at 06:22 AM.
Zenix3D, because sometimes you just wanna blow stuff up!
It would appear to be unenforceable. And kinda pointless, with OGG. Which would lead me to wonder why they stipulate 5k distributions at all. It just stops people using the format and drives them to a better one.
Cas :)
Yes. I emailed and asked them specifically whether Java was an exception and they said it wasn't.
Well copyrights, patents, none of this is straightforward to enforce, is it? At some point, it's going to come down to a court and a burden of proof if neither party backs down. No idea whether the courts have backed them in the past or not, but I'm thinking it wouldn't be hard to prove 5,000 downloads of any of my games.
Well zipping them would render them "not" mp3 files too, but they're still MP3's ultimately, aren't they?
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