5.6.7 Development Journal

[PyTom]

I'm actually thinking of flipping around the sound and music statements, so instead of:

music play "mozart.ogg"

we'll have:

play music "mozart.ogg"

I think the latter reads closer to the English, which I'm liking. Any thoughts from the peanut gallery?

[dizzcity]

Speaking as a non-techie, I prefer play music over music play.

-Dizzy-

[Alessio]

"play music" sounds better, but "music play" looks better when browsing through the script and trying to find a specific spot. It's easier to find if the most important word comes first. But both are fine, really.

I might add:
- fadeout music
- fadein music

[monele]

Really *really* good initiative ^^

[PyTom]

Actually, much like now, fadeout and fadein are parameters to play and stop. So you could write:

play music "foo.ogg" fadeout 1.0 fadein 1.0

Or even:

play music [ "foo.ogg", "bar.ogg" ] fadeout 1.0 fadein 0.5

We don't support channels here, as they don't seem necessary beyond one channel each for music, voice, and sound.

[Mihel]

I too like the idea and would prefer "play music ..." It might not look as easy to find as "music play" for browsing through the script, but it's better than "$ renpy.music.play ()", especially if you have other such calls to Python code.

And actually I think I would see the verb in this statement as the most important word anyway, but that's because I also use the queue a lot, so looking for "music" would get me all of the "play"s, "stop"s, and "queue"s, whereas looking simply for "queue" makes it more efficient.

Also, PyTom, wouldn't getting rid of channel support get rid of the synchro-start feature? If so, I would personally be vehemently opposed to that myself (I was pondering using it as soon as in Foxtaile), but if nobody else uses it/channel support, then I suppose the majority must rule I can always just play measures of fully-mixed music.

Incidentally, is there a way to clear the queue without playing another file?

[PyTom]

Well, I'm not removing renpy.music.play, so if you need synchro_start, or multiple channels, you can always use that. I'm curious, though... what are you using synchro_start for?

For now, you can clear the queue using:

$ renpy.music.queue([ ], loop=False)

In the next version, this will turn into:

queue music None

[Mihel]

Well, I would probably only use synchro_start for one section, one during which a battle occurs. I envisioned having one or two drum channels and one "other", all playing synchronizedly, but while the drums play their thing in constant loop (with few alterations), the main channel plays a queue of 4-bar segments. The reason for that would be so that I could then change each channel to reflect what's going on in the story in real-time without having to synthesize every possible drum/melody/harmony combination individually and have 10 million files

[DaFool]

I am also for multichannels for each type of sound.

Also because of battle sequences in the future.

For example, a gamer might have the following exclamation by 3 characters in battle:

Oneesama!
Naninani?
Gambatte!

If the gamer is slow, he will here these as 3 separate voices. But if the gamer is fast, then the 3 voices will converge to form a chorus. And you know the feeling whenever you listen to something that sounds like there were multiple voice actresses in the same recording booth practicing a line together? It sounds awesome!

[PyTom]

We (still) support multiple channels, but you'll have to use the python, rather then the statement forms.

[NetGenSuperstar]

I'd also like to say that I prefer "play music" over "music play." Not only does it sound closer to an English sentence, but it would probably allow your code to be more organized when/if you create "play sound" and "play voice" statements as well.

[Counter Arts]

Wow Mihel is really doing something with the dynamic music. So like, when was the last time a commerical game had that kind of dynamic music? Crossfading and altering channel volume levels do not count.

[PyTom]

Not a commercial game, but I will point out that Go! Magical Boy had a really good music setup. It was quite a few fairly short loops, and they went into one another seamlessly, so it sounded like one really long track.

[DaFool]

I noticed in converting midi->wav->ogg that some pause is introduced at the end of the song. So that for example, something that's 1:53 can become 1:54 or even 1:55. I'm scratching my head over this one.

So the question is, did GMB have EXACTING music lengths for this to work, or did you use music queue creatively so that, in our example above, at 1:53 the next loop starts playing immediately, cutting off the first loop at the exact point in time.

[Alessio]

Heh, it's nice to see somebody is interested. :)

The slices were exact down to sample level, without gaps.

The way I did it was to first record one long, seamless music track (thus the empty space you mentioned is irrelevant, as it will only be at the very beginning/very end), taking care that the planned cutting spots will not truncate any melody/sound.

Using Excel and cross-checking with the wave file I then calculated the exact splitting points (approx. every 8 seconds). I then sliced up the wave file using Wave Splitter (quite some manual work). This resulted in 22 slices.

Then it required some trial/error to see which parts of the song could be put in which order, and how to bridge from one mood to another.