22 Reply by Carbon (edited by Carbon 2007-10-04 06:51:15)

  • Carbon
  • Carbon
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  • Registered: 2007-10-03
  • Posts: 89

Re: Background music while playing

I have as of yet not had anyone seriously comment on this specific suggestion with the empty OGGs, and I would appreciate if someone did.

Well, I'm not a dev, but I understand exactly what you're proposing, and unlike some of the rather negative responses in this thread, it seems like a good option that would take minimal implementation and be rather fun to play with (adding all sorts of custom music, or just the basic Star Wars ones if you've got 'em) assuming PB doesn't check hashes.

The only thing I worry about is that the ambient sound would be played (I assume) with the settings for volume for "general", rather than the separate music slider, making the end-user have to play with volume quite a bit if their track is too loud or too quiet without the benefit of a quick esc -> options -> audio.

But yeah, I don't understand the hostility. Not everyone has a $100 keyboard, and BF2142 does *not* like alt-tab. It's not a ten-hour sorta deal, my (educated) assumption (having a background in level design, though not BF2's editor) is that it would be relatively easy to do and should have little to no performance cost.

EDIT: Since a few people seem to not really understand the process (though I may be overestimating here), I'll explain it like this. Let's say you wanted some space in your little side "who posted this" thing on the forums, where the avatar would go, and you didn't want an avatar. So, you matched the background of the forums color, and made a small jpg file, uploaded it to your website, and pointed the forums to it. Ta-da, now you have a "blank" avatar that spaces out the text. Now let's say you wanted to change it to a new avatar.

Well, you don't have to upload a new file or anything - you could simply just change the back-end jpg you just made to the image you wanted. While this might seem like a stupid pointless thing for an avatar (why not just point the forum to your new one), you can't do that in a map for obvious reasons.

So what you do is make a small silent file that is looped, makes absolutely zero sound, but is played globally. The average user won't get anything, because, well, it's silent. But a user that wanted some sort of music could replace that silent file with the one he wanted, and get "music" on that level that obviously only played for him (because he's the only one with the clientside replacement).

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  • Registered: 2007-05-20
  • Posts: 492

Re: Background music while playing

Carbon wrote:

should have little to no performance cost.

heh you've not got alot of experience modding bf2142 have you big_smile

Guys, you must understand that alot of us devs have been working our nails through to the bone for the past few weeks (some of us have been havingl ess than 5 hours sleep a day for a long time). So don't blast us if we seem a bit... 'negative'.

All issues raised in our forums will be looked at and discussed through the development process of R2.

24 Reply by Dominio (edited by Dominio 2007-10-04 09:58:12)

  • From: Stockholm
  • Registered: 2006-01-07
  • Posts: 41

Re: Background music while playing

Mr.Guybrush wrote:
Carbon wrote:

should have little to no performance cost.

heh you've not got alot of experience modding bf2142 have you big_smile

Are you suggesting that adding an extra background looping ambient OGG backdrop for each map - even a silent one - would actually give a performance hit?

Mr.Guybrush wrote:

Guys, you must understand that alot of us devs have been working our nails through to the bone for the past few weeks (some of us have been havingl ess than 5 hours sleep a day for a long time). So don't blast us if we seem a bit... 'negative'.

I fully understand if you are all tired, and I don't have a problem with people being negative in general in response to my suggestions. I don't even have a problem with people not even bothering to read and understand what it actually is I am suggesting before they post their criticism. It's the ironizing I have a problem with (which has been demonstrated so far by General Un-Co and Markus). I *do* have a problem with someone - even developers... particularly developers, who should know better than to insult the player base - ridiculing me for suggesting it in the first place, though.

Mr.Guybrush wrote:

All issues raised in our forums will be looked at and discussed through the development process of R2.

Fair enough... I just want to make sure you actually understand what it is that I'm proposing here.

Carbon wrote:

Well, I'm not a dev, but I understand exactly what you're proposing, and unlike some of the rather negative responses in this thread, it seems like a good option that would take minimal implementation and be rather fun to play with (adding all sorts of custom music, or just the basic Star Wars ones if you've got 'em) assuming PB doesn't check hashes.

I'm glad to hear at least someone else understands me, dev team member or not. Thanks for the support, and the attempt to clarify what I'm really saying.

Carbon wrote:

The only thing I worry about is that the ambient sound would be played (I assume) with the settings for volume for "general", rather than the separate music slider, making the end-user have to play with volume quite a bit if their track is too loud or too quiet without the benefit of a quick esc -> options -> audio.

True, but the player in question could always fix this by remastering his OGG files to a different volume level. A hassle, for sure, for just changing the volume of the music, but at least a way to do it.

BF2142 soldier name: TychoCelchu

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  • From: Boston, MA USA!!!!
  • Registered: 2007-04-11
  • Posts: 12

Re: Background music while playing

Mr.Guybrush wrote:

Guys, you must understand that alot of us devs have been working our nails through to the bone for the past few weeks (some of us have been havingl ess than 5 hours sleep a day for a long time). So don't blast us if we seem a bit... 'negative'.

(Excellent job BTW)

I don't even listen to the music in games.  I usually turn the sound effects up so I can hear them over my own music playing and turn off the game music... (for any game I'm playing).  Besides if you're not sacrificing performance to get the music.. you're sacrificing resources.  That is unless your computer can handle the resource or performance drain... and if it can... why not listen to your own music.. I recommend "Static X" for playing the First Strike Mod.. smile

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  • Registered: 2007-09-29
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Re: Background music while playing

I'd just prefer hearing diatnant foot steps than any song. No music when I play.

27 Reply by FSDev| General Un-Co (edited by FSDev| General Un-Co 2007-10-05 05:24:15)

  • From: Melbourne, Australia
  • Registered: 2006-01-02
  • Posts: 1,930

Re: Background music while playing

The reason why I posted that 'tutorial', is because your will simply loop 1 song repeatedly until the map finishes. The average bf2 round time is in my experience 20-30 minutes. 'The Imperial march' is 3:02 long (at least my file is), that means the file will repeat 6.67->10 times per round, now think that most servers play each map at least twice, that makes 13.33 ->20 times in a row. The only way to stop it being to quit the game and rename the files. I know there is no way I or for that matter most people would put up with that.

  It is also important to note (that as someone else pointed out) 90% of players aren't going to edit files to play music if they even bothered to read the manual to find that such a 'feature' existed. Not to mention most people simply run a music player in the background... So there is really no point including it.

Finally and most importantly changing any file within a zip will cause punkbuster to kick you for modified content, due to your files being of a different size too those in the punkbuster checksums.

Where does this leave us? Exactly what Flippy, Ty, Ulph, Markus and my self said before if you want music, open Media Player. THIS THREAD NEEDS TO BE LOCKED imo.

  Don't waste Blitz's time with such matters, Talon is the stand in PR guy while xERo is away, please direct PR issues towarrds him.

Btw check the times on your post and Tys he posted 2 hours before you wink. Both Ty and I were in the process of typing up tutorials to help the mappers, in the custom mapping section (Ty finished his first).

General Un-Co,
                         Signing off
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  • From: Stockholm
  • Registered: 2006-01-07
  • Posts: 41

Re: Background music while playing

FSDev| General Un-Co wrote:

Finally and most importantly changing any file within a zip will cause punkbuster to kick you for modified content, due to your files being of a different size too those in the punkbuster checksums.

Well... while there may be ways to address your other concerns, if you are right on this account then that would certainly spell doom for the whole idea. Are you absolutely sure that this is the case?

FSDev| General Un-Co wrote:

Don't waste Blitz's time with such matters, Talon is the stand in PR guy while xERo is away, please direct PR issues towarrds him.

Well, thanks for informing me, not to mention responding to me in non-patronizing manner this time.

FSDev| General Un-Co wrote:

Btw check the times on your post and Tys he posted 2 hours before you wink. Both Ty and I were in the process of typing up tutorials to help the mappers, in the custom mapping section (Ty finished his first).

Alright. I didn't really think that the developers were trying to hide how to use the editors with FS/BF2142 from the player base, but the concern seemed to have popped up once or twice before on the forums.

As for locking the thread, I hardly think it is necessary. If you are certain that punkbuster will not allow an ogg file in a client-side zip to be replaced, then I rest my case and this discussion can be more or less considered over.

BF2142 soldier name: TychoCelchu

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