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Herculine

Lump music format?

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While experimenting with SLumpED I discovered that I could import to my WAD music files in formats other than midi (wav and mp3, for example) and they will play in-game. I am running ZDoom v2.41 (r2358) and GZDoom v1.48 (r813). If I decide to leave this music file in the WAD permanently, will people using other sourceports be able to hear it?

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Various engines don't support these, including source ports. But aren't you releasing your WADs only for ZDoom engines? That's what you did until now.

In any case, people can open the WAD and delete the music if it's interfering with their preferred engine's behavior.

Keep in mind these files also increase file size by a good deal. A WAD file that may be 200 KB may turn into 4 MB just from a single MP3. In addition, if the music isn't available for free use, the idgames archive will possibly reject your WAD for copyright reasons, as established here:

4.  Do not embed commercial MP3s as music in WADs. If you have made
    your own music as an MP3, or I can verify that you had it made
    especially for you by one of the folks in the community, I'll
    accept it as part of your wad.

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I'm not making all my maps sourceport-specific any more because too many folks griped about it, I made the mp3 file the lowest quality possible and thus the smallest size (and in this day and age who has a problem with downloading a few megabytes?), and the music is by Ludwig van Beethoven so it's my sincerest hope that its use won't spark another Napster controversy. :P

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myk said:

In any case, people can open the WAD and delete the music if it's interfering with their preferred engine's behavior.

Or Herculine could create a special "mp3 music wad" to run with the map, where as the main wad would have midi music, or even better, the main wad could have both midi and mp3, with the mp3 music using different lump names and then using MAPINFO and EMAPINFO (for example) to make ports that support mp3s to use those lumps instead (of course this wouldn't help ports that support mp3s but don't support MAPINFO or similar, but it would be a "good enough" solution IMO).


@Herculine: Even if the composition is by Beethoven, I'd guess someone else owns the rights to the particular recording. As a rule of a thumb, don't add mp3 music to your wad unless you've got an explicit permission from the copyright holder. Not everyone cares, but quite a few people here (for a good reason) can be pretty anal about it.

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Unfortunately I haven't learned how to do the MAPINFO bit yet (it sounds like a pain IMHO) and even if I did release the music all as a separate WAD there could still be the copyright issues. Maybe the best thing for me to do would be to make the music only for my personal use and forget it.

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There are many different engines that behave in different ways. When Vermil said "most source ports" above, he really meant something like "most maintained and advanced source ports." The most reliable way to make a "universal" WAD that works with many engines is to use a "format" that many engines try to support. There are two that are rather popular, vanilla and Boom. You can add limit extension over those, optionally.

  • To make a vanilla map or level set, make sure either you or somebody tests it with vanilla itself or Chocolate Doom.
  • To make a least limit removing vanilla map or level set, make sure either you or somebody tests it with Doom+ (vanilla hacked to raise limits) or Stawberry Doom.
  • To make a most limit removing vanilla map or level set, make sure either you or somebody tests it with PrBoom+ -complevel 2.
  • To make a Boom map or level set, make sure either you or somebody tests it with Boom itself or PrBoom v2.02.
  • To make a limit removing Boom map or level set, make sure either you or somebody tests it with PrBoom+ -complevel 9.
To use the DOS engines (vanilla or plain Boom) people use DOSBox, unless they have a system that supports DOS, of course. Limit removing allows larger maps. Most limit removing and Boom limit removing allow maps with over 32K SEGS entries and are more forgiving on errors. Least limit removing has vanilla's error standards and stays within the 32K SEGS limit (and a 64 KB BLOCKMAP; it's wise to use ZenNode's BLOCKMAP compression for vanilla.) Boom allows any BLOCKMAP size, provides extra editing features but sticks to 32K SEGS entries or less. Practically any source port supports vanilla and most support Boom, so one your map works in the testing engines, it'll work for many. To be sure you're satisfied, of course, also test in your preferred source port, if any. That's why I imply above that you could relegate compatibility testing to beta testers.

I would suggest either
  • vanilla but only if you are willing to be very careful with the limits. This implies maps that aren't too big. Chocorenderlimits can be pretty useful here,
  • least limit removing vanilla which allows some bigger levels, and works with nearly anything, including source ports not heavily based on Boom, or
  • limit removing Boom, which is supported by most regularly maintained advanced source ports.

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Jodwin said:

Or Herculine could create a special "mp3 music wad" to run with the map, where as the main wad would have midi music, or even better, the main wad could have both midi and mp3, with the mp3 music using different lump names and then using MAPINFO and EMAPINFO (for example) to make ports that support mp3s to use those lumps instead (of course this wouldn't help ports that support mp3s but don't support MAPINFO or similar, but it would be a "good enough" solution IMO).

It's a bad solution IMO, as music wad can be distributed separately. Also not everyone prefers ZDoom.

Jodwin said:

@Herculine: Even if the composition is by Beethoven, I'd guess someone else owns the rights to the particular recording. As a rule of a thumb, don't add mp3 music to your wad unless you've got an explicit permission from the copyright holder. Not everyone cares, but quite a few people here (for a good reason) can be pretty anal about it.

It's possible to use Vorbis encoded audio, which is obviously not MP3. ;)
It also sounds better at equivalent bitrate.

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At the moment I'm building my newest map using DB1 with the Boom configuration because it's a six-key map and also I like the "generalized linedefs" flexibility. Aside from that I believe it should work with just about anything. I'll experiment with music still, but likely won't release any with the map just to keep myself out of trouble. Thanks everyone for the help.

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SDL_mixer has terrible, broken MP3 playback support, and thus I can't recommend using MP3 music in ports that use SDL for their audio. SDL_mixer's OGG support is better and is generally recommended.

tempun said:

It's possible to use Vorbis encoded audio, which is obviously not MP3. ;)
It also sounds better at equivalent bitrate.

That's...not the point he was making at all.

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tempun said:

Also not everyone prefers ZDoom.

That's exactly why I suggested having both midi and mp3 lumps. Most ports that can't use MAPINFO are smart enough to ignore it, so you can have midis on D_RUNNIN and others while have mp3 lumps called WHATEVERYOUWANT and use MAPINFO to use those instead of the usual lumps. -_-

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I think if I were inclined to make a music WAD I'd go with the ogg format which is about half the size of mp3 and seems to sound just as good, especially with other game sounds happening -- it's not like you're gonna just stand around listening to the tune anyway.

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Herculine said:
At the moment I'm building my newest map using DB1 with the Boom configuration because it's a six-key map and also I like the "generalized linedefs" flexibility. Aside from that I believe it should work with just about anything.

In that case, you're free to use all other Boom features, such as other extra line or sector types, extra animations, or BEX strings in DeHackEd, because vanilla behavior is already excluded.

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myk said:

In that case, you're free to use all other Boom features, such as other extra line or sector types, extra animations, or BEX strings in DeHackEd, because vanilla behavior is already excluded.


Yeah, I'm gonna try to learn to do that water thing 'cause I've always thought it's pretty cool.

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