Playing other MMOs, one thing I really appreciate is the addition of background music.

I imagine the devs will never do this: the cost of acquiring/licensing/selecting music and integrating it into the game would be large enough that it probably wouldn't be worth their time.


But for the players, this would be fairly easy via Decal... Decal can play MP3s fairly easily, correct?


I imagine the coding wouldn't be so hard. Assuming Decal is capable of both reading the player's coords, and playing MP3 files:

-For the outdoors: "If the player's current coordinates are between X1,Y1, X2,Y1, X2,Y2, and X1,Y2, play Song1.mp3."

-For the indoors: "If the player's current landblock is 1234, play Song2.mp3."


Use a simple volume fade to fade between tracks, and you'd be good to go.


For example: I'd use the Sonic & Knuckles Sandopolis Act 1 music for outdoors Neftet, with Sandopolis Act 2 music for the Neftet dungeons.


Can anyone with Decal experience tell me how hard this would be to code? I imagine the time consuming part would be soundtrack selection, but as a fan project with no official backing from Turbine we wouldn't be encumbered by licensing/cost concerns...

 

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Not very hard, just annoying to pick songs for all the different landblocks.

 

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You call that 'annoying', I call that 'the really fun part'.

Decal can read map coords, right? I'm imagining that for most of the aboveground world I'll define songs for certain chunks of the land, rather than landblock by landblock.

I'm imagining the "checking" process would look about like this:

-Check my landblock

-Is my landblock on the list of landblocks with landblock-specific music? If yes, play the song for that landblock. If no, continue.

-Check my coordinates

-Are my coordinates within one of the defined chunks (squares, most likely) that have been assigned specific songs? If yes, play that song. If no, continue.

-Fade out to no music.


My main questions are:

-Can decal handle the playing of an MP3 through some standard Windows service? or would everyone have to install a certain MP3 player and have it running in the background for this to work correctly?

-Is this the sort of thing that a competent decal developer could prototype in a day or two? Am I correct in assuming that the actual song selection (hundreds of songs, perhaps) is the really time consuming part?

 

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If the answer to question 2 is "es, a competent decal dev could whip this up pretty quickly", then I'll start spending a couple of hours a night on song selection in the hopes that once I've got that handled, the actual plugin development can follow.

 

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Yes, it'd be easy to do.. yes, the time-consuming part is deciding on music for 800+ landblocks.

EDIT: And then you get to find someone willing to do it.

 

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Gotcha... I'll start song selection.

If I'm not able to find a Decal dev who'd be willing to give it a shot out of personal interest / general goodwill, are there people with the necessary skills who'd do it for cash?


(It's a bit easier for the 'overworld' than for the dungeons. I'm thinking most of the Obsidian Plains, except for the center with Aerbax and Singularity Bore, could share a single song... Hmm. I wonder if, for the Singularity Bore landblock, I could split it based on the player's Z-axis, so there's a different song for the Aerbax boss battle versus being down on the ground...)

 

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I'll do it for $500.

Actually, dungeons would probably be easier to do.





lol wtf

 

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It'll only take him a year to get it working correctly.....just like his logger. Hence the $500 price tag. Gotta pay for all that time.

 

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...yeah, I'll stick to trying to find a Decal Dev who supports the idea and is willing to give it a go. ;p

 

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