Music

27th of july 2015

1 Music project for Ryzom

Few weeks ago I was talking with Gorias about some stuff for my work in the Lore Team related to the Marauders. And we noticed that both share a common idea.
We both think we lack music in Atys. The music each race plays in their festivities, to have fun or to relax. Music is the most important thing in any culture, and the cultures of Ryzom must have music too!!
So after few days of talking, we decided to start a project inside the Lore Team to write the "musical lore". It will take long. We are focused in writing the Theory of Sound by now. How the sound moves around Atys. How the environment affects to the sound. How each race understand those sounds and how later they start to create sounds with basic instruments and how those instruments evolved.
In short, by now is just a Lore Team work. But of course, Gorias and I share the same dream. Someday, this Lore come true in the game. Maybe players playing to some instruments? Maybe new NPC with new missions related to the sound? I was talking with Tamarea and a Music Team, and of course a Music Group in RF could be great so we can start having ideas and sharing them to move towards that dream.
I am a musician myself and I can´t wait to start creating some songs. But, as I told, by now this is just a Lore work by now. I don´t want to make no one sad, but we want to make sure we create a good Musical Lore to be sure which kind of materials and instruments can be used to make music, or to understand what kind of music a Zoraï could like.

Q: There are some music instruments in the concept arts!
A: That´s true YannK. But we are rechecking all that. Those instruments are just an idea. There is nothing inside the Lore about them.

Q: Right now i play Ryzom with my sound turned off because if it is on I crash all the time when entering and exiting guild hall or cities. Is there a way to fix this first? Otherwise i cannot play with sound turned on.
A: that´s true, but I just came to tell you all we have a project inside the Lore Team about the music of Atys. Once this is finished, I think we should start to see how we could implement or not the musical lore in Ryzom, or if it is possible.

Q: But it is primarily about the definition of scores of individual nations or?
A: No. That will be the last part. We are working in the physicis of the music by now. How the sound moves in the different enviroments, how that sounds affect the enviroment. How the sound affect the races and their culture. Once we have this "Theory of Sound" finished, we will start to make each race work. The instruments for example. And with the time, why not, make scores of songs for each race or faction.
I understand that waiting for the Lore is finished is frustrating when we already could have tones of ideas, I have a lot for example, but we must make this step by step to avoid problems in the future. I hope the ones who share the same dream as Gorias and I have are happy to know this project is already started. And I hope we can join in the future to make a great work. I just want to ask you to be patient.

Q: there has been some ideas in the forums about including instruments in the game that players can play.
A: The musical lore doesn´t exist and Gorias and I are working on it. We started few weeks ago and we think is better to have that Lore finished before we start making the work to implement in game.
Unless there are more questions I don´t have nothing more to add. Of course, if you have something, don´t hesitate to send me a mail to gaueko@ryzom.com or talk with me while I am on IRC.

17th of august 2015

1 Creation of a Music Group Ryzom forge

We are going to make a Musical Project. For this we will first create Ryzom Forge Music Group. 
The Music Team will born in the future, we are still working on it with the Musical Lore. 
The manager of this Music Group will be Gaueko.
The common places for communicaton will be IRC, #ryzomforge or the specific channel #ryzommusic, the sub-forum that will be created, and of course Ryzom Forge Wiki.

General objectives
The role of both, the Team and the Group, will be to create the music of Ryzom and the ambiental sounf of the game itslef. The difference betwen them will be that the Team will take care of the Musical Lore (Scores, faction music, lyrics etc) and the RF group will create the ambiental music and the ambiental sounds of the game (I will explain more in few).

Ryzom Forge Music Group objectives
We have two main goals: Creation of background music and atmospheric sounds. The background music will be used for the missions and rites. This means we will create music to give a quiet atmosphere, frightening one, joyfull one etc.
And the atmospheric sounds are the objects do when we interact with them. 
Footsteps, a crate that is opened or broken, the wind, the breeze, the sound of the insects, maybe the sound of an animal that chase us... In the end, give to the background a more realistic sound experience, even if the one we have is good one, but we can improve it!!
For this, we will need to create music and sound files that later we will implement in game. We still don´t have a place to storage them but as soon as we have a place for it it will be told. The files we create must be created under CC-BY-SA license.

Q: Will it be possible to activate/deactivate the music according to ones prefereces, while still having the sounds of the nature? Managing music and sounds separately in the client ?
A: Dev should answer to you Zatalyz, but I guess it could be possible. Of course, musicians will need to co-work with developers too.
A of YannK: I'll speak about it later for the graphic assets, but a deposit with version management (under mercurial) for the sounds can be considered really quickly. 

Q: How to link these music and sounds to a place, an object, an action... from a dev point of view?
A of YannK:
First, I want to mention that my knowledge is very empiric regarding sounds in RC, I haven't had much occasion to make a lot of tests.
That being said, from what I know, there are two kinds of usages for sounds: through primitives and through datasheets. Till there it's all very normal.
The datasheet part is linked to an animation: the sound (.sound file) is linked to the application of an animation (.anim file), which tells it how it should appear, with which gradation, at which time, etc.
This .anim file itself is linked to a visible object in the 3D part of the client, a .creature.
Don't be mistaken by the .anim or creature name. It can be an event where nothing is moving or an object which isn't a creature :) For example the tower near Chiang on Silan is a .creature.
But genereally speaking, it lets you know when a sound should be emitted in order to be synchronised with what the player is seing: so ensure that the box creaks when opening it, the engine can make it with no problem at all.
He sounds created when walking depend on the kind of ground if I'm well remembered, so except if creating a new map with new environmental textures, it will probably be difficult to change the footsteps, because it would imply to change the sound of all the places where the textures is used (to be checked).
You've understood it, skills of the characters call for .anim animations, which themselves start .sound, so it is possible to link a sound to a character animation easily. The difficulty is to create new kinds of animation, because it requires to change the code on BOTH client and server sides.
The other way to manage a sound is through primitives: on the map you can place environment sounds, sometimes on very small places, but there again lots of set-ups since we call actually datasheets which themselves give lots of set-ups to the original .wav.
This sounds may change automacially (day/night cycle for example or depending on the weather) or they can be linked to external triggers, either them being environmental or related to a mission. Everything can be set-up (but it's sensitive and will require lots of tweaks).
All of this to tell you that the system allows a lot of things (which explains the wealth of what already exists :) ) but there's a very big problem:  It seems there's no .wav nor .sound source file anywhere (and more or less all datasheets are linked to sounds). Which explains why nothing was released when the graphical assets have been.
So it's not possible for example to change the existing particle systems (because they often call for .sound), nor change anything already existing in term of sound background. Any change will have to be a re-creation from scratch, including the base .wav files.
We'll have also to consider the question of creating datasheets linked to sounds, knowing that we have no complex example to understand their exact way of working. So documenting it will be long (documentation of the datasheets on which I'm working).

Call for musicians is launched!

28th of september 2015

1 Creation of new ambience music
Gaueko: "I have posted in the Music Group some usefull links to free sound sites. Even if we can create our owns, better if we try to get what is already free for all in the internet to use them in the future. If you know any other free sites, no matter the language, please post it there.In other hand, I want to start  working in some ambient music for the game. I will try to have something  for this week, but I can´t promise nothing. I am talking with Tamarea  to decide where we could add this new files till we have a better place.  If any one wants to start making ambient music, or if already has  something recorded, let me know so we can add those files of yours to  the same place.I call to any musician that wants to join me in this adventure!If you want to contact me for any of this topics, or for any other music related topic : gaueko@ryzom.com"

Q: did ou kept an eye on licences there?
A: I did. But if you find any problem with them, notify me too.

05th of October 2015

1 Creation of new music:
Gaueko has created some ambient songs for the game. 

Gaueko: Once we have a place to share with all we will inform you. Maybe someone gets inspired to join me! And I call again for musicians or interested people that wants to join me, in the Group or in the Team.

Q: did you inspire from the music when we enter a city?
A: No. The work we are tasked to make in the Music Group is to make ambient music for the missions / game. For example, if the mission tells you to "visit" Primary Roots, you get a horror song when you enter on Primary Roots. Missions, or could be music triggered when entering a region too, but music that will be of joy, horror or action. The music you hear when you enter a city, could be of inspiration for the Music Team when witting songs for each race. But that will depend on the Musical Lore we are working on by now. Missions, or could be music triggered when entering a region too, but music that will be of joy, horror or action.

19th of October 2015

Q: How to add a CC licence on new sound/music content? Is it enough to use Asana or Dropbox to share them in a "CC-by-SA music" file?
A Shepeng: you have to read the user licence of Asana and Dropbox to know this.Tools don't need to be free, but sometimes user licences are very restrictives.

Q: Place the musics in a directory called "Sound and music CC-BY-SA is not sufficient? Does the storage tool need also to have this licence?
A Shepeng: From my point of view, it's better to use a deposit, Bitbucket or other. Khanat proposes also to do it. 

- Riasan (Ark team) is asked for helping the Music group. He makes tests to add new sound/music ingame, so searches a way to play music/sound during missions and tries to add new music when entering a region.Here are Riasan's words: "Gaueko asked me if I know a way to add new music ingame. I look and founded a good way to add and play some music ingame using Ark. I made some tests and it works but it's not really something what I can show to others (only code not finished). I will try to add new music when a player enter a zone (like music by entering Yrkanis)."

PtitBill: I would be very interested for future projects, making sounds will give better atmosphere!

2nd of November 2015 

PtitBill: I think i'll call for Music group to add sounds on some actions in ongoing projects. We will need a database of sounds.

Zendae: The label "Music Group" is a bit false, because they are also in charge of sound effets. Maybe we cold rename it "Audio Group"?

16th of November 2015

1 Sounds datasheets
Tamarea: The sounds datasheets have been found back! But for now they aren't released, I'm waiting to know the licence. But the ones who looked at them in the the team have applauded, it seems that there is everything which was missing us. We can apparently specify sounds variations for one species of mob, so that for example the males have a lower voice which can be heard from further. To be seen if we can use it!

Q:  Additions will be possible, I think?
A: Yes, that's what we're aiming at!

PtitBill: I need a lot of sound effects.

8th of february 2016

Gaueko: We had the problem of where to host the new sounds or ambience songs RF group could create and compose, and that the files have the proper CC license with them. Kunitake talked with me last week, he was interested to help us and he told me he has a solution that could help us.

Kunitake: You said me that we had a problem with license and where to upload it. So I asked to a pro dev i know very good (who worked for Voxtok). He said me literally that you were complicating the task. So, he told me that it was very simple. Open a repository on bitbucket (or github whatever) and just make a branch for your assets, in this case it's the music. You put an archive and into this archive you put the license, or simply, add files with the license.txt on the repository. Thats this little file you see in many projects on many repo. That looks kinda idiot i know but in 30 years of career he said he never had any problems with it. Just include the license with the file and it's ready. So i did this partially (quite simple) at https://bitbucket.org/Noyd/ryzomaudio/src.

Gaueko: Thanks a lot for the solution Kunitake. I will bring the idea to the Ryzom Team, but I agree this one is the easiest solution, for RF Music and for Music Team one.

7th of march 2016

Gaueko: Does someone something to ask or add about this?
Ptitbill: I need some noise for projects.
Gaueko: The Music Team and Group are by now not working until we create the storageing "problem". But maybe I can try to speed up this and we can create those sounds.

Q: You know how to add new sounds? We've had some troubles, on our side, with the tools...
A: About your question Zatalyz, talk with Riasan. When I created the Music Team he made some experiments by his own to add music and sounds. Maybe he can guide you better.