Remastered Music

[TechSY730]

Since Pablo is rereleasing some of the songs at a higher quality than those shipped in the game, is there a way to make the game play these higher quality versions?

I know that the game expects the audio files to be in a ogg container format (aka. a .ogg), but what about things like encoding and bit-rate?

What encoding does the game expect the audio to be in? (I am assuming vorbis, what you normally would use ogg for)
Is there a bit-rate, sampling rate, and/or bitness (16-bit, 24-bit, etc) that the game needs to play it?

[x4000]

The unity engine is not able to load anything but ogg files off of disk.  In terms of encoding rates, we do them at a semi-lower encoding rate to keep the download files smaller and also to keep the disk hit and general ram usage lower.  But if you were to create ogg files in a higher quality based off the mp3s purchased through itunes or whatever, the game could play them.

[TechSY730]

The unity engine is not able to load anything but ogg files off of disk.  In terms of encoding rates, we do them at a semi-lower encoding rate to keep the download files smaller and also to keep the disk hit and general ram usage lower.  But if you were to create ogg files in a higher quality based off the mp3s purchased through itunes or whatever, the game could play them.

Awesome. I think I will do that.

I await the higher quality release of the songs in the expansions.

EDIT: Oh, and one of my original questions still stands. What encoding format does the game expect? Vorbis like most ogg files?

[x4000]

Yes, vorbis.

[TechSY730]

Thanks. I'll do the conversion when I get back home. And I look forward to the higher quality rerelease of the expansion music so I can get them playing in higher quality too.

[Spikey00]

Do we have an ETA on when the Spire soundtrack will be released? 

[x4000]

I have no idea; that's up to Pablo.  The reason why he doesn't release some of that stuff is that it costs him money every month to have it on places like iTunes.  So if it doesn't sell well enough, he literally loses money every month.  That's why he took down a lot of the soundtracks after their original runs.

[PVega8]

Once we get done with the release of AVWW, I will focus more time on the other soundtracks. In the meantime, we're all working hard to make this game as awesome as it can be!

[Kraiz]

I take it that we can use the Vorbis OGG with our own custom music tracks to edit the music?  Is there a file that details what music files are used (I know that not all of them are used in the main menu, so it makes me believe there's a sort of text or data file that has all the music tracks laid out with titles and lengths and other info on the tracks themselves)

[Spikey00]

Yikes, didn't realize that iTunes charged for monthly upkeeps--isn't a percentage royalty best for both the [indie] artist and Apple?  How have the sales for the soundtracks been insofar, anyhow? 

[x4000]

They charge monthly upkeep AND take a percentage.

[Spikey00]

I figured, although don't they offer a variety of options to artists?  Just curious since I don't know much about the inner workings of iTunes, and it seems it's not such a great option for indie musicians.

[x4000]

I honestly don't know much either.  Pablo has the soundtrack rights, and does what he will with them on his own.  Arcen has the rights for them in connection with the games and promotion of said games, but as I had no interest in trying to sell soundtracks, and figured that he might, the rights have stayed with him for the music.

[TechSY730]

I take it that we can use the Vorbis OGG with our own custom music tracks to edit the music?  Is there a file that details what music files are used (I know that not all of them are used in the main menu, so it makes me believe there's a sort of text or data file that has all the music tracks laid out with titles and lengths and other info on the tracks themselves)

I'm pretty sure that the engine just scans the appropriate music folders for ogg files and plays them randomly.

IIRC, The only ones that get treated specially are the ones not in the main "in-game" music folder.
I believe that those require specialized names, like title, gamevictory, gameloss, chase, and other such music that is not played normally but only in special circumstances.

So I think you can just dump what you want (with vorbis encoding in an ogg file, of course) into the in-game music folders and the game will be willing to choose them.

I could be wrong though.

Make sure you keep track of expansion specific folders though. Expansion specific music goes into a different folder then the base-game music. The game "consolidates" all the the various in-game music folders across the base-game and the expansions into one big list that it will choose randomly from.

[x4000]

Exactly that, yes.