MOD or TC

[Darkstealth]

Are you guys making a mod (changes a small part of a game) or a Total Conversion (change almost everything about half life to LBA)?

[Phoenix]

Well - it's more of a TC I suppose - cause we will be changing textures, characters, maps, weapons, gameplay, sound, and possibly music - if I can come up with a way of making HL play a smaller format like MOD or MP3 (El Muerte I don't know if you've got any ideas on that one).

[elmuerte]

I don't know much about the Half Life (\Quake 2) engine. so I don't know if it supports mod or mp3.

[WebSeed]

Music and sound was an integral part of LBA/LBA2 therefore I think we need both in the MOD. There are two problems however;-

Problem 1) Half-Life uses wave files (*.wav), and these tend to be very big (for music tracks, many sound effect files etc). This would mean bulking up the MOD file size considerably, <b>NOT</b> good for web distribution.

Solution) Use an MP3 encoder program to compress the wave files into MP3, then decompress once downloaded.

Problem 2) Wave files in HL are stored in memory (i.e. cached). This can cause a severe performance penalty for large music/lots of sound effect files. I don't know if it's possible to stream audio from HD (anybody else know?).

Solution) Use relatively small samples looped (i.e 20 seconds). To be honest this isn't the best solution.

[ChaosFish]

I guess Half-Life isn't the best thing for mods, but I think after the mod will be finished it won't be too hard to convert it for a better game...

[Q-Wi-Q]

When I entered the team, I said that I could mix music. Well, if you need it, I'll, convert it. There MUST be a way of making the MOD use mp3's instead of wav's, or converting the wavs.

[Phoenix]

I had a tinker around last night and have come to the conclusion that WebSeed's idea of endoding to MP3 for the release and then decoding to WAV during install is the best option. I figure we can make 4 minute tracks at about 1.5MB each and I can include a software decoder that will do all the decoding automatically during install. No problem - and large WAV files are streamed from the hard drive in HL, not from memory.

[Q-Wi-Q]

IF we do the music (and that's a big IF hehe) should it be music that almost matches the description of the LBA theme? Or can it be something totally else?

[Phoenix]

Hmmm....don't really know. As Ido once said, "it'd be kinda funny hearing the friendly LBA theme while running around shooting people". I think perhaps you could have some of the music like the bit in LBA2 when you go in a cavern section, but not the White Leaf Desert music if you know what I mean! An perhaps as a general soundtrack we could use something along the lines of what they have on the original Half-Life CD, except different. I still have no idea as to what Jesse is capable of doing, does he compose or just mix, he said he was ready to start the other day!!!

[ChaosFish]

I don't remember saying that... but if I said it I guess it's true
I think LBA music will be cool, and when Twinsen die will there be that sound from LBA?

[Phoenix]

Yes, you said it when you saw my first version of the intro movie with that odd LBA music in te background.

[ChaosFish]

Oh, now I remember...

By the way, any mappers need screenshots from some map in LBA? Now I'm doing the map of the first jail with Prograb, just tell me what map do you need...

[Q-Wi-Q]

Now who is doing the music in the MOD?
...

[Phoenix]

Well Jesse is the "official" sound man but I just saw him say in the Twinsun Tribune that he doesn't even visit this Message Board - i'm not sure if he is even that interested.

In other words, anyone with composing abilities and good ideas say so here - that way they can take care of the music and i'll encode it!

[Neko]

alrighty, don't get funn ideas now hehehe

i can convert anything into everything and i do compose
let just say i am back to do this job

alright let's first make our goal.

which of you does have cool edit>?
i do now but i say i prefer to compse rather than convert 4574857 weapon sounds into mp3

is mp3 a valid format into this game?

and what kind of music shall i make, must it be only lba?
or could it be more various.

let's make this straight:
everyone volunteers to help me with this should be in to this "sound" team.
now let's get to busniss

[Q-Wi-Q]

Jess?

count me in, I can't do very much with music, but I CAN compose some nice tunes heheh.
Remixing skills would be for you then hehe.
If you need me, just gimme a mail

[Kieron]

Mememe! I can compose! But we could use some of the originals as well, they're just stored as wavs on the cd.

[Neko]

IF you can compose
then send m something you really made yourself.

that would be nice


Gorter2@bart.nl

[Q-Wi-Q]

That's the prob (which I entered in the board sooner). Composing is cool, yet the mixing is ... well, just say I'm not really good at that... Hehe. I can sing it tho (people say I have a great voice) lol. Hmm.... I'll figure something out

[Darkstealth]

I think if you compose music for a mod that you hunt people and shoot down then it might not bne the best idea to have sweet music in the background (unless your a crazy ). I think any music made for an LBA DM mod shoud be LBA flavoured but appropriate (it's late do you expect me to spell correctly at this time?!) for combat. I personally think Quake 1 had the best sound track. It was ambient, eery and scary in a death match (oh I miss my quaking days).

I do a bit of music myself, but I feel this is up to the composers' judgement.

[Neko]

Woah this is old. I have no update at all on the dm mod or whatsoever. But I'm interested into submitting tunes if that's still valid and going.

at least see what you want, or mail me if you want to do anything.

cheers,
Jesse.

[SpaceGuitarist]

btw jesse, where can i listen to more of your songs?

i got just one till now...

[Neko]

Originally Posted by SpaceGuitarKid

btw jesse, where can i listen to more of your songs?

i got just one till now...

Hi,
There should be a website..but my friends is a bit busy so it's like it can take a few weeks(months...years, sigh). I did upload some relevant stuff (unlike sundown for arabia which is now 1 year old exactly), but somehow the links don't work.

So..I have no idea ^^

At this moment it could take a while..I rather release a cd or something when all's ready. It sounds good to me, lots better than ever before and much more experimental with synthesizers and classical piano influences.

And how about you? got anything new?

oh yeah, just heard the dm died, so forget my idea

[Battler]

Solution: use ADPCM WAV's, like those, used in LBA 2. They are not so big, so it is a good solution.

[Lightwing]

Gosh, what a dead forum.

Interesting because once LBA DM used to be one of THE hottest projects in the LBA community.