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A fun 2D retro platformer inspired by Sonic games and a game creation system

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#1 2018-08-17 09:18:40

TheSeventhEmerald
Member
From: Spain
Registered: 2010-04-19
Posts: 302

Crystal Temple Music

Ok, ok, I took my time for this, I know. tongue

Writing a song in Sonic-style using completely new tools for me has been challenging. Even when the song is like 50 seconds long, I have dedicated a lot of time to polish it until I am completely satisfied with the result (a lot of time means like 10-15 hours, which is the same I usually need for a 4min track).

So let's see what do you think! smile

https://soundcloud.com/user-105629660/crystal-temple

I hope next one will require less time as I have learned a lot of things making this one. Alexandre wanted to have a remastered version of Sunshine Paradise. That is my next goal!

About the tools used to produce the song, instruments are Genny and the Aracnosoft sf2. Both can be used for whatever, even commercial projects, so there is no problem -we only give credits to the creators of the sounds or mention that we used their work.
EDIT: looking carefully to Aracnosoft's licencse, they state it is "freeware, primarly for private non-commerical use" but that commercial use can be requested through written consent from the author. Still, I believe that there is not problem for our use. If you want, I may write to the original authors to confirm that there is no issues. Thanks to SilverstepP for pointing this to me.

Last edited by TheSeventhEmerald (2018-08-18 17:54:39)


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#2 2018-08-17 11:27:41

G.E.R.
Member
From: Russia, Krasnodar
Registered: 2017-12-26
Posts: 177

Re: Crystal Temple Music

Congratulations on the your first audio release!
I listened the track and noticed the "mystering" style of the music. Is it gives a reference for the Mystic Cave track?

The track duration is 110 second. If level duration will be on 4-5 minutes, the track will be played 2 times.

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#3 2018-08-18 18:01:33

TheSeventhEmerald
Member
From: Spain
Registered: 2010-04-19
Posts: 302

Re: Crystal Temple Music

G.E.R. wrote:

I listened the track and noticed the "mystering" style of the music. Is it gives a reference for the Mystic Cave track?

It was a bit my intention, yes. I detected, however, that those "mystering" chords are  too disonant for some people. I would like to have your feedback on this, see if you like it, or you see it ugly.

G.E.R. wrote:

The track duration is 110 second. If level duration will be on 4-5 minutes, the track will be played 2 times.

The track duration is 53 seconds. The SoundCloud track repeats twice (and a bit) the song, so it would be played like between 4-6 times. I listened to the track a lot of times, so I think it will not become repetitive.


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#4 2018-08-18 23:29:16

Alexandre
Administrator
From: Brazil
Registered: 2009-01-27
Posts: 3,300
Website

Re: Crystal Temple Music

Alright.

In the message below, "you" refers to any person who would like to submit an asset (image, sound, sprite, music, and so on) to Open Surge. Edit: I updated an old post.

TheSeventhEmerald wrote:

EDIT: looking carefully to Aracnosoft's licencse, they state it is "freeware, primarly for private non-commerical use" but that commercial use can be requested through written consent from the author. Still, I believe that there is not problem for our use. If you want, I may write to the original authors to confirm that there is no issues. Thanks to SilverstepP for pointing this to me.

The issue is this: do you own the work? Open Surge game assets are released under the Creative Commons; either CC-BY (attribution) or CC-0 (public domain). To submit a game asset to Open Surge, you must own it. In other words, for us to take the song, these conditions must be met:

- you must be able to use the soundfont freely, without restriction, including commercially (so it can be released under the CC)
- the author of the soundfont must own his work (not always the case)

Additionally, you must be willing to (and have to ability to) release the song (or any other asset) under the Creative Commons (CC-BY or CC-0). This means people can take the song, build upon it and reuse in any project, even commercially. Not everyone is ok with this.

Although I appreciate the work that is put in the contributions, a statement such as "yeah, it's okay to use it" or "probably okay" is not enough. We need the songs under the Creative Commons. When releasing a song under the Creative Commons, the author must state that he/she has full permission to do so. If the licensing is unclear, I don't take it.

---

It would be nice if we had a soundfont for Open Surge, so we wouldn't have these issues.

---

Regarding the song itself, I find it a bit repetitive smile

Last edited by Alexandre (2018-08-19 01:01:59)

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#5 2018-08-19 08:43:48

G.E.R.
Member
From: Russia, Krasnodar
Registered: 2017-12-26
Posts: 177

Re: Crystal Temple Music

I want to say one more thing: the temple is placing on the cave, therefore level music should has a appropriate "cave" style.
Try to add an echo effect. For example, of such a type.


Alexandre wrote:

In the message below, "you" refers to any person who would like to submit an asset (image, sound, sprite, music, and so on) to Open Surge. Edit: I updated an old post.

Summing up the aforesaid: if I created a .png-file (brickset, object sprite, enemy sprite, ect.) independently in Photoshop (with license!), I can posted this images for free using. I understand correctly?

In this case, I save image with PSF file with separated layes without rasterization. It allows to make any changes while saving the layer settings, or modify one small section without auto-changing other sections.

Last edited by G.E.R. (2018-08-19 08:56:59)

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#6 2018-08-19 09:59:05

TheSeventhEmerald
Member
From: Spain
Registered: 2010-04-19
Posts: 302

Re: Crystal Temple Music

Hey Alexandre,

I do not understand why we would have to free the content under CC-by or CC-0. OpenSurge is licensed under a GPL3 license. That means that I take OpenSurge to make whatever I want, I must release the derivative work with a GPL license.  Even when commercial use for the code is allowed, it makes little sense to sell a derivative game of OpenSurge -you must publish the source code, then it can be compiled and distributed for free by anyone else. Best commercial model for a GPL-licensed software is to sell assistance to the end-user, but that is not very useful for a videogame, usually.

Using a CC-BY or CC-0 is not as restrictive as the OpenSurge license itself. You could take the song or assets of the game and reuse them as you wish, but then you are not obligated to distribute your project in a libre way. Even with a share alike CC I cannot force you to make your application free -it would only affect my song. Basically anybody might take OpenSurge assets to build a privative project upon it, which in my opinion goes against freedom. OpenSurge is libre and all its content should be used for libre software. If you see the license I put to the song, it is CC-BY share-alike (so freedom is conserved, whatever you do to the song) and  non-commercial (since a commercial model for libre games, in my opinion, is not really a profitable thing -this way I avoid the song to be used by privative games). I understand that in this way some projects may loose the freedom to use my song, but I haven't seen many libre games selling things.

So I used a CC that is, in my opinion, the most similar thing I could make to a GPL, which is the license the game has and that, under my point of view, is the most adequate for libre games. With GPL, people can get commercial profit from your work, but they really have to build something upon it, and still they are forced to contribute to free software. With art, it is more complicated: they could simply take your thing and sell it with no extra-effort, and make privative stuff. If I am collaborating with a libre project, I will not allow using that songs for commercial uses, for the reasons I have explained.

To sum up, if you insist in having all resources as CC-BY or CC-0 (of course I understand that you have you have your philosophy behind this), then I am afraid I will not submit the songs for the project. I am very sorry for that, but it is the way I see the situation. Licensing is a very delicate thing and I would not like to see my songs used for things I do not agree with.

Last edited by TheSeventhEmerald (2018-08-19 10:01:42)


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#7 2018-08-19 19:23:55

Alexandre
Administrator
From: Brazil
Registered: 2009-01-27
Posts: 3,300
Website

Re: Crystal Temple Music

Hi TheSeventhEmerald,

First of all, thank you for bringing this discussion to the light. I understand it is very important for us to have transparency about things, and to let the motivations be made clear.

If you do not accept a non-NC license for the songs, please be certain that I respect that.

Regarding the sharealike licensing: I once favored that too, but it came to my knowledge an incompatibility between the GPL and the CC-BY-SA. I thought about the issue and figured the CC-BY would be a better choice. Usually people just want credit, and the CC-BY is designed to fit this purpose very well.

Licensing an asset under the CC-BY is not the end of the world in my view, and besides, who would use CC-BY assets anyway? Most likely it's other indie devs. A big profitable studio can produce its own assets.

Regarding the commercial usage, it's a sensitive point in the sense that not everyone will agree. I respect the different opinions smile But we still require the CC-BY/CC-0 for Open Surge assets.

From a practical point of view, Open Surge benefits from non-NC licenses (such as the CC-BY) as well:

  • Even though Open Surge is made available to you, players and modders, free of charge, it takes actual time to build it.

  • I mentioned a few times in this forum that we need funding to keep the project going. I also mentioned that one of the ways we can get funding is via an ad-supported mobile version of the game. Would this be a commercial usage of the engine and of the assets? Yes.

  • The CC-BY/CC-0 combo allows Open Surge to be featured in commercial PC magazines (I do not know if you have those in your countries). These magazines bring to the audience indie games and other computer software. They write articles about them as well, teaching how to use things and helping to spread the word. It's great.

Regarding selling MODs, I would see no problem if an indie dev created an original MOD with Open Surge and sold it on, say, itch.io to get funding. In this case, the GPL would still apply, together with its freedoms (including redistribution of the engine, etc). Who would pay for the game, in this case? As a player, I respect indie work and I understand that making a game is not free of cost. People can buy it. And even if the download is made available at no cost, making it costs the developer time and money. Either the developer maintains a full time job, or he does something else.

Finally, regardless of the licensing philosophy, I want to thank you personally for the time and concern you put into the contributions and into the project. I understand licensing is a sensitive point, but I also understand we share things in common, namely the passion for building these things. wink

G.E.R. wrote:

Summing up the aforesaid: if I created a .png-file (brickset, object sprite, enemy sprite, ect.) independently in Photoshop (with license!), I can posted this images for free using. I understand correctly?

What is asked is that you own the content and let it be released under a free license (CC-BY/CC-0), so others can benefit. How you create it, is up to you smile

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#8 2018-08-20 08:50:45

TheSeventhEmerald
Member
From: Spain
Registered: 2010-04-19
Posts: 302

Re: Crystal Temple Music

Hi Alexandre,

Thanks for sharing your point of view in the discussion. Knowing that the CC-BY-SA might be incompatible with GPL license and the other arguments you said, I'm going to reconsider to change my work to the CC-BY license. Also as you said, big companies (and even decent sized indie studios) have their own way to produce assets.
In principle I was going to upload some things with CC-BY, I simply thought that a more restrictive license may help to conserve freedom of project, but let me think about it a bit more. smile

I'll let you know editing this post.


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#9 2018-08-30 09:03:59

TheSeventhEmerald
Member
From: Spain
Registered: 2010-04-19
Posts: 302

Re: Crystal Temple Music

Ok, I finally decided to give the CC-BY license a try. If you see, I changed the license of the track in SoundCloud. I will upload loop-ready version of the song here very soon.

Also, if you want any improvement to the music it is the moment to say it! smile

Seing KZR advances with graphics, I think it is the moment to start working on Sunshine Paradise music. Expect it during September cool


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