[Freeciv-Dev] Re: sound development

[Tomasz Wegrzanowski <maniek@xxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, Jun 18, 2000 at 07:56:16PM +0200, rutger@xxxxxxxx wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 16, 2000 at 11:07:47PM +0300, Vasil Mantarov wrote:
> > 
> >    Is there a possibility of including mp3s as files for ambient music
> >    for the different fractions?
> 
> You have GPL'd mp3s for FreeCiv?
> 
> What would be the advantage over something like
>   mpg123 ambient_music_for_my_fraction.mp3 & ./civ &

mp3 format is patently-problematic.

If anyone were interested :

  There is ongoing developement of *patent-free* compresed music format
  similar to mp3 called ogg.

  Library is ready.
  Encoder and decoder are ready for Linux,
  in various state of porting to other OSes.
  Plugins to all popular player are being developed,
  and are in various state of maturity. 

  Licensing for library is LGPL,
  for rest GPL.
  Developement is open.

  Compresion is usually 10% better than mp3's.
  There are minor quality issues (being fixed every week),
  but not visible for most of music.
  Biggest problem is 2x-5x bigger CPU utility when decoding,
  but it is probably only due to lack of optimalizations in
  this state of project.

URL is http://www.xiph.org/ogg/