[Freeciv-Dev] Re: MP3 Patent Issues

["Sam BC" <sambc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

How many sound-effects are there in the average game? I think 20 x 50 kb
would be making a very conservative guesstimate, and that is already nearly
1meg. Consider that atmospheric (reactive) music could be handled by the
same/similar function calls, there should be more sounds than that, why look
a gift-horse in the mouth, and similar ideas, MP3 has significant
advantages.

However, it may work well to have three downloads for Freeciv, only one of
which is required for no sound, and one of the other two to have sound.
Consider freeciv-1.12.0.tar.gz with the game and all code and default data.
Then freeciv-soundpcm-1.12.0.tar.gz and freeciv-soundmp3-1.12.0.tar.gz. The
latter would likely install to approx. 1/12 previous size, less if sounds
are short enough that low-bitrate would generate few artefacts.

Another £0.02 from me...


SamBC

> -----Original Message-----
> From: freeciv-dev-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:freeciv-dev-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Dan Gohman
> Sent: 30 June 2000 01:07
> To: freeciv-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [Freeciv-Dev] Re: MP3 Patent Issues
>
>
> On Thu, Jun 29, 2000 at 07:00:04PM -0400, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > Dan Gohman (gohmandj@xxxxxxxxxxx) wrote:
> >
> > > When discussion about sound support in freeciv was initially raised, I
> > > thought people were referring to sound-effects, which would be a nice
> > > addition to the clients.
> >
> > These sound effects could be in MP3 format.  MP3 doesn't always mean
> > "music".  It's just sound.  Thus the relevance of this discussion.
>
> 5 seconds of 8-bit mono 11025 Hz PCM data (uncompressed) is only
> around 50k.
> This is the level of sound quality used by many games and provides decent
> quality for sound-effects. Additionally, code support for this format for
> all of the various output devices and platforms would be fairly simple.
>
> Including an mp3 (or similar) player would only make sense for
> significantly
> longer sound samples and/or music.
>
> -Dan
>
> --
> Dan Gohman
> gohmandj@xxxxxxxxxxx
>
>
>