I still don't like the idea of MP3s in BYOND games, If i connect and i suddenly start downloading something.mp3, i can tell you right now i'll be disconnecting... Mods I can make 45kb if I use crappy enough sampples ;) But midis are fine normally. Just gotta get out of the habbit of using vgmusic ones :D

In fact, I plan to bomb my local phone company. They don't want to upgrade because they don't want to pay for destruction costs... if I do it for them, suppose they'll allow DSL connections in my area? >:}

-LoW

LordJR wrote:

Naw... Mp3 are cool... and the MODz days are just about all gone... even though I'm a former trax'er!

LJR

ps. Its better to think upgrade, more bandwidth, than to stick to I only have dial-up kinda thinking.. If u don't have anything in your area then 1) Move 2) Complain to your local phone or cable company to offer it, make a note to bug them at least a few times every week like a telemarketer! Don't let them think that 56k dialup is all you need! Expand!! More cable! More Bandwidth! Upgrade! upgrade! upgrade! :P

From what little I've seen of the MOD community, I think it suffers from a lack of good tools (most are designed for DOS or else are plain buggy), few good sample resources, and lack of general awareness among the public. Add that WinAmp's support for MODs is kinda crappy (it doesn't loop them) and they become hard to play. Yet in games, they're amazing.

I wish for once someone would come up with a MOD-type format that uses compressed samples (lossless or lossy), and "context hooks". What I mean by that is that in gaming, or in any kind of computer application using background music, it would be great if one piece could segue into another or perhaps change moods as the pace changes.

Imagine for example you're playing an RPG where you're exploring a town. You leave the town and enter a light forest; wind instruments play, quietly at first until they dominate the piece. In darker parts of the forest, strings could start to take over, with percussion peeking in if any action commences. It'd be complicated but the end effect would be great, like a living soundtrack. If building context into an individual file was inappropriate, then at least it could have cues for a player to seamlessly load up and play a different file, with possibly a way to signal the player to switch to the finish (or a finish) of the piece. Cooler still if you could temporarily play two pieces at once, so one goes through a segue intro (that is, an intro designed to segue from another piece rather than introduce the music from silence) while the other one spins down.

Maybe that doesn't make a great deal of sense; I'm no musician. But I think the MOD format is good in principle if not necessarily in implementation. It could stand to be more popular, it needs much better editors and players than what's out there now, it needs more capabilities--to say nothing of standardization between the different formats. Continuous music and songs are two different concepts; MP3 serves the latter reasonably well for now, but the former is a niche that MODs have only begun to fill. Whether anything better will ever arise to fill it, I don't know. I hope so.

Lummox JR

Lord of Water wrote:

In fact, I plan to bomb my local phone company. They don't want to upgrade because they don't want to pay for destruction costs... if I do it for them, suppose they'll allow DSL connections in my area? >:}

-LoW

In this time of No Freedom of speech, watch out what you say... if the wrong type of Thought Police pick it up in this military/judicial ruled state we called the US catch word of this, you'll be labeled a terriost and hung but a closed court.

LJR