MP3 licensing is over: Disable the FMOD hack

ID:2242786
 
May 1 2017, 6:50 pm
Applies to:
Status: Open
Issue hasn't been assigned a status value.
BYOND currently has MP3 support via FMOD. Now that MP3 is a free format:

https://www.iis.fraunhofer.de/en/ff/amm/prod/audiocodec/ audiocodecs/mp3.html

we can disable the code that checks if a file is an mp3 file to prevent it from playing.
May 2 2017, 1:20 pm
+1
May 2 2017, 2:20 pm
It's more of a thing with BYOND's special license with FMOD than it is with the MP3 people themselves. I believe a new license has to be negotiated (and probably paid for) before those kinds of changes can be made.
May 3 2017, 5:55 am
Fmod has a special completely free license for projects under a certain size. I don't know if BYOND qualifies but it's something worth looking into
May 21 2017, 7:57 pm
do away with fmod and use a better sound engine :P
May 28 2017, 11:56 pm (Edited on May 29 2017, 12:04 am)
Only thing I could think of is switching to OpenAL and rebind anything directed to the web client to Web Audio API. Figure out how to include support for newer codecs like Opus as well maybe.

Of course that would sound pretty hard and a huge use of time considering there's may only one to a few active byond client developers. (I think it's one guy but I could be wrong)

If Fmod works on desktop and webclient (and there's an html5 beta, I assume using the web audio api) and there's no major plans to reconjigure byond to work on a newer client, I don't see why FMOD needs to be changed unless it becomes too expensive to use.
Apr 8 2018, 11:57 pm (Edited on Apr 9 2018, 12:05 am)
Bumping this.

Modern composers make music in DAW's that export to wav and mp3 most of the time. Nobody really uses midi as a playback format any more and while there are small communities of people listening to and making chiptunes and .mod files, they are definitely the minority.

Getting proper music in a BYOND game has always been a nightmare for these reasons, and this still being an issue in 2018 is pretty silly.

I can go and make my own composition in Ableton right now but actually getting it to playback in BYOND without seriously compromising sound quality or bloating the project size is basically impossible.

If the issue really is that BYOND's license with FMOD needs to be updated in some way and paid for, at least find out how much it costs and maybe try and crowdfund it from the BYOND community?

This is assuming that that's even the case of course. After checking FMOD's licensing I don't think there's actually any reason for mp3 to still be disabled currently- they don't mention anything specific about the mp3 file format. Has anybody actually checked in with the FMOD people regarding this?
Apr 9 2018, 12:06 am (Edited on Apr 9 2018, 12:13 am)
BYOND supports OGG vorbis, BTW. I make chiptunes. That's what I export to.

MP3 would be a nice format to have access to, but I'll acknowledge that OGG is pretty much the better, if less-used, format.