Dune2 music

[dvalin]

Hi!

I'm working on Dune Legacy and as we want our project to be entirely free without any copyright issues

we will no longer ship data files with it any longer.

Therefore we are now using sandtools to extract the data etc.

But one thing I can't seem to find out is what kind of midi format does Dune2 use? And is there any

utils out there to convert it to "normal" midi?

Oh, btw. our url is still http://sourceforge.net/projects/dunelegacy and we are in great need of

people helping out, so if you wanna contribute, don't hesitate! :)

[stefanhendriks]

to be honest, i don't think ea will consider a law suit against a freeware dune2 project. But to answer your question, i have no clue. I know the 'c55' files are the sc55 format. (commonly used). Also there are MT32 midi files, with the extention 'xmi'.

I know c55 files can be played by renaming them to 'mid', i think any normal midi player can play them then. But for the xmi, i have no clue.

[dvalin]

Who knows, Blizzard did it against freecraft (clone of the warcraft2 engine) and making

sure that everything is free is always a benefit. Also it reduces the large amounts of

data that earlier needed to be distributed.

And last, when the project breaks copyrights etc. it scares away people, eg.

happypenguin.org and linuxgames.org won't publish anything about it until

things are fixed..

I'm having problems playing the midi files with TiMidity++, but I think your answer

will help me out, thanks :)

[stefanhendriks]

hmm, well i cannot use an extraction program since i have enhanced the gfx manually. Perhaps i can try to make it a seperate package and such to make sure that i do not get in legal trouble? We'll see what time tells.

[dvalin]

Unfortunately do we also have a lot of manually enhanced graphics for Dune Legacy too,

so for now I just have to drop it and replace it with some ugly, hasty graphics made

from scratch until I find a decent solution.

In theory a lot of graphics can be generated during the extraction based on the

original graphics, while we can make others from scratch..

Feel free to stop by #dunelegacy to exchange ideas.. :)

[MrFlibble]

I guess that legal in its 'narrow' definition means that you use the media freely unless you claim it as your own when it actually isn't, or try to sell it when you know the real owner won't benefit from that. In the 'broader' definition, legal means that whatever you do with media, you do it with a permission from the original author. However, I think that in case of Dune 2, you won't access the original author for the permission, and I hope they actually don't care.

It's different with Blizard. They're very anxious because of their projects' popularity. Many people still play Warcraft II and Starcraft online. Which means that any custom project that is based off Warcraft 2 or Starcraft and provides multiplayer option deviates new Warcraft 2 Battle.net Edition or Starcraft buyers. Which means stealing Blizzard's benefits, in a way.

Dune 2 has no multiplayer and is considered abandonware. Moreover, EA doesn't even support newer games like Dune2000 of Emperor, it is said.

It makes me sad that you have to drop the graphics made by me. But I'll be brave...

[dvalin]

MrFlibble: I'm sorry to have to do this, but this is really the best solution, as I've

explained the use of non-free material scares away contributors to the project, also

users. Also assuming that we won't get into trouble due to Dune2 being abandonware is quite

a risky assumption to make, also even if ea wouldn't take legal steps against us, the

game media would still not be legal for us to distribute and much less legal to modify.

But when things are getting into place I will use your ideas from your graphics and

I hope that you will still contribute, but we have to make sure that our project

stays free only using things we can distribute under our own license (GPL).

Btw. I forgot to mention that I meant #dunelegacy @ irc.freenode.net

[Caid Ivik]

hm, that gave me an idea: why don't you use a microphone or line-in cable? I've just tried it with my mp3 player and it isn't worst...

http://imperium.nazory.cz/Ordos%20Mentat.WAV

[dvalin]

Well, the problem is that I'm not able to play any of the midi files at all.

While those might be played on several windows players, I haven't found any player

able to play them on linux..

[stefanhendriks]

i still got the e-mails from EA, as i tried to get the source and had to tell about my project. I even spoke with their lawyers. Strictly spoken, they do NOT give permission of any kind with ANY product they have, this includes DUNE 2. So, they can sue you, as they have warned to do so.

Also, they said there is no such thing as Abandonware and dune 2 is NOT.

If you are interested in the mails sent, i can forward them to you.

@midi files:

I am unsure now if it was my program which could play the midi files or Winamp 5.x

Perhaps there is some code to read c55 midi format?

I am in the middle of moving on my own, so i won't stop by on the irc channel yet. But i am definatly interested to do so. Do you recommend some good , light, and fast, yet easy to use IRC program. (Definatly not mIRC ;)).

@ The mp3:

I don't think the voice itself is a problem, but the size. I already have to add my mp3 additions as an 'add-on'. But its definatly a good idea. :)

[Caid Ivik]

if Dune II could read it, then the decoder/reader/player should be inside the game code...

[stefanhendriks]

ofcourse, but do you have the dune 2 source? ;)

[dvalin]

Yes, there's no problem with the sound in the game, I'm able to extract and convert

it to ogg vorbis without any problems.

The only two things I have problems with now is the wsa(wsa2png exists, but is broken)

and midi files, so any help on these two would be greatly appreciated:)

For IRC I don't know, but for *NIX I prefer irssi, I don't use Windows..

[MrFlibble]

i still got the e-mails from EA, as i tried to get the source and had to tell about my project. I even spoke with their lawyers. Strictly spoken, they do NOT give permission of any kind with ANY product they have, this includes DUNE 2. So, they can sue you, as they have warned to do so.

Also, they said there is no such thing as Abandonware and dune 2 is NOT.

So Stefan, how do you deal with that legality stuff? ???

[Caid Ivik]

ofcourse, but do you have the dune 2 source? ;)

e-mail Petroglyph, perhaps somebody has; fck laws  ;D

[stefanhendriks]

So Stefan, how do you deal with that legality stuff? ???

do i have to answer that?

[dvalin]

seems like these midis are also compressed, the .xmi files consists of several .xmi files again,

I was able to extract them with RIPXMI.EXE, the .xmi files I extracted was I then finally

able to convert with xmi2mid.. Now let's see if I can get the source for ripxmi or something..

[dvalin]

xmi2mid v1.2 seems to convert these fully, I've mailed the author asking for the source,

now lets hope he's a nice guy :O)

[stefanhendriks]

multiple xmi files? when i look with xcc i see there are as many xmi files as c55 files and so on. I can even play the xmi files straight with winamp, though they sound weird.

[dvalin]

Stefan: I might be wrong, I made this assumption from that I wasn't able to play

the xmi files with other players, but ripxmi was able to extract xmi files

inside the xmi files again which I was able to play with other players.

xmi2mid v1.2 on the other hand was able to convert the  xmi files to midi files

(older versions did not).

But now I'm puzzled, does some of these xmi files contain several songs?

I can't seem to find all the songs from dune2 and when looking at the filenames

on the midi files that was shipped with dune legacy earlier, some of them had names

like DUNE7_1.MID, DUNE7_2.MID, DUNE7_3.MID, DUNE7_4.MID etc. which left me with

the impression that DUNE7.XMI had several songs. Can anyone give me any info on this?

Btw. Stefan, I never received your mail..

[stefanhendriks]

never received my mail? here is the picture i wanted to show you... (attachement post).

do not be mislead by the filenames, as they do not always corrospond to the filenames in the pak file.

the mt32.zip package on fed2k has the right filenames ;)

[attachment archived by Gobalopper]

[MrFlibble]

The tunes were converted from 'C55' files, which were actually XMI files with subsongs. The tunes are converted by Andrey Gayvoronsky, each number corresponds to the source XMI file, behind is corresponding subsong. There were actually some more subsongs in some tunes, but they seemed to be only some jingles.

Maybe this will help you. The pack was downloaded from Game music base.

[dvalin]

Heyo!

MrFlibble, I'm happy to tell you that I've recreated almost all the graphic from Dune Legacy that you

did with ImageMagick + Dune2 data files. It's done by cutting out parts of the images from Dune2 and

pasting them together, almost everything is in place, things just lacks some polishing and a better font.

So while your graphics won't be shipped with the game, all the graphics being generated from the Dune2

data are based on your design! :)

[MrFlibble]

Wowzer! Glad to hear that. I'm eager to see the results ;D

Must have been quite an effort to recreate everything... Thank you very much :)

[Caid Ivik]

Maybe this will help you. The pack was downloaded from Game music base.

wow, slovak site  ;D

but still, those mids aren't the best version available in Dune II...