Feature Request - Music!

[RevenantBob]

How about allowing us to load up MP3 or Ogg or midi files to our clients to help with the mood of the setting? It's a feature I've modded into maptool that completely enhances the gameplay. Thought it'd be nice to have in Fantasy Grounds.

[Qai]

That would be a really nice feature, as music is something I've done from time to time. The way I currently do it is through RaidCall. We use RaidCall as our voice communication program (which for a GM is an extremely excellent program for managing several gaming groups and having an overall go-to place for hanging out outside of gaming sessions). RaidCall has a very neat feature that lets you play music on your end and then share that music stream with everyone else in the channel.

[Trenloe]

This has been asked for/requested/discussed quite a few times before: www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?19434-Pushing-Sound-Files and in other threads.

Doing music would be a big investment and take up a lot of bandwidth - especially as FG uses a client server architecture, the GM side would be streaming music to each player, using bandwidth for each of those players. Much better to use a server based voice application (like TeamSpeak) to do this as the GM will only be steaming once (to the TS server) not multiple times. If you've been on these forums a while you'll see posts from GMs complaining about slow response/lag of FG over a less than ideal network, so keeping GM bandwidth down is a priority.

There are sound effects currently on the FG wish list first page, with music streaming being way down the list on page 5: https://fg2app.idea.informer.com/

[RevenantBob]

This has been asked for/requested/discussed quite a few times before: www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?19434-Pushing-Sound-Files and in other threads.

Doing music would be a big investment and take up a lot of bandwidth - especially as FG uses a client server architecture, the GM side would be streaming music to each player, using bandwidth for each of those players. Much better to use a server based voice application (like TeamSpeak) to do this as the GM will only be steaming once (to the TS server) not multiple times. If you've been on these forums a while you'll see posts from GMs complaining about slow response/lag of FG over a less than ideal network, so keeping GM bandwidth down is a priority.

There are sound effects currently on the FG wish list first page, with music streaming being way down the list on page 5: https://fg2app.idea.informer.com/

This isn't true. It can send the music to the person much like an image file then commands to play said music. It's really no different than an image, and you just add in fmod API to play the music for code. Like I said, I've coded this in other programs and it works wonderfully.

[Trenloe]

This isn't true. It can send the music to the person much like an image file then commands to play said music. It's really no different than an image, and you just add in fmod API to play the music for code. Like I said, I've coded this in other programs and it works wonderfully.
Nice idea, don't get me wrong, but not really tenable with the current FG network libraries - which I believe are single threaded, you may have noticed that the GM client hangs for a few seconds when a player first connects? M_W has indicated that he would like to review the network libraries in the future which may make transfer of large files less impacting on the GM and players and make this possible.

Anyway, it's not up to me if it gets put in FG - but I'm guessing by the 16 votes on the wish list that this is not seen as a high priority - especially when there are very easy methods to do this now through other apps. When I run my games I just have another user in Teamspeak and constantly stream background music and effects that way - ask the group I ran through Star Wars this week, we had a great time with the Star Wars music blaring out. The music I used during this game session is well in excess of 30MB - sharing that to 5 players the way FG currently shares images would have had a major impact on the game - whereas using TeamSpeak I could chop and change the Star Wars intro theme, to the Cantina music, to the Empire March, to the Mos Eisley spaceport music... etc.. I didn't have to worry about wondering if my large MP3 files had uploaded to the PCs at the point when I wanted to play it, and also have a major slow down of my game while the single threaded network libraries transfer the large files...

[Qai]

As much as I would love to see music capability in FG, I would put it near the bottom of the list for the simple reason that other software mentioned can already accomplish this when used in conjunction with FG. It's really much the same argument used for other things like map making tools. Sure, it would be great if FG had this capability as well, but other software already exists that can suffice. The dev team is already stretched as it is and I would rather work be done to improve the core app or new features added that can't be found elsewhere before stuff like music is addressed, especially with the growing VTT market.

As for FMOD, I also have some experience with it. It is a very clean, very easy API to use. However, it has a completely different licensing scheme for inclusion into commercial applications. Sadly, I think this would be more of a hindrance for something small-scale like FG.

The point about bandwidth usage I think is a red herring. If the internet connection is wonky, then you simply don't use audio and you don't have a bandwidth problem.

However, all that aside, a feasible compromise would be the ability to create sound modules in just the same way that tokens and rulesets are created. All the players would download the module before the session and the music would be triggered by the GM as needed. In this case, all the music is played locally from the client, nothing is streamed, and the only bandwidth would be a few bytes instructing the client which track or sound effect to play. Literally the same amount of info would be transferred for this as it is for dice rolls.

[RevenantBob]

However, all that aside, a feasible compromise would be the ability to create sound modules in just the same way that tokens and rulesets are created. All the players would download the module before the session and the music would be triggered by the GM as needed. In this case, all the music is played locally from the client, nothing is streamed, and the only bandwidth would be a few bytes instructing the client which track or sound effect to play. Literally the same amount of info would be transferred for this as it is for dice rolls.

That was my thought too in quite a similar fashion.

I just tossed FMOD out there at random as well as a portable API. I havn't looked at it's licensing in ages. :)

[damned]

The point about bandwidth usage I think is a red herring. If the internet connection is wonky, then you simply don't use audio and you don't have a bandwidth problem.

sadly its not a red herring. fg seems to be quite limited in its upload (from the GM) speeds. for about 6 months i was using a beta version of the C&C ruleset. because i was the only one that had it installed and everytime there was a new beta release it meant 10mb uploads to each player. just 10mb added significant time/delay to the start of each session. same in the recent virtual con 3 - 6 players for a one shot session - still needed to download the 10mb. fortunately i did get everyone connected prior to game so we avoided the downtime. sometimes this can be done sometimes it cant. i didnt do it for virtual con 2 and the first 45mins were a wash...

[Moon Wizard]

Luckily, sound files are more compact than graphic files which are the bulk of ruleset memory usage.

I used to build something similar for a different product many years ago. It was built-in sounds (i.e. ruleset) that could be triggered based on scripts. They were fun, but you have to get a whole library of sounds or else it gets old very quickly, plus the licensing is a challenge to do anything official.

We're looking at moving to Unity. While sounds will probably still not be part of the initial migration to the new platform, the built-in sound support should make it easier when we do get a chance.

Regards,
JPG

[brochr]

When I run my games I just have another user in Teamspeak and constantly stream background music and effects that way - ask the group I ran through Star Wars this week, we had a great time with the Star Wars music blaring out. The music I used during this game session is well in excess of 30MB - sharing that to 5 players the way FG currently shares images would have had a major impact on the game - whereas using TeamSpeak I could chop and change the Star Wars intro theme, to the Cantina music, to the Empire March, to the Mos Eisley spaceport music... etc.. I didn't have to worry about wondering if my large MP3 files had uploaded to the PCs at the point when I wanted to play it, and also have a major slow down of my game while the single threaded network libraries transfer the large files...

I converted to FG & Teamspeak about three months ago from Maptool. One of the unexpected bonuses was how easy it was to add a soundboard plug in to Teamspeak. For the latest couple of games I have used it for sound effects, and really enjoyed the enhancement.

From the DM side I have a couple of thoughts:

- mood music is great in theory but you can't really tell how loud it is for the players. A solution where chat, music and sound effects are all on separate channels for the client would be ideal. However, the down side is that you are then increasing bandwidth.
- we have one player on a satellite connection. His experience of normal chat is iffy at best...sound effects were OK but mood music killed TS the connection.
- my two cents is that sound effects add more to story telling (especially following a listen check). For me, music is a nice-to-have. If client bandwidth wasn't an issue I would probably use more.

Take care

[Von Stalhein]

I'm a bit of an audiophile and I find even voice chat over IP to be a horrendous experience for my ears. However, I do love using music in games ever since I used Neverwinter Nights as a DMing platform. The best solution in my view is to use a system that is the same as Neverwinter Nights. Specifically, music that DMs want to use must be packaged up and sent to the players via their own means (we used to use email or a shared box.net account). The players stick it in a data folder. Then during the game, the DM has access to and control of the playlist, volume slider and so on. This means that everyone gets nice background music at a high sound quality and the bandwidth is absolutely minimal (since it's just sending the play/pause/volume/etc. commands). It also bypasses any concerns about copyright etc. that the developers of FG might reasonably have, because the software itself isn't transmitting anything musical. It is the group's responsibility to make sure they are acting reasonably/legally with regard to the files they transfer.

I would have thought that adding a little media player to the software and connecting its commands to accept incoming networking signals (as well as having a volume override and what-have-you for the client) would be a pretty easy thing to implement?

[Blacky]

Not that easy. Currently, the networking code of FG is very much borderline, having issue with the simplest thing. Adding something else like that should come after cleaning networking.

But in principle, it does work. Rolistik did handle music like this, and Rolisteam tries to; for example.

The copyright issue is a non issue. Or to be more on point, there's as much concern with than there is with images (maps, tokens, illustrations).