Legality of and Ideas about

Not a terribly clear title, I'm afraid, but I couldn't be asked to do two different topics.

Anyway: Intro music. Does anyone know what the law is concerning this? There was a topic about 'graphics stealing' not long ago which cleared my queries about that, so I thought I should ask about this... if you see what I mean.
Let me clarify: I've found some music that I thought would be good for the intro, but it's from a professional band. With the aforementioned topic in mind, and the fact that sending an email to the people asking if I could use it would almost certainly be ignored, I thought I'd ask here for advice...

And the 'Relativity' of the title isn't e=mc2 relativity (although that's not relativity either, technically speaking). My current 'work in progress' plug is being a nightmare - I originally thought that I could use Nova-style relative shields and damages, but with the small quirk of weapon systems (beams do less damage than 'pulses'), I've been having to redo the whole thing: a basic fighter has 500 shields. Realising that this was a little odd, I wondered what the history and thoughts of the community was on this subject...

As far as intro music goes, the best legal way around it would be using the music for "educational" purposes. If your plug-in is a non-profit project (if you were still in school this would be even better), it wouldn't be all that difficult to call it educational.

If you don't have permission, you can't use it, and Ambrosia might even get in trouble if they put it on the add-ons directory. This applies just as much if you're not charging any money, or if you're associated with a school (despite what the thousands of teachers who fast-forward over the 'no public performance' message on videos every day may think).

^What about the various Star Trek/Babylon 5/etc plugs out there? They usually use theme music from the show in question for their title sequences. Is that problematic?

Those are well-established franchises with big fanbases. The owners of those songs are accustomed to having their music used for non-profit applications and generally don't mind when their music is used - especially considering all the other things owned by them that ar being used. If a company does care, they'll let you know, at which point anybody who wishes to avoid trouble will terminate the project.

As for using a band's music, give it a shot. Send them an email asking for permission. Just be careful when choosing your words.

You are not allowed to include copyright materials in your own work without prior, explicit permission in writing from the copyright holder. Anybody who publishes your work on a server -- for example, Ambrosia -- could be considered to be jointly liable, under the recent rulings about mp3 sharing in various countries.

Regards

Martin

Magnatune offers music in standard formats (with no DRM) in a variety of generas and a simple mechanism to liscense music for games. You are also welcome to use magnatune to find music you like and then ask the artist directly if he'd/she'd let you use it for free for your project.

Steven Keys is another musician that does game music sometimes.

If you are interesting in classical music, try searching for "pandora records". They are a now-defunct record company that did the right thing and released their music under a creative commons liscense rather than let it rot until it became public domain (if ever).

The vast majority of popular music, that distributed by the great record cartels, is, quite frankly, less artistic than the average EV cheat plug-in. It is something that simply satisfies some base desire of the masses, and unlike the cheat plug-in, it does it for profit.

For scenario intro music, may I suggest some of the work of the Romantic composers? (Wagner is an example, but I'm not suggesting 'Ride of the Valkeries' here.) Many of their compositions were aimed at either inducing a state of awe, or making you want to invade Austria. These feelings easily translate to the sort of thing you want in an Epic EV total conversion.

Liszt's Totentanz is up there with there with the Imperial March as great menacing music, for instance. (Although I get the feeling he was showing off his amazingly 'l33t' piano skillz at some points in it, and it is about a quarter-hour long, so he puts some more subtle parts in as well.)

Lindley, on Sep 26 2005, 07:30 PM, said:

^What about the various Star Trek/Babylon 5/etc plugs out there? They usually use theme music from the show in question for their title sequences. Is that problematic?
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In those cases, the entire plug-in is infringing every bit as much as the music would, so it doesn't make much difference; the owners of Star Trek and Star Wars seem to have decided to tacitly allow most such uses by fans, although that wasn't always the case (remember Tom Spreen's problems over Rescue?), so you shouldn't assume that other series' owners take the same approach.

David Arthur, on Sep 27 2005, 05:26 PM, said:

In those cases, the entire plug-in is infringing every bit as much as the music would, so it doesn't make much difference; the owners of Star Trek and Star Wars seem to have decided to tacitly allow most such uses by fans, although that wasn't always the case (remember Tom Spreen's problems over Rescue?), so you shouldn't assume that other series' owners take the same approach.

Funny, that's very similar to what I wrote, although I guess a bit clearer (and probably a bit more accurate).

Another option for intro music is KillerTracks - the EV and EVO intro songs were both shortened versions of KT songs, so you know they have some awesome stuff. Unforunately, I think there's a fee of some sort involved.

Oh dear... That's all a lot more complicated than I'd hoped. There was me, thinking that with the graphics virtually done the only thing left was the long slog of resource creation...
Thanks for the advice, guys.

(Thinks) Now I think about it, I suspect that the band no longer exists. I imagine no-one's heard of it - does "Fields of the Nephilim" ring any bells? Who should I contact in the case of defunctness?

Chrome Falcon, on Sep 30 2005, 01:22 PM, said:

Oh dear... That's all a lot more complicated than I'd hoped. There was me, thinking that with the graphics virtually done the only thing left was the long slog of resource creation...
Thanks for the advice, guys.

(Thinks) Now I think about it, I suspect that the band no longer exists. I imagine no-one's heard of it - does "Fields of the Nephilim" ring any bells? Who should I contact in the case of defunctness?
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The best thing to do is to make your own music. I did this once - got a cheap keyboard with rhythms, programmed a short rock track, plugged it into my Mac and played some guitar with it.

And what do you know -- people actually liked it.

We sure did Martin!

Y'know, Chrome, I could just dust off Garageband and take it for a spin again. What sort of track were you looking for, and what length, approximately? If you'd like a techno track, it could be ready in about an hour or two.

Did I hear GarageBand? I'll help! I've been wanting to do another song for a while now, but just can't seem to get an inspiration. Also, I need a bit of motivation. I have a MIDI keyboard that can be connected to the computer and work with GarageBand.

But, of course, Anaxagoras did ask first...

Thanks a lot, nuku, Anaxagoras!

I was roughly working on the basic length of the original EV mp3s for length - about a minute and a half.

As for what sort... ugh. I've gone through several possibilities before I came here, all of them different. How about I give you a general synopsis of what the plug is like, and see what sort of ideas you come up with?

Chrome Falcon, on Oct 3 2005, 04:55 AM, said:

As for what sort... ugh. I've gone through several possibilities before I came here, all of them different. How about I give you a general synopsis of what the plug is like, and see what sort of ideas you come up with?
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I think that would help quite a bit.

Garageband...

Beginners...

Ok. Here goes.

By 2087 AD, Earth was roughly divided into two superpowers, in America and Europe. The second cold war had begun. In that year, a scientist successfully developed an artificial virus to act as the next superweapon - a means of devastating the enemy without destroying the cities. Due to an accident, the virus (codenamed Nekron) escaped, and started wiping out the world's population. Both sides assumed that they were under attack, and unleashed their arsenals. By the time a cure for the virus had been developed and some form of peace had been created, 90% of humanity had died.
10 years later, 2100, an alien race named the Centauri landed on Earth and made contact. They offer to help the humans, and and the humans officially become the Terran Colonies, a semi-independent part of the Centauri League.
That's general background info.

The factions are:
Terran Colonies

Centauri League: Run by the Centauri, who are generally nice people. A bit like the Miranu in EVO.

Pursk Imperium: Praski (Singular Pursk) are militaristic and unpredictable, but have officially stopped their wars of expansion. 'Officially'. They also have a nasty secret in the form of these guys...

Silent Watchers: Breakaway Pursk faction with dreams of galactic domination. They use a lot of infiltration and for most of the strings are trying to take over control of another faction. The big villains of the piece.

Skerathi Empire: Insectoid imperialists with a bad track record. They once controlled most of the galaxy, but their power is waning. There are some who are trying to get this back, though.

Tren Protectorate: Cyborgs (and honestly, I didn't know about the Tron movie before I made up the name for these guys - this is a story I've been working on for years) who use massive cargo ships to move around the galaxy. They have enough firepower and armour to mean that if they ever went on the offensive, very little could even slow them.

Any ideas coming through? Thanks, guys.

rmx256, on Oct 4 2005, 07:43 AM, said:

Garageband...

Beginners...

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Not like I can afford a freaking Mixing Board. Though I am considering hooking up my keyboard to my iBook. I'm sure it can be done.

Chrome Falcon, on Oct 4 2005, 10:33 AM, said:

<snip>
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Seems like it needs something that sounds epic.

rmx256, on Oct 4 2005, 04:43 AM, said:

Garageband...

Beginners...

No, just poorer. :mellow:

Anaxagoras, on Oct 4 2005, 03:46 PM, said:

Not like I can afford a freaking Mixing Board. Though I am considering hooking up my keyboard to my iBook. I'm sure it can be done.

Trust me, it can. I know from experience and the fact that it's working this second.

ProTools still has a free download version

And I do not have a mixing board- I had to sell that because I am also poor. And off topic...