Custom Music

[SziserTrue]

My Idea is simple : to make folder which can contain your custom mp3's. I was playing your game a lot and I love it ,but after all this time I would like to add some of my custom space music

[Jap2.0]

Would it work if you added your own custom music to (Steam/SteamApps/common/)Factorio/data/base/sound/ambient? Note that it uses the .ogg file format, so you'd have to convert to that first.

[eradicator]

Would it work if you added your own custom music to (Steam/SteamApps/common/)Factorio/data/base/sound/ambient? Note that it uses the .ogg file format, so you'd have to convert to that first.

As everything else music has to be defined as a type = "ambient-sound" prototype to work in the game.

@OP:
I never understood why people want built-in audio players in games. Why don't you just turn the game music off and use a proper media player? (I use foobar, so i have no idea what the current trend in media players is. Maybe winamp is still alive?)

[BlueTemplar]

Ease of use? Paste in the folder and forget?
Also, matters when the music is tied to in-game events - like I think it actually is in Factorio?

[eradicator]

Ease of use? Paste in the folder and forget?

How is that easier than just pressing play on an already configured playlist in my player?

Also, matters when the music is tied to in-game events - like I think it actually is in Factorio?

If you want event-awareness, "paste and forget" doesn't work anyway. The game can't magically know what music you'd want for which event.

[BlueTemplar]

Because you don't have to launch a separate program?

I should have made clearer that this was meant as an "either", rather than an "or".

But it kind of can, if they are organized in sub-folders, for instance music/battle/ and music/peaceful/ (or just music/) ...
(This is not as easy as just pasting a big list of course, as it requires the player to pick and choose...)

[eradicator]

Because you don't have to launch a separate program?

Do people manually start/end their music player all the time? Mine starts when i start the system and and stops when i shut it down. And is controlled by the media keys on my keyboard.

But it kind of can, if they are organized in sub-folders, for instance music/battle/ and music/peaceful/ (or just music/) ...
(This is not as easy as just pasting a big list of course, as it requires the player to pick and choose...)

Sure. That might work if there's few enough subfolders. People would still have to convert their stuff to ogg vorbis though because of licensing Edit: ok, not licensing. But there'd still need to be effort put into integrating mp3 decoding just for this.

[Koub]

Do people manually start/end their music player all the time?

Totally . But on the other way, I always listen to the game OST and sounds when I play, at the exceptions of some MMOs, if I need to group, and the sounds are too loud for me to hear my team mates in dungeons/raids.

[BlueTemplar]

Well, mp3's are a bonus, but not as necessary as a "paste and forget" system: there are a lot of programs to convert between the various audio formats... I think even Windows Media Player can do that out of the box?

I actually had older games music in mind, which is generally in .wav format.
(When it doesn't use a custom, hard to reproduce, on-the-fly music generation, I'm looking at you Alpha Centauri !)

----

P.S.:
Does anyone else find that Factorio's music is oddly similar to Dungeon Keeper's ? (also, the color palette...)
Compare :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASEb6ilob48&t=4m07s

And :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CA6hoW-qoK8

[bobingabout]

what was the audio format of files before they switched to OGG? I thought it was MP3, but it could be WAV... either way, it was changed a back in version 0.10 I think.

[eradicator]

Do people manually start/end their music player all the time?

Totally :). But on the other way, I always listen to the game OST and sounds when I play, at the exceptions of some MMOs, if I need to group, and the sounds are too loud for me to hear my team mates in dungeons/raids.

If it gets too loud or i've had enough i just press the play/pause hotkey on my keyboard. If i closed the actual player every time i'd have to manually restart it, what a hassle :p. (foobar2000 is pretty awesome both for functionality and customizability once you get used to it.)

what was the audio format of files before they switched to OGG? I thought it was MP3, but it could be WAV... either way, it was changed a back in version 0.10 I think.

I bow before your seniority. I think i joined in 0.11, and started modding in 0.13? I found one old mod on my disk that has some mp3 files, but i can't find any reference to them in the lua files.

Well, mp3's are a bonus, but not as necessary as a "paste and forget" system: there are a lot of programs to convert between the various audio formats... I think even Windows Media Player can do that out of the box?

I have very low expectations when it comes to codec knowledge amongst common users. I'd expect them to just change the file extension via explorer rename. WMP doesn't even play ogg according to this list, let alone encode (the list doesn't distinguish). ITunes which also seems reasonably popular apparently has "limited support for ogg" whatever that means, probably play but nothing else.
And even if the conversion software was no problem at all, you still face two major problems:
1) Converting one lossy format to another is a shitty idea and can easily destroy audio quality.
2) Converting large amounts of songs takes correspondingly large amounts of time.

[Jap2.0]

I'm guessing VLC can convert to ogg.