Re: [PD] Creating auidioengines for games using PD
environment for experimenting with audio gameplay, but if it was a dead end development vise, maybe I should reconsider, because of the hard sell situation it would put me in. But fortunately your answers tells me to just continue using PD, even if certain legal issues still needs some ironing out. Any other info or theorizing about using PD in games both legally, design wise and technically, are most welcomed since it is highly relevant to my chapter about using PD for game design in general. Thank you all again and I hope you will all have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Cheers! Thomas [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Considering that I have had to deal with this legal minefield, I can say the following: Work with Miller to understand what is covered by the BSD license (not all of it is) There are a number of game engine issues which you need to address when using Pd (this is at the technical/code level) Don't worry about the patches. Any game is going to have encryption and other copy protection stuff on it. Please don't ask me to comment on the details of how PD has been/is being used. However, if you want to talk about the theory of PD being used in games, especially on a certain game console which I care about :-) then ask away... Note: if you are dealing with a game publisher on the legal aspects of PD, then it is likely that my company has enough legal agreements with them for me to talk about concrete uses of PD. Let me know in private email. Mark Danks Senior Manager, Developer Support SCEA *Thomas Jeppesen [EMAIL PROTECTED]* Sent by: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 12/19/2007 05:01 AM To PD-list@iem.at cc Subject [PD] Creating auidioengines for games using PD Hi, If I wanted to use PD to build an audio-engine for a game, how would the copyrights work if the game I was creating the engine for were commercial? Also, and I know this is going to be sensitive to some people in this community, but lets have the discussion anyway, I don't like the idea about anybody being able to open the audio-engine that I have created for a commercial game, as easy as they would any PD-patch out there. And I'm sure the people I would be working for would hate the Idea. Is there an easy or _normal_ solution to locking a patch so it can't be opened by anybody? I know that PD has been used in the production of the music-engine for Spore, but I havn't been able to find details about this particular project. Does anybody know anything about it that they could share with us? I read a post from Andy Farnell on the sound design mailing list, that EA had created their own version of PD for Spore, is that the only way to go about it if you wanted to use PD in a commercial production? And last but not least, are there any other know commercial products (games primarily) out there that has used PD as the audioengine? Cheers! Thomas ___ PD-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list ___ PD-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list ___ PD-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] Creating auidioengines for games using PD
First of all, thanks to everybody who have answered to my post. It is much appreciated! A lot of my questions have been answered – thank you all! The reason behind these questions is, I'm a thesis student (almost finished). In my thesis I've been working with gameplay in sound, primarily within a musical context. For this purpose I've build a prototype of a music game of my own design, using PD alone to build both the game engine (imagine that Andy ;) ) and the audio engine. Of all the game engines I've come across, none of them would have been able to do what I've been able to do in PD within a few months. This off course has to do with the very nature of advanced audio gameplay, which is relatively new in gamedesign, but as we've all seen with the rise of Guitar Hero and Sing Star, something that has become very big business. In other words, the market now seems ready for this kind of audio/music gameplay, but the technology available within the industry is not, at least not for small time developers, unless PD can be integrated within a product without to many obstacles. Since I'm not a programmer in the traditional sense, I'd like to continue using PD as my main environment for experimenting with audio gameplay, but if it was a dead end development vise, maybe I should reconsider, because of the hard sell situation it would put me in. But fortunately your answers tells me to just continue using PD, even if certain legal issues still needs some ironing out. Any other info or theorizing about using PD in games both legally, design wise and technically, are most welcomed since it is highly relevant to my chapter about using PD for game design in general. Thank you all again and I hope you will all have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Cheers! Thomas [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Considering that I have had to deal with this legal minefield, I can say the following: Work with Miller to understand what is covered by the BSD license (not all of it is) There are a number of game engine issues which you need to address when using Pd (this is at the technical/code level) Don't worry about the patches. Any game is going to have encryption and other copy protection stuff on it. Please don't ask me to comment on the details of how PD has been/is being used. However, if you want to talk about the theory of PD being used in games, especially on a certain game console which I care about :-) then ask away... Note: if you are dealing with a game publisher on the legal aspects of PD, then it is likely that my company has enough legal agreements with them for me to talk about concrete uses of PD. Let me know in private email. Mark Danks Senior Manager, Developer Support SCEA *Thomas Jeppesen [EMAIL PROTECTED]* Sent by: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 12/19/2007 05:01 AM To PD-list@iem.at cc Subject [PD] Creating auidioengines for games using PD Hi, If I wanted to use PD to build an audio-engine for a game, how would the copyrights work if the game I was creating the engine for were commercial? Also, and I know this is going to be sensitive to some people in this community, but lets have the discussion anyway, I don't like the idea about anybody being able to open the audio-engine that I have created for a commercial game, as easy as they would any PD-patch out there. And I'm sure the people I would be working for would hate the Idea. Is there an easy or ”normal” solution to locking a patch so it can't be opened by anybody? I know that PD has been used in the production of the music-engine for Spore, but I havn't been able to find details about this particular project. Does anybody know anything about it that they could share with us? I read a post from Andy Farnell on the sound design mailing list, that EA had created their own version of PD for Spore, is that the only way to go about it if you wanted to use PD in a commercial production? And last but not least, are there any other know commercial products (games primarily) out there that has used PD as the audioengine? Cheers! Thomas ___ PD-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list ___ PD-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] Creating auidioengines for games using PD
is covered by the BSD license (not all of it is) There are a number of game engine issues which you need to address when using Pd (this is at the technical/code level) Don't worry about the patches. Any game is going to have encryption and other copy protection stuff on it. Please don't ask me to comment on the details of how PD has been/is being used. However, if you want to talk about the theory of PD being used in games, especially on a certain game console which I care about :-) then ask away... Note: if you are dealing with a game publisher on the legal aspects of PD, then it is likely that my company has enough legal agreements with them for me to talk about concrete uses of PD. Let me know in private email. Mark Danks Senior Manager, Developer Support SCEA *Thomas Jeppesen [EMAIL PROTECTED]* Sent by: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 12/19/2007 05:01 AM To PD-list@iem.at cc Subject [PD] Creating auidioengines for games using PD Hi, If I wanted to use PD to build an audio-engine for a game, how would the copyrights work if the game I was creating the engine for were commercial? Also, and I know this is going to be sensitive to some people in this community, but lets have the discussion anyway, I don't like the idea about anybody being able to open the audio-engine that I have created for a commercial game, as easy as they would any PD-patch out there. And I'm sure the people I would be working for would hate the Idea. Is there an easy or _normal_ solution to locking a patch so it can't be opened by anybody? I know that PD has been used in the production of the music-engine for Spore, but I havn't been able to find details about this particular project. Does anybody know anything about it that they could share with us? I read a post from Andy Farnell on the sound design mailing list, that EA had created their own version of PD for Spore, is that the only way to go about it if you wanted to use PD in a commercial production? And last but not least, are there any other know commercial products (games primarily) out there that has used PD as the audioengine? Cheers! Thomas ___ PD-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list ___ PD-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list -- Use the source ___ PD-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] Creating auidioengines for games using PD
On Wed, 19 Dec 2007 23:49:15 -0500 Chris McCormick [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: They are risk averse and will shoot your ideas down with economic figures from years old games (gosh, Risk aversity in games is an interesting topic in it's own right. I read somewhere that 86(96??) percent of games are deemed failures. What other industry has this profile? Mineral/oil prospecting?! If this is true i) You can hardly call games a risk averse business. ii) The profits on successful games must be COLOSSAL iii) Something is terribly wrong and development needs re-balancing somehow. Here's what we are up againstParts of the equation leading to same old same old crap conservatism (and I'm largely repeating other peoples voices here...) Games came from bedroom hackers to multi-billon industry in a decade! Talk about growing pains. A self cannibalisation of an inward looking industry. Paranoid protectionism and consequent lack of skills fluidity and atrophy of intellectual impetus... (pretty harsh, but a fair view of games circa 2004, things have improved since.) Premature compartmentalisation of roles in a forced top down design model, eg sound designer vs audio programmer or level designer vs script writer. Causes inefficiently decoupled teams. Powerful forces trying to subvert/subsume gaming into the Hollywood linear narrative (take the games market to sell what amount to interactive films) A very fickle marketplace. Hostile societal and political lobbys (viz violence, political censorship, ideological engineering). No reliable software metrics for development. Hardware is a rapidly moving target. Some games are obsolete before they get halfway through the dev lifecycle. Hampered by inability to rapidly redepoly content on new platforms because of proprietary obstacles. Downstream publishers destroying years of production work by insisting on encumbrances, alienating users with aggressive copy protection that makes products unusable. So, maybe we're crazy trying to advocate disruptive new technology into that situation, but someone has to do it ;) -- Use the source ___ PD-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] Creating auidioengines for games using PD
On Wed, 19 Dec 2007 23:49:15 -0500 Chris McCormick [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Unless you run Pd as a separate process and send it network commands, you're going to have to have to modify Pd at least a little bit to get it integrated with your game engine. Popular glue code within game dev is lua, so Pdlua from Claude and the peeps at Goto10 seems a very useful bridge. Another powerful tool is OSC, most useful in the prototyping stage of development. It's easy and helpful to encapsulate all your sound objects with an OSC interface to make them portable. It has the advantage of being able to run the game code and sound code on two separate machines, nice decoupling of resources. A very simple intro to the fun of OSC in game dev http://www.obiwannabe.co.uk/tutorials/gamedev/OSC/oschooks.html -- Use the source ___ PD-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] Creating auidioengines for games using PD
Hallo, Andy Farnell hat gesagt: // Andy Farnell wrote: Popular glue code within game dev is lua, so Pdlua from Claude and the peeps at Goto10 seems a very useful bridge. Btw.: Graham Wakefield and I made Vessel/lua~ [1] run on Pd: There are still some small bugs to sort out and one feature to add till a first release, but I'm very excited about this. [1] http://www.mat.ucsb.edu/%7Ewakefield/lua%7E/lua%7E.htm Ciao -- Frank Barknecht _ __footils.org__ ___ PD-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] Creating auidioengines for games using PD
On Thu, 20 Dec 2007 22:32:06 +0100 Frank Barknecht [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hallo, Andy Farnell hat gesagt: // Andy Farnell wrote: Popular glue code within game dev is lua, so Pdlua from Claude and the peeps at Goto10 seems a very useful bridge. Btw.: Graham Wakefield and I made Vessel/lua~ [1] run on Pd: There are still some small bugs to sort out and one feature to add till a first release, but I'm very excited about this. Yu! Me too! :) Bookmarked for new year experimentation with the Pd verision. Cheers Frank, a. [1] http://www.mat.ucsb.edu/%7Ewakefield/lua%7E/lua%7E.htm Ciao -- Frank Barknecht _ __footils.org__ ___ PD-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list -- Use the source ___ PD-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
[PD] Creating auidioengines for games using PD
Hi, If I wanted to use PD to build an audio-engine for a game, how would the copyrights work if the game I was creating the engine for were commercial? Also, and I know this is going to be sensitive to some people in this community, but lets have the discussion anyway, I don't like the idea about anybody being able to open the audio-engine that I have created for a commercial game, as easy as they would any PD-patch out there. And I'm sure the people I would be working for would hate the Idea. Is there an easy or ”normal” solution to locking a patch so it can't be opened by anybody? I know that PD has been used in the production of the music-engine for Spore, but I havn't been able to find details about this particular project. Does anybody know anything about it that they could share with us? I read a post from Andy Farnell on the sound design mailing list, that EA had created their own version of PD for Spore, is that the only way to go about it if you wanted to use PD in a commercial production? And last but not least, are there any other know commercial products (games primarily) out there that has used PD as the audioengine? Cheers! Thomas ___ PD-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] Creating auidioengines for games using PD
I think the code for making PD patches proprietary is proprietary... d. Thomas Jeppesen wrote: I'm sure the people I would be working for would hate the Idea. Is there an easy or ”normal” solution to locking a patch so it can't be opened by anybody? -- derek holzer ::: http://www.umatic.nl ::: http://blog.myspace.com/macumbista ---Oblique Strategy # 138: Retrace your steps ___ PD-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] Creating auidioengines for games using PD
Thomas Jeppesen wrote: Hi, If I wanted to use PD to build an audio-engine for a game, how would the copyrights work if the game I was creating the engine for were commercial? Also, and I know this is going to be sensitive to some people in this community, but lets have the discussion anyway, I don't like the idea about anybody being able to open the audio-engine that I have created for a commercial game, as easy as they would any PD-patch out there. And I'm sure the people I would be working for would hate the Idea. Is there an easy or ”normal” solution to locking a patch so it can't be opened by anybody? the first idea that comes to my mind is by binarizing the pd-files (that is: make the files non-human readable); and write a small converter that will revert your changes before Pd parses the file. the simplest way would probably just add a constant offset to each character, does making the file not recognizable on first glance. more sophisticated solutions would involve encryption. but then, what do you really want to protect? I read a post from Andy Farnell on the sound design mailing list, that EA had created their own version of PD for Spore, is that the only way to go about it if you wanted to use PD in a commercial production? creating your own version of Pd is probably the most simple way to achieve a locked version. another reason for this is probably to include all external objects into a single binary and strip all the objects not needed. btw, commercial is not contradictory to open source. mfga,sdr IOhannes ___ PD-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] Creating auidioengines for games using PD
i can't imagine how a game's sales would be in any way compromised by the audio engine being open source or not. but then again i'm not a complete bastard lawyer type of person. ___ PD-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] Creating auidioengines for games using PD
(sory to bottom post Dereks reply, I lost the parent) Thomas, the thing is not to implement a games engine in Pd, but to implement Pd in game engines. The former is foolish, trust me :) I heard that EA have their own build called EApd I also know that one *very* large company has Pd in RD for their console platform. I am also talking to some development companies and advocating Pd to some games engine manufacturers for procedural audio. My mission is more to do with establishing an industry standard language for proc audio, being dataflow. For many reasons Millers Pd is the correct choice and almost optimal object set. The widely held view is that the trick is to implement Pd within the existing plugin structure of current technologies. I wouldn't bother trying to hide your work, publish it and join in the advancement of technology for everyone. Work on getting your client to take a non-exclusive license or buyout of your work and impress the value of open source technology on them. Open source is not incompatible with profitable enterprise. A better choice for you would be Max if you must follow this road, but then you'll need to negotiate a license with Cycling74. best regards, Andy On Wed, 19 Dec 2007 16:05:14 +0100 Derek Holzer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I think the code for making PD patches proprietary is proprietary... d. Thomas Jeppesen wrote: I'm sure the people I would be working for would hate the Idea. Is there an easy or _normal_ solution to locking a patch so it can't be opened by anybody? -- derek holzer ::: http://www.umatic.nl ::: http://blog.myspace.com/macumbista ---Oblique Strategy # 138: Retrace your steps ___ PD-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list -- Use the source ___ PD-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] Creating auidioengines for games using PD
here's a game-like app with pd for audio. http://fijuu.com ___ PD-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] Creating auidioengines for games using PD
On Wed, Dec 19, 2007 at 02:01:31PM +0100, Thomas Jeppesen wrote: If I wanted to use PD to build an audio-engine for a game, how would the copyrights work if the game I was creating the engine for were commercial? Pd uses the BSD license which essentially gives you the freedom to create your own closed source version with your own modifications, as long as you include the BSD license text, with Miller's copyright notice in your app somewhere. You can find that text in the Pd sources and put it in your installer or an 'about' window, or the game's documentation for example. That is basically the only requirement of the BSD. (Please don't take this as legal advice since I am not a lawyer, and I will not be held responsible for anything that happens whatsoever should you do anything I might have suggested). Also, and I know this is going to be sensitive to some people in this community, but lets have the discussion anyway, I don't like the idea about anybody being able to open the audio-engine that I have created for a commercial game, as easy as they would any PD-patch out there. And I'm sure the people I would be working for would hate the Idea. Is there an easy or ?normal? solution to locking a patch so it can't be opened by anybody? There is no reason that they should be able to open your audio engine (the source code). If you integrate it with your closed source game, and don't release the source of your modified Pd core, there is basically nothing (short of decompiling) that they can do. If on the other hand you are talking about the Pd patches that make up the actual guts of the sounds, then you will have to take extra steps to prevent people from modifying those patches. You could do this using asymmetric cryptography. You would create a key pair and use one key (private) to encrypt all of the patches, and then hide the second key (public) in your source code somewhere and use that to decrypt the patches as they are loaded. This means that nobody can create their own patches or modify yours without the private key and hence they can't modify your patches. I think that this is what a lot of games consoles like the PS3 and PSP do to prevent people from running homebrew code on their systems. However, consider this: most games have data files that people figure out how to hack eventually. After a while games companies started to actively encourage this releasing by releasing level and graphics editors with their games. Eventually they started to actually include whole APIs which people could use to 'mod' the original game. Some of these mods have even gone on to be commercial successes in their own right. If I were you, I would not actively discourage people from being able to mess with the data files (or audio engine pd-patches or whatever) since many potential consumers of your game will see this as an asset of the game and you will probably sell more copies because of it. The philosophy in the games industry at large is rapidly changing. Everyone is starting to realise that open technologies (like TCP, HTML, mp3s, etc.) are the ones that are generally the most successful in the market place. People like freedom. People like player created content, and players like to create content - it makes the game more fun. If you make your product more free, in general you will have happier customers who pay more for your product and evangelise it to other potential customers. If I have convinced you of this, then your only issue will be to convince your publisher. Unfortunately this will be a difficult task since the mid-level manager types who will have the power are generally about 10 to 20 years behind the curve in pretty much every way. They will try to make you cripple or remove the best things about your game, close them up, and DRM the crap out of them. They are risk averse and will shoot your ideas down with economic figures from years old games (gosh, that sounds a bit bitter doesn't it ;) ). I know that PD has been used in the production of the music-engine for Spore, but I havn't been able to find details about this particular project. Does anybody know anything about it that they could share with us? There is an article on Gamasutra about integrating Pd into your game engine, and there was a post (I think) on my Max/MSP list about Spore using Pd inside it, but I don't think of anything other than those bits of info. I read a post from Andy Farnell on the sound design mailing list, that EA had created their own version of PD for Spore, is that the only way to go about it if you wanted to use PD in a commercial production? Unless you run Pd as a separate process and send it network commands, you're going to have to have to modify Pd at least a little bit to get it integrated with your game engine. PDa will help you integrate on low end platforms and older/handheld consoles. In the end, it's not very difficult to do and is marginally easier to do on Windows since
Re: [PD] Creating auidioengines for games using PD
Chris McCormick wrote: On Wed, Dec 19, 2007 at 02:01:31PM +0100, Thomas Jeppesen wrote: If I wanted to use PD to build an audio-engine for a game, how would the copyrights work if the game I was creating the engine for were commercial? Pd uses the BSD license which essentially gives you the freedom to create your own closed source version with your own modifications, as long as you include the BSD license text, with Miller's copyright notice in your app somewhere. You can find that text in the Pd sources and put it in your installer or an 'about' window, or the game's documentation for example. That is basically the only requirement of the BSD. (Please don't take this as legal advice since I am not a lawyer, and I will not be held responsible for anything that happens whatsoever should you do anything I might have suggested). However, it is worth noting that not _all_ of Pd is BSD licensed. While all of the core is, a large number of externals are licensed under the GPL. Also, be sure to read the exact text in the BSD license distributed with Pd, as there are many variants that have different sets of requirements. -- Russell Bryant ___ PD-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Re: [PD] Creating auidioengines for games using PD
Considering that I have had to deal with this legal minefield, I can say the following: Work with Miller to understand what is covered by the BSD license (not all of it is) There are a number of game engine issues which you need to address when using Pd (this is at the technical/code level) Don't worry about the patches. Any game is going to have encryption and other copy protection stuff on it. Please don't ask me to comment on the details of how PD has been/is being used. However, if you want to talk about the theory of PD being used in games, especially on a certain game console which I care about :-) then ask away... Note: if you are dealing with a game publisher on the legal aspects of PD, then it is likely that my company has enough legal agreements with them for me to talk about concrete uses of PD. Let me know in private email. Mark Danks Senior Manager, Developer Support SCEA Thomas Jeppesen [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent by: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 12/19/2007 05:01 AM To PD-list@iem.at cc Subject [PD] Creating auidioengines for games using PD Hi, If I wanted to use PD to build an audio-engine for a game, how would the copyrights work if the game I was creating the engine for were commercial? Also, and I know this is going to be sensitive to some people in this community, but lets have the discussion anyway, I don't like the idea about anybody being able to open the audio-engine that I have created for a commercial game, as easy as they would any PD-patch out there. And I'm sure the people I would be working for would hate the Idea. Is there an easy or ?normal? solution to locking a patch so it can't be opened by anybody? I know that PD has been used in the production of the music-engine for Spore, but I havn't been able to find details about this particular project. Does anybody know anything about it that they could share with us? I read a post from Andy Farnell on the sound design mailing list, that EA had created their own version of PD for Spore, is that the only way to go about it if you wanted to use PD in a commercial production? And last but not least, are there any other know commercial products (games primarily) out there that has used PD as the audioengine? Cheers! Thomas ___ PD-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list ___ PD-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management - http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
