Transport Tycoon Forums

Please update the jukebox with an mp3 feature so I can listen to my MP3s while I build the worlds greatest road transport network!

Well, this was something I was going to do ages ago, but it was decided that we didn't want to rely on too many external libraries. If the main developers decide against this any time soon, I will be happy to add an MP3, and Ogg Vorbis, player.

Altough mp3 would be nice, why doesn't TS just start up Winamp or something similar to listen to the music while playing TTD?

Yes, I think an internal mp3 player is quite unnecessary. All you need to do is run your favorite player seperately in the background. Why should I turn my Xmms off and use the internal one whenever I play OpenTTD?

dominik81 wrote:Yes, I think an internal mp3 player is quite unnecessary. All you need to do is run your favorite player seperately in the background. Why should I turn my Xmms off and use the internal one whenever I play OpenTTD?

because for windows users, alt-tab'ing is too much trouble

Airtaxi Pilot wrote:

dominik81 wrote:Yes, I think an internal mp3 player is quite unnecessary. All you need to do is run your favorite player seperately in the background. Why should I turn my Xmms off and use the internal one whenever I play OpenTTD?

because for windows users, alt-tab'ing is too much trouble

In windowed mode

I also run WinAmp in the background, just above the window of OpenTTD so I can even see what is playing

Well, I see no reason for OpenTTD to be able to play users' own MP3s/Oggs... for that, they might as well use Winamp in the background or something. But I was thinking more along the lines for actual game music. I don't really like the idea of just calling another program to do it (eg, the way extmidi does it under Linux), as that is really just an ugly hack, to be frank.

I remember seeing an addon for Winamp ages ago so that it can display the song name on screen (on top of everything) and so you can change it using shortcuts. Unfortunately I have no idea what its called. I don't even bother if there is music or not because I am too focused on how my trains are running - HELP! The game is dragging me in! Eeeeeek!

orudge wrote:Well, I see no reason for OpenTTD to be able to play users' own MP3s/Oggs... for that, they might as well use Winamp in the background or something. But I was thinking more along the lines for actual game music.

Oh, that's what you're talking about. Yeah, I totally agree on that. But we'd need new ingame music as well then.

Airtaxi Pilot wrote:

dominik81 wrote:Yes, I think an internal mp3 player is quite unnecessary. All you need to do is run your favorite player seperately in the background. Why should I turn my Xmms off and use the internal one whenever I play OpenTTD?

because for windows users, alt-tab'ing is too much trouble

use the always ontop feature or get duel monitors

Hey, everyone! stewis just volunteered to buy every OTTD player a second monitor

Supporting mp3 under openttd is completely useless when used only for music. Winamp is much more versatile that the current ottd music player. (Does it work? Never used it! .

Using mp3's is usefull only for one thing: sounds. The mp3-format requires little disk-space, and just a little cpu. Perhaps it could reduce memory usage. And, it could be used to add new sounds.

But still, with so many gameplay-wise more important suggestions, I can imagine that this come very low on the to-do-list....

Heh, running winamp in the background is A LOT easier. If you've got a good, configurable keyboard with extra buttons like mine, you can configure them to skip to the next song and such. I can't live without it anymore. Or you could build an IR-receiver and use nearly any remote you have to do the job for you. Or build a button panel. Or use a joystick. There's a ton of plugins for winamp, and for windows and linux in general. I don't see any need for an ingame player unless it plays game music.

Unless someone else like orudge programs support for it to OpenTTD, I don't see much chance of the game ever having mp3 support.

Anyways, if that's done, new sounds and music is needed. I haven't heard any concrete plans about that.

ChrisCF wrote:Hey, everyone! stewis just volunteered to buy every OTTD player a second monitor

**hides monitors**

By the way, I thought you needed a license to use MP3 in your software? Or is that just for commercial products?

which is why ottd wouldn't use mp3, but probably ogg et al.

Or, better still, raw .wav or .au files for the sound effects - no need to introduce pointless extra decoding for silly things like a train heading out.

I'm also under the impression that you need an MP3 licence only for commercial products, and only for the Fraunhofer code, since you patents algorithms, not file formats. Something like LAME should gte around the MP3 issue fairly simply. All of that said, remember that TTD runs on machines as slow as 25MHz - I've drafted in a 100MHz 486 to see if it still works on there IIRC, MP3 decoding in real-time requires a bare minimum of 250MHz, and I'd imagine that the Vorbis decoder has higher requirements again (300-400 range, which already puts down my second machine ...), due to the higher compression ratios involved.

As nice as all that would be, think of what other things have minimum specs weighing in at 400 or 500MHz. I don't know about anyone else, but I'd prefer something which works, and takes up minimal processing power out of my post-GHz processor, leaving enough power available to be able to play the damned MP3s in the background in hte first place

Anyone done any benchmarking of OTTD on old systems yet?

My old 233mhz Pulsare could encode and decode MP3s and Oggs without problems - it seemed quite fast actually. Also you only need a license if your program encodes MP3s not for decoding.

There isn't really much point in using .wav sounds as they eat up space a bit too much. The best option would probably be to stick with what we have, midi files. They seem to have come back into fasion now thanks to polyphonic ringtones.

lucaspiller wrote:There isn't really much point in using .wav sounds as they eat up space a bit too much. The best option would probably be to stick with what we have, midi files. They seem to have come back into fasion now thanks to polyphonic ringtones.

Does that mean I can download them onto my mobile fone?