ToME WikiMusic for the T-Engine can be in a variety of formats. Background music is probably most efficiently shipped in module format (IT, XM, MOD etc.), though for reduced download size MIDI music would be smaller, but does not work correctly on all platforms with current versions of T-Engine's music library and should be avoided. Vorbis would be acceptable if you're willing to deal with the greater size. Also do not use mp3 format because the patents surrounding it will give people trouble.
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Chatter
DarkGod: MP3 are NOT fine, the players have legal strings attached. Use oggs it's smaller and better anyway
ShrikeDeCil: Lilypond isn't a sequencing program so much as a Latex-like for musical notation. Which outputs to midi + sheet music + other (which includes ogg IIRC).
NeilStevens: You know, you guys can make fixes directly, heh.
ReenenLaurie: Great! I knew about Lilypond (a couple of years ago), but I didn't know that had a Windows interface. /me is excited.
NeilStevens: Ogg is a wrapper format, not a codec. You can't just stick any Ogg sound into a ToME module; it has to be Vorbis or it won't work.
AndrewSidwell: Lilypond doesn't have a Windows interface any more than it has Linux interface -- you use it by creating textfiles and running Lilypond on them. (You probably already found that out, though.) Also, it doesn't output to Ogg, and the MIDI output is poor quality so I wouldn't recommend it. (For great-looking sheet music, though, it's great!)
BucketMan: I'm trying to settle on a music file format. So far .ogg seems my best choice, since I'm not going to compose or transcribe my own music. (Four hours with a mod editor gave me less than 30 seconds of music. :/ ) But, I don't seem to be able to make Vorbis .ogg files less than 32Kbps. mp3 I can get down to 16Kbps and still have acceptable sound (8K is possible) but that seems not to be an option for legal reasons. Any advice? At 32Kbps, I have about 7 megs worth of music I'd like to use, and that seems awfully large for a roguelike.
DarkGod: Why? 7 Megs is not large at all by today's standards IMHO
BucketMan: I think I'm instinctively trying to avoid going over the 1.44 meg floppy disk limit. 7 megs of music and sound effects for an 800K game really seems like it should at least be a separate, optional download. I might be living in the past, though, and this might be irrelevant. Is anyone in the world still using dialup?
DarkGod: Their numbers is quickly fading. And anyway you can have a "light" version if you so desire
It's like naming stuff in the 8.3 notation for DOS compatibility, could be useful to like 3 people on earth :/ ReenenLaurie: I don't think TEngine 3.0.0 works on DOS machines anymore... or does it? There is not a DOS compile for 3.0.0 on the downloads page. I agree with BucketMan though, you don't really want to have a 15mb download for a roguelike. Although I think even top graphics intensive games like quake4 etc. is probably not more than 1% engine. The rest - all graphics and sound. I may have to up it to 2%...
DarkGod: Yeah code/data is never really big, it's always medias. If you want your module small, dont use them
Or make a light and heavy version. And no T-Engine3 wont work on DOS, unless SDL is ported to DOS, which I rather doubt NeilStevens: Ding ding ding. If your idea of roguelike game design is to cripple the graphics and sound deliberately, you're free to, heh. Or if you just want to have an easy download and a big download, you're also free to! T-Engine 3 just gives the module developer that liberty that wasn't there before.
ReenenLaurie: Personally I think .MID is fine. It's small, and these days windows comes with a decent sampling synth. Ubuntu focuses on being better multimedia, so I am assuming their default MIDI aren't too bad -- I may be terribly wrong here.
One can also download a Timidity driver (for windows) but I haven't had a lot of joy with it.
Downloading the whole timidity with a soundfont is about 6mb, but for me it's one of the only ways that really makes sense for roguelikes. If you have a lot of music it will also become up to 6mb easily in .MODs (and derivatives).
My personal advice on how to go forward, is to request a "built in" timidity like driver in the engine, and then optionally download a soundfont (you don't want to download a fixed soundfont for every new version of the TEngine), if no soundfont is found then play the .MIDs through the OS's MIDI sound (which I guess would by SDL controlled).
DarkGod: That's very cumbersome as it is very OS-dependant, this might be possible but certainly not for T3 :/
NeilStevens: SDL_Mixer's midi support is horribly buggy and CRASHY on at least one OS. Do NOT use midi in a module unless you want your module to CRASH the game for people.
Mike: I'm still cursed with dialup, and I can't be the only one - but I wouldn't bother with a <32Kbps music. With MP3 at least, I'd go with at least 128 (you can't use MP3, but AFAIK Vorbis .ogg files are similar in size). So I'd like to see the music as a separate download, although you do have the option of light (no music), medium (32K) and heavy (192K) if you want. You could even do the same with the graphics tiles, although I wouldn't bother as they compress very well and take less than a meg.
BucketMan: Has anyone else been having trouble getting .ogg files to work? I can get .wav files to work, but even after downloading the Vorbis .ogg codex, I get only silence in-game.
ReenenLaurie: I haven't tried .ogg files... but it sounds like we can be ready for a BIG update on DBT.
BucketMan: Well, not exactly. Lately I've mostly been experimenting with new things, random town and quest generation, dungeon levels that use a Z-axis, some other things. And, of course, sound. Yes, DBT has some sound now, but mostly the .ogg file issues I've been having are with another module that I may release if I can get a few more things to work.