Monday, March 23, 2009

[Fantasy] Rolling Militia - warmarch

Let me share with you the first piece of music of the ones that I've created since starting this blog. I'm still quite busy with producing some other pieces, currently with no target project on mind, but this was the first one that rolled out of my production line.

It's kind of a march for a massive emotionless, dark army rolling by on the warpath somewhere. I had started this piece with the intention of creating a warmarch with no special feeling on my mind, but upon placing the first root notes of the later appearing harmonies in the first phrase it felt like echoes of a massive, faceless warmachine, and thus I pushed all the other parts into that direction, when I was building the brasswind parts upon the strings. After that came the idea of a quicker climax part to end in a high pitch final tone, and then added some variation of four parth chords built upon the three part chords - that together with the quicker ending gave an interesting rise of tension for me. Then came some tweaking of expressions here and there.

As I've already mentioned this one has no target project at the moment, so I've released only at SoundClick.com with no free licensing for now. If you're interested in using it in some way in your FLOSS game project, drop some comment here, we can discuss it, and I can release it under a permissive license (see first post of blog about details). If you've any other comments the same applies - comment here. :)

Ok, I stop talkin', you may have a listen now: Link.

Donations related to this track can be done with the following button:






This track will be licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0 when donations reach $60.
So far $20 were donated.
Detailed: $20 by kripken.

Project interested: Intensity Engine by kripken.

13 comments:

  1. Hi Paul,

    I'm very interested in this project of yours! Good luck with it.

    Specifically I am curious about using this track - Rolling Militia - in a FOSS game project of mine (almost done, I hope to launch in a month or so). It seems you haven't set up the per-track donation system yet for any of the tracks. When will this happen? And, how much are you looking for in order to switch from -NC to -SA?

    Another question, what are your thoughts on a dual-licensing model (like Qt, Java, etc.) as an alternative: Release under the CC-BY-NC, and offer a non-limiting license for people that pay for it? (In other words, each project would pay for it's own license, and wouldn't need to wait for other projects to happen to want the same track.) - Just a thought, I'm not arguing this is a better or even a valid model ;) , I'm just curious what you think.

    - Kripken

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  2. Hi there,Kripken! Thanks for your good words!

    Regarding your questions: It will happen for a track as soon as someone is willing to use it for a non-vaporware project and communicates that fact with me! :) Now that you did it for this track, I'll do so, so that you can grab it with the -NC license and I'll add the donation button too in this post. This way I can see if there's interest. :)

    Your idea is a good one as well, but as this project blog is in the FLOSS area I'm in favor of the full freedom like the idealistic FLOSS code projects do it for their source code. Also this experiment is about donation and not payment which fact would contradict that kind of dual licensing. (I'm just explaining the reasons, I know that it's obvious, but it was still interesting to word it. :))

    BTW, what kind of game will it be? It's obvious now, that I'm too curious. :D

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  3. And yes, this piece was created roughly 3 or 4 iterations of around 3 hours, so doing a quick measurement, reaching a donation level of $60 is good enough. :) I'll do the editing of this post updating with these facts and the button as soon as I'll have some time.

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  4. ah, 3 or 4 iterations of around 3 hours each iteration (around 12 hours), I meant. :)

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  5. Regarding my project, it's called the "Intensity Engine", and was mentioned e.g. on FreeGamer (where I heard about your blog), with a little skepticism actually ;) http://freegamer.blogspot.com/2008/12/late-nights-and-leftovers-scourge-021.html

    Currently my project's main website is purposefully down, I am planning a major release in a month or so with a new website, new features, probably a new name as well. As for what kind of game it'll be, at first it'll consist of a few short 3D multiplayer action games, with more to follow, hopefully in part by community members.

    I understand what you say about donations vs. payment, and FLOSS ideals. I have a lot of respect for the experiment you're doing here, and I hope it succeeds.

    Now, my concern at this point is the following. My project is FLOSS, but not necessarily non-commercial, as I will be experimenting with some ads and stuff like that (and I'm a coder, not a lawyer, so I don't know where the line is drawn for something to become 'commercial'). So I don't want to use anything licensed under -NC, to be safe and to avoid any misunderstandings. Now, I'd be happy to donate towards the goal of removing the -NC for this track (or others that I like), but the issue is that your experiment here is in its early stages, and it seems that I might be the only one donating towards this specific goal.

    In other words, once you have momentum, by which I mean lots of people donating small amounts, then I think this model can really work. But until then, the situation might be that a person like me either (1) donates a small amount, but it isn't enough so the donation has no immediate effect on the license, and furthermore the person needs to wait an unknown amount of time in hopes of other people donating, or (2) the person is forced to donate the entire sum in order to change the license.

    So, I guess what I'm getting at is that some 'bootstrapping' might be useful here - some sort of incentive to get early adopters like me to start donating, to get around the issues I described above.

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  6. Ah well, your reasoning is quite understandable, I think I should consider these things. I think such a new step in the process is a good idea for projects that can't cope with the temporary -NC license. I should look around to create a temporary granting license per project - this way liberation can be done and project devs who want no -NC can join the experiment.

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  7. "to create a temporary granting license per project" - sorry its not crystal clear - the granting license shouldn't include a period of time, by "temporary" I meant till it's freed to CC-BY-SA :)

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  8. Okay, so here goes the new not-so-free license for dual licensing. What do you think about it?

    (c) 2009 by Pal Zoltan Illes

    The copyright holder(s) hereby grants the right to use the copyrighted work as part of the software called XY developed by ZQ. It may be freely distributed, copied and modified by anyone as long as it remains part of that same software. Derivative works must be licensed under this same license. Derivative work's license may contain the additional copyright holders but no copyright holder name should be removed from the license text. Modification of the license in other ways is prohibited. You need explicit permission from all the copyright holders to use it in any other way. This copyright notice must always be distributed with the copyrighted work.

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  9. Cool, this seems like a reasonable compromise overall.

    The license also seems fine. I just have one suggestion, for your protection you might want to clarify what 'derivative works' refers to: The intention is obvious to me, but in theory it can be understood to be either a derivative work of your copyrighted work (the music), or a derivative work of "software XY" (the software).

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  10. Valid point there, thanks!
    So this is the proposed version:

    (c) 2009 by Pal Zoltan Illes

    The copyright holder(s) hereby grants the right to use the copyrighted work as part of the software called XY developed by ZQ. It may be freely distributed, copied and modified by anyone as long as it remains part of that same software. Derivative works of this work must be licensed under this same license. Such derivative work's license may contain the additional copyright holders but no copyright holder name should be removed from the license text. Modification of the license in other ways is prohibited. You need explicit permission from all the copyright holders to use it in any other way. This copyright notice must always be distributed with the copyrighted work.
    ---

    If you specify the parameters I will create the archive and send it to you, update the blogpost with donation button and so on. :)

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  11. I'm not sure what you mean by 'parameters'?

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  12. Well, the official name of your project and your name :) You can send it to the email address found in my profile. Then I can send you a reply mail with the ogg file with the license.

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  13. ah, so it's in my profile's gtalk acc, you just have to append the usual 'gmail.com' :)

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