CoLoBoT 15th Anniversary Preparations

CoLoBoT 15th Anniversary Preparations - Printable Version

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CoLoBoT 15th Anniversary Preparations - RaptorParkowsky - 07-19-2016

Last months were very unpleasant for TerranovaTeam. I think this state of procrastination must stop, now. No matter what, no matter how. Just use some free time until summer ends and start making better GOLD!

As you all probably know, this year on 3rd of November there will be the 15th Anniversary of the original game's release. We have only 107 days left to prepare something quite special for this event. We have to think realistic - we don't have enough time to do something as huge as a major CBOT refactoring, or redoing the Exercises (OR even adding Pinkie Pie™ to the Moon for some reason...). We should focus on something that is already partially done or not verified and accepted to be in game.

We have a lot of unfinished assets that aren't pushed to the repo: @tomangelo 's subdivided models, @Adrian 's HD model textures, @RaptorParkowsky 's HD environment textures (processed photos by @michx) and logos, some of the new/remastered sound effects by @bartekko and @True Destroyer. That's a lot of stuff. Even if some of it is still unfinished or doesn't have a usable source (at least yet), it can be added to the game now. So let's get started:

Remastered HD textures of the models and environment

People responsible/connected:
@Adrian
@RaptorParkowsky
@michx

Firstly I want to tell that I feel really bad for my procrastination at this topic recently. Probably most because of me @Adrian stopped his work and again doesn't write anything on forum. I really hope that @Adrian will be back to finish his great work on object textures.

My work on new environmental textures is also partially done. @michx equipped me with few good quality photos that I'll process to use in game. Those will be of course only few new sky textures + my new hi-res lens flare textures. They all will be placed in new group subdirectories under data/textures/ and they will have different filenames, so there will be necessary to change few parameters in most scene files of the game in one commit. Old textures will be in data repository for temporary backward compatibility with userlevels and they will be probably removed in another release to keep clean main data repository and packages. I have to only find a software that would let me find and replace in all scene files the parameters responsible for usage those textures in levels. Few things can't be changed now though because of their hardcoded nature, so I hope that @krzys_h or other programmer will help me by fixing (even partially) #725 issue.

Before commit all of these new textures I want also use the magic of tight PNG compression by using pngcrush tool that @tomangelo once found. It's really good for optimization binary graphic files.

Refreshed hi-poly models

People responsible:
@tomangelo
@piotrdz

This is probably the most tricky one. Especially if we want to implement a brand new model format now with most of discussed features or even without them. Done models itself could be already uploaded to the official repo as they will be working even without any messing with the code. But there's another thing to discuss: should we add them as optional for now or fully replace the old ones? GOLD's graphics engine(s) in most instances isn't optimized enough to handle without visible framedrops all those hi-poly meshes that have no LOD. I guess without proper optimization those models will cause framedrops even on relatively new GPUs (2006-2010), but in the other hand most modern GPUs will be just fine. And this is only about PC builds of the game. What about planned Android builds? My proposition is to add them temporary as switchable mod that is enabled by default and if user will experience any huge framedrops or somehow don't like few/all of them, then he/she could just disable them. There could be useful a special settings page or section which shows all installed mods in the list that allow disable/enable them without need of messing in mods user/global directories.

About models itself, @tomangelo already done most of them and I have to say that's wonderful job and great start for us, especially me for making and redesigning GOLD in it's own open source way. They'll be great addition to our game for long time before I finish my research on completely redesigned models.

Unfortunately I don't know much about current state of development the new model format. I'll let @piotrdz to tell about it in this thread.

New sound effects

People responsible:
@bartekko
@True Destroyer
@krzys_h

@bartekko and @True Destroyer did their job on remastering the sound effects long time ago. And I think their work shouldn't be just forgotten. But unfortunately most of new sound effects doesn't really fit to the game's sound design. But some of them are enough good to just add them as new sounds to specific events such like engine overheating less irritating alarm or menu background. @krzys_h then would help me in programming way to implement those new sounds to the game if there will be agreement about that. And I can prepare a full list of sound effects that could be considered to use and waiting for other's approval.

CoLoBoT OST TerranovaTeam's Anniversary Release

Finally the soundtrack from the original CoLoBoT game. I think we could finally release it for promotional purposes. People that are responsible for this:

@RaptorParkowsky
@Emxx52

Good 1:1 CD accurate FLACs are done. Titles, cue and all other metadata of all tracks are done, but waits for final acceptance by me, @Emxx56 and rest of the team. Hi-quality CD cover art is done, but also waits for acceptance. So what remains to do on that part of our celebration 15th Anniversary? Here's the list of what I'm wishing for:

1. Revision and acceptance of all things we've done.
2. Promotional track screenshots and individual miniatures
Firstly this task is mine. I'll do the photos of all the planets using original game. Best ones will be used as a background image of every track in YouTube release of the album. As you all know, most of the tracks are themes of the planets from the game. It would be great to see and hear the climate from the Missions both in the same time. Maybe even a full slideshow would be good for that (but this is a little bit too spoiler filled option). And track miniatures will be just re-arranged cover art to fit YouTube's 16:9 image aspects and will contain individual track title.
3. Official TerranovaTeam's SoundCloud account
This is @Emxx52 and probably partially my part of the job. We must establish an official community account for such kind of releases, just like we have official YouTube account. The main problem is about the account's name - should it be ColobotGame or TerranovaTeam?
4. Audio visualization
Another aesthetic and promo related feature that makes every music content on YouTube 20% more cooler. Spread spectrum or/and oscilloscope to the pair with planet related images should be enough cool to watch while listening. I'm searching for software that could help me to achieve something similar to this.
5. Upload all finished and accepted stuff to all places
And make them visible at the 15th Anniversary.
YouTube release should have:

Best audio quality as possible
Image resolution in 720p, also best quality
Video descriptions should contain some basic information about individual track from metadata, links to the project website and GitHub, and link to the same track on SoundCloud. Maybe we'll write also a short description about the music release. Everything that could make it more official and legit.

SoundCloud release should have:

FLAC quality sound
Album cover art
Download option available
All descriptions (if available on this platform)

So that's all what I could propose now for CoLoBoT 15th Anniversary and for 0.1.9 basing on what we already have and what 0.1.9 milestone currently is on GitHub. Did I forgot about something that could be done in 107 days? TerranovaTeam, wake up! Let's discuss and then we'll be organizing stuff. And make this 0.1.9 release pure GOLD!

RE: CoLoBoT 15th Anniversary Preparations - tomangelo - 07-19-2016

1.9 - last version of original Colobot. 0.1.9 - Gold anniversary update. Coincidence? Tongue

From another ideas what can be done: random relief generator (wasn't something related with that commited to repo?), or invasion mode.
Also we still need to add comments to main site. It was accepted a quite long time ago.
As a proof I'm actually working - human1 (based on models by @wiesio98)

Spoiler :

RE: CoLoBoT 15th Anniversary Preparations - krzys_h - 07-20-2016

Why all the colors? They are distracting and thus make the post harder to read.

(07-19-2016, 05:27 PM)RaptorParkowsky Wrote: unpolished 0.1.7 and 0.1.8 releases

Don't you even dare to say that. We were supposed to stop making releases perfect. https://colobot.info/forum/showthread.php?tid=757

(07-19-2016, 05:27 PM)RaptorParkowsky Wrote: Even if some of them [...] have no useable source, they could be added to the game.

That sounds like a bad idea because it's breaking the license terms we set ourselves...

(07-19-2016, 05:27 PM)RaptorParkowsky Wrote: Old textures will be in data repository for temporary backward compatibility with userlevels and they will be probably removed in another release to keep clean main data repository and packages.

I'd rather do that in code so that we don't need to distribute more assets than needed by the game itself. We can make those a downloadable mod for backwards compatibility if it's really needed.

(07-19-2016, 05:27 PM)RaptorParkowsky Wrote: I have to only find a software that would let me find and replace in all scene files the parameters responsible for usage those textures in levels.

Any better editor like Notepad++ or common Linux command-line tools like sed.

(07-19-2016, 05:27 PM)RaptorParkowsky Wrote: Few things can't be changed now though because of their hardcoded nature, so I hope that @krzys_h or other programmer will help me by fixing (even partially) #725 issue.

For now we can just change those in the code, it makes no sense to export them to external files as you would be still hardcoding the path to those files.

(07-19-2016, 05:27 PM)RaptorParkowsky Wrote: Before commit all of these new textures I want also use the magic of tight PNG compression by using pngcrush tool that @tomangelo once found. It's really good for optimization binary graphic files.

This is not really needed, especially if we are still officially an alpha version. Nobody cares about the few MB that will save.

(07-19-2016, 05:27 PM)RaptorParkowsky Wrote: My proposition is to add them temporary as switchable mod that is enabled by default and if user will experience any huge framedrops or somehow don't like few/all of them, then he/she could just disable them. There could be useful a special settings page or section which shows all installed mods in the list that allow disable/enable them without need of messing in mods user/global directories.

++, I think we could do that with all temporary/unfinished assets

(07-19-2016, 05:27 PM)RaptorParkowsky Wrote: Unfortunately I don't know much about current state of development the new model format. I'll let @piotrdz to tell about it in this thread.

New model format with support for multiple meshes in one file is implemented, the animation code doesn't use it in any way yet. Also there is no way to store animations in files iirc.

(07-19-2016, 05:27 PM)RaptorParkowsky Wrote: @krzys_h then would help me in programming way to implement those new sounds to the game if there will be agreement about that.

Sure, just tell me what exactly you need

(07-19-2016, 05:27 PM)RaptorParkowsky Wrote: @Emxx56

So you upgraded Emxx from version 52 to 56 without telling anyone? :>

(07-19-2016, 05:27 PM)RaptorParkowsky Wrote: and what 0.1.9 milestone currently is on GitHub

There are no more version milestones on GitHub, the version numbers were left just to make it clear which of the milestones from the "old" system they represent. See https://colobot.info/forum/showthread.php?tid=757

RE: CoLoBoT 15th Anniversary Preparations - Karol - 07-20-2016

I'd like to ask you about marketing and documentation.

I think that from a user point of view there is not enough informations about colobot.
At colobot.info there is no link to your wiki,
new features of cbot are not described in in-game help. About the existence of try and catch commands I've learned from one of the issues. Some informations can be found exclusively on your forum like access to the file http://compiled.colobot.info/job/colobot/job/colobot-misc/branch/master/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/Colobot_Gold_Edition-Game_Design_Document.pdf whitch is unfinished but helpful.
There are no official informations about moding, I've learned that from other users mods examples. It should be even in programmers handbook inside colobot.
It would be nice to have colobot gold-1.8 "what's new" list like it was for 1.7. And of course 1.9
Facebook profile is dead. You should boast about every commit, guys. Show us that you are alive!
There are some third party web pages and software databases on the Internet with completely inaccurate informations about colobot.

Colobot has a very high entry threshold because of lack of informations. Most of the time it comes to reading forum or searching something that should be easy to find from the main page or in game. I think that changing that should be a part of 1.9 milestone.

RE: CoLoBoT 15th Anniversary Preparations - krzys_h - 07-20-2016

The link to wiki is hidden because it's deprecated in favor of the in-game documentation which will get a web viewer at some point. Try...catch is still buggy so it's hidden from official docs. There is no 0.1.8 changelog and official download because we still don't have Linux and OS X builds ready. GDD is well... unfinished, as you noticed. Modding is planned to be added to official documentation at some point, it's just that nobody had time to do that yet as it's constantly evolving. We tried using social media more but for some reason it all always dies sooner or later - like the recent idea to start a developer blog to keep people imformed about all recent changes on the dev branch.

RE: CoLoBoT 15th Anniversary Preparations - Karol - 07-20-2016

krzys_h Wrote:Modding is planned to be added to official documentation at some point, it's just that nobody had time to do that yet as it's constantly evolving.

So maybe I'll do it? But I'm not sure if my informations are up to date. And i still don't know how to use translation tools (there were some scripts but I don't know what they do) just for the state that is planned for 1.9 release.

Why facebook fp died? (i'm not sure if it's the right place for this question)

RE: CoLoBoT 15th Anniversary Preparations - Simbax - 07-21-2016

(07-20-2016, 10:26 PM)Karol Wrote: new features of cbot are not described in in-game help

They are. I know, because it was me who documented (most?) of them. If something is not documented then it is not supposed to be at this moment or I (or someone else) just haven't done it yet. I was also planning to rewrite old documentation at some point... Anyway, the CBOT is a mystery even to us and new discoveries are still made. Seriously, nobody knows how CBOT really works and people generally are afraid to touch it. It's work in progress.

(07-20-2016, 10:49 PM)Karol Wrote: Why facebook fp died? (i'm not sure if it's the right place for this question)

Because nobody here is really into social media and there is usually nothing to post about. Most commits are not interesting for the end-user. Also, isn't Facebook slowly dying anyway? I feel like it is, but I feel old already, I don't understand what is popular nowadays and I honestly don't like all these Instagram, Snapchat or whatever thingys. They seem... pointless? Ah, I'm off-toping here, sorry.

(07-20-2016, 10:49 PM)Karol Wrote: So maybe I'll do it? But I'm not sure if my informations are up to date. And i still don't know how to use translation tools (there were some scripts but I don't know what they do) just for the state that is planned for 1.9 release.

If you do it, it'll be awesome! Even if only partially done it'll be far better than nothing.

Well, the thing with translations is... There are .po files spread everywhere and you can edit them in any Notepad-like editor or use something like POedit. That's when you want to translate something. When you are creating something new or modifying the content, then you just work with standard .txt files in English. So you just write it normally like you were creating a help file for an user level, but of course with different folder structure. But here's a catch -- you must generate and update the .po files every time you change the original files. I have full Colobot development environment configured, so I just do something like `make install` to automatically update the translation files and to copy the right file to my dev Colobot installation, so I don't know if it's possible to create help files without having the whole Visual Studio (or MinGW or whatever) and cmake environment ready to compile and build the whole game without problems. And you'd need to learn how to use git if you don't know this versioning system already, so you can make a pull request to our main repository.

I could try to build an environment to work just with translations which may require to modify some cmake files (maybe there already is an appropriate flag like "only translations" or you can just manually run the .py scripts, I don't know) and write some kind of tutorial on the forum, but I kinda have limited time resources right now.

You could eventually just work with standard GOLD dev installation available for download after every commit and share the files with us so we can take care of the rest and commit them to the repository. You must also remember to update your data (dev) directory once in a while since it's build separately and it's in a separate repository, but there isn't usually many commits to that one.

I don't know where you stand with your programming knowledge, so sorry if I mentioned some "obvious" things.

RE: CoLoBoT 15th Anniversary Preparations - krzys_h - 07-21-2016

To build just the data directory you need only cmake, make and Python installed, you don't need to have everything that is required to build the game itself. You can also just write the English files and we'll add all the required translation infrastructure later.

RE: CoLoBoT 15th Anniversary Preparations - Karol - 07-21-2016

Ok, I think I'll menage doing it.

As for my programming knowledge, I generally code in python, Mathematica (symbolic calculations), rarely c++. I'm linux only user, about a year ago I gave up on dual boot Smile

I heve no IT education, I'm physicist so my programs rather have command line interface and numerical or data presentation purpose. I know how to use git but on github I'm beginner because I code alone. I hope you'll excuse me if I'll do some dumb things while committing Big Grin

Summarizing, is this a part of 1.9 milestone? Should I post it as an issue on github?

If so, we can continue discussion about the rest things in this milestone. Smile

RE: CoLoBoT 15th Anniversary Preparations - krzys_h - 08-08-2016

I was throwing random things into ShoutBox and then an idea happened. I don't want it to get lost somewhere so I'm copying it here:

Quote:» RaptorParkowsky:
I don't know Chinese internets about CeeBot1 tough...
08 Aug 17:00
» krzys_h:
Just a random marketing idea - email all people listed on http://colobot.info/original_ceebot.com/...cbot-e.php and remind them about existence of Colobot
08 Aug 21:06
» krzys_h:
https://web.archive.org/web/200710111317...alc4-e.php I KEEP FINDING THINGS
08 Aug 21:28
» krzys_h:
https://web.archive.org/web/200504281105...chal-e.php
08 Aug 21:28
» krzys_h:
@RaptorParkowsky You wanted Ceebot1? No such thing ever existed, previous versions were called CBOT and were hardware based - https://web.archive.org/web/200505031838...ec.ch/edu/
08 Aug 21:30
» krzys_h:
https://web.archive.org/web/200306290923.../index.htm more stuff here
08 Aug 21:31
» krzys_h:
https://web.archive.org/web/200306290944...team-e.htm CBOT engine WAS written by a different person. Myth confirmed.
08 Aug 21:37
» krzys_h:
Scribbler is totally based on a real-world robot, not the other way around - https://web.archive.org/web/200304230217...prog-e.htm
08 Aug 21:42
» krzys_h:
I wonder how many of these people actually know that 15 years later, their project is still alive in some form. @RaptorParkowsky I have a task for you for the anniversary, hunt down their email addresses in the internet and we'll send them some anniversary email, just to say thank you for the fact that thanks to their work we're all here.
08 Aug 21:57

Do you think that would be a good idea? We could try to find all the people who are listed in the credits and on https://web.archive.org/web/20030629094414/http://www.epsitec.ch/edu/team-e.htm and contact them.
Now THAT is an idea for an anniversary, not just some things which we can finalize whenever we want...

RE: CoLoBoT 15th Anniversary Preparations - krakers - 08-09-2016

Very good idea. There's nothing to lose

RE: CoLoBoT 15th Anniversary Preparations - RaptorParkowsky - 08-09-2016

I have finally some time to respond to that thread. Maybe you don't noticed this, but thanks to @Emxx52 I've updated initiational post a little, so re-read it to get the things right.

krzys_h Wrote:Don't you even dare to say that. We were supposed to stop making releases perfect. https://colobot.info/forum/showthread.php?tid=757

Well, ok. But I still have to admit that releases had some obvious and nasty bugs or even strange differences between release/debug compilation. The only thing we could do in the future to prevent that situations is... well, testing. More testing.

krzys_h Wrote:That sounds like a bad idea because it's breaking the license terms we set ourselves...

Well, in the post update I stated that we don't must to have all sources yet. Anyway, depends on the situation and type of game asset it may become hard to maintain all sources. Especially for graphic and music assets. We can probably just make more repos for them, but I don't think I'm right person to discuss anything about maintaining development stuff.

krzys_h Wrote:I'd rather do that in code so that we don't need to distribute more assets than needed by the game itself. We can make those a downloadable mod for backwards compatibility if it's really needed.

Long time ago I thought about something like the official legacy repo that would contain all original assets from Colobot, CeeBots, stuff found in ceebot.zip and even other EPSITEC games. It could be helpful for modders who needs some old stuff for making levels, mods, etc. GOLD would be evolving in it's own way then in it's own repo, gradually replacing old assets with new and cleaning unnecessary stuff.

krzys_h Wrote:This is not really needed, especially if we are still officially an alpha version. Nobody cares about the few MB that will save.

Well, for me it's something that will take only a minute or two, so I don't see any problem in saving kilobytes in such way. Especially if it helps in some maintaining problems.

krzys_h Wrote:++, I think we could do that with all temporary/unfinished assets

So may I make an propositional issue for that feature in our settings menu? Or maybe it should be available in the other place in game? I guess it depends mostly on current UI engine limitations.

krzys_h Wrote:So you upgraded Emxx from version 52 to 56 without telling anyone? :>

Just another bug in my post. I hope it's fixed now enough.

krzys_h Wrote:Do you think that would be a good idea? We could try to find all the people who are listed in the credits and on https://web.archive.org/web/200306290944...team-e.htm and contact them.

I totally like this idea, maybe that will keep the things alive for more time. But firstly we really should do all the things needed to make it look good. Our website, our game, everything.

I'll be making contact with @Adrian at a days to encourage him to make object textures 100% done. I hope there's no need to providing sources for them now, especially if they will be almost useless at this stage of development. When I'll be in full-time development in the case of hi-poly models then I'll be able to provide proper sources for everything. I guess we can just replace old with new ones and even old GPUs will be fine. I'ts different situation that with @tomangelo 's models.

I'll collect all or part of the assets in next month, when I finally get everything right with my PC. Now I can't decide what OS should stay as my primary, so it'll take few days before I actually start making something for this event.

I hope I said everything that was necessary to say now.

RE: CoLoBoT 15th Anniversary Preparations - Karol - 08-28-2016

Guys, I can't do what I told you I willl. I know it wasn't much but I'm abroad and I don't even have a computer. I won't come back soon. Sorry.

RE: CoLoBoT 15th Anniversary Preparations - RaptorParkowsky - 09-01-2016

Today I started my preparations for this event. I did some cleanup and research about all assets that will be implemented to the game (mostly my unfinished textures and @michx photos).

- Downloaded all photos done by @michx (thanks!)
- Optimized PNG compression for all photos (hi-res PNG photos ~80 MB -> ~20 MB losslessly)
- Cataloged all photos before main process.

And I did some things that were to do with the soundtrack.

- Silence in music10 ("11. You Lose...") and music11 ("01. CoLoBoT Main Theme") has been removed.
- Updated metadata tags with some new informations.
- Recorded a test video with oscilloscope visualisation.

@Emxx52 , tomorrow I'll share with you all updated FLACs for final verification.

About oscilloscope visualisation if we'll like it, there shouldn't be a problem to record it in FullHD and better quality (YouTube really hates my MKV files...) and replace in the post-production one of the green background color with the screenshot/cover-art from original game just like here (but in 16:9). But I guess there should be a better software for making such visualisations for videos.

EDIT: Here it is @Emxx52 , CoLoBoT - Official Soundtrack [Beta Developer's Preview]. Titles, queue and all metadata tags are waiting for your and any other TerranovaTeam member approval.

RE: CoLoBoT 15th Anniversary Preparations - Simbax - 09-02-2016

Here's a screenshot of the most important meta data, for people who don't want to download this huge package for unknown reasons:

[Image: M0yRNv1.png]

@Emxx52 said to me on priv that he's not responsible for those tags and he is quite furious at what is in this package.

Here are my two cents about this:

Spaces in filenames are not a good idea. They should be replaced with underscores _ (the same could be said about the other files, I prefer _ instead of -, but whatever). Dots and other punctuation signs look... weird, at best ("You lose....flac" for example).
"CoLoBoT Main Theme" -- ok, but I wouldn't call it "main theme", it's just an intro jingle, but it could be left like that. Also, it's "Colobot" or "COLOBOT", not CoLoBoT (we agreed on official naming long time ago AFAIR).
"Leaving Earth - NASA Exercises" -- it should be just "Leaving Earth", why prolong and complicate titles like that for no reason, especially that the "NASA Exercises" part doesn't make any sense.
"The First Unknown World - Nature of Natives" -- as above, the part after '-' does not belong there, the title is definitely too long in this one.
"Crystalium - System Failure" -- it's just "System Failure".
"Saari's Heat" -- ok, but in filename it should be "Saaris" instead of "Saari's".
"Eruption" -- ok.
"Centaury - The Lost Hope" -- either the first or the second part, not both (the second one is more artistic, I like it more personally).
"Infinite Thunderstorm" -- "Infinite Storm", it doesn't agree with @Emxx52 convention about his artwork.
"Terranova - Our New Home" -- either the first or the second part, not both, cause they mean the same.
"You Win!" -- remove the exclamation mark from the filename.
"You Lose..." -- those three dots in the filename are really, really odd. It's just a filename, it should be "You_Lose". Meta tags are for the real titles.
"Jazz Buzzing EasterEgg" -- you know that when you explicitly state "EasterEgg" it's no longer "EasterEgg", right? Also, what's it EasterEgging? Wasn't it just a random funny music? Just remove the "EasterEgg" from the name either way.
A small technical detail: when you make a package, make it so the root folder is in it (so, when I say "Unpack here" it unpacks to "Colobot Soundtrack etc." folder, not making a mess in the folder I'm currently in). This part (and about filenames) is about end-user convenience.

Here's the preview of the cover:
[Image: YEtRJIJ.png]

"Official Release thanks TO TerranovaTeam", although "Official Release etc." is redundant IMHO, better leave just the logos.
Are you sure that we can legally use the EPSITEC logo like that? Just to be sure...

About the little txt file...

Unless we find a Kabel font with proper license, we can't use it. Especially not on official cover. I know, I'm boring with this stuff, but it'd be quite a drama if one day there would be news all over the Internet "TerranovaTeam sued! You won't believe! Like us on Facebook to view more!"
"Updated logo"...

@Emxx52 's opinion on the matter is as follows (note that I'm providing it to you in heavily modified version (ok, I just translated and rephrased everything) in order to avoid potential suicides caused by the tone of it):

There was no cooperation during creation of this package apparently, as @RaptorParkowsky decided to do everything by himself without consulting it with @Emxx52 like they agreed to on priv.
Album artist is TerranovaTeam and EPSITEC, not two people (especially that one of those people didn't even took part in creation of the package apparently).
Some points are similar to mine: Infinite Storm not Thunderstorm (it was apparently wrong long time ago, fixed, and then here we are again...), "Official Release etc." not needed, titles are generally "stupid".
"Updated logos"... Let me stop here, quite the epithets were thrown at this point...
Album name tag should be just "Colobot" (without "Official Soundtrack etc."), it's the standard convention for game soundtracks apparently, with an example of TF2 soundtrack.

RE: CoLoBoT 15th Anniversary Preparations - Emxx52 - 09-02-2016

Ok, so I've created a Dropbox folder for these tracks as it was supposed to be done this way. If anyone wishes to contribute I'll gladly give you a write access.

Regarding the metadata
Track titles were changed to be more subtle and subjectively better, and so their filenames were changed accordingly.

Spoiler :

Feel free to suggest any changes.

RE: CoLoBoT 15th Anniversary Preparations - RaptorParkowsky - 09-04-2016

I see I did quite a big buzzing bee here... Well, probably as always when I want to do something and didn't explain every. single. thing about my work.

Simbax Wrote:@Emxx52 said to me on priv that he's not responsible for those tags and he is quite furious at what is in this package.

I didn't expect that he will react for this so emotionally, so I'm really sorry for that. I just wanted to share updated package to him that he would approve and make his own changes, and to everyone to see the progress. I knew that he wanted to do some changes with titles and propose some ideas, but I also wanted to make as much as I could before his/yours suggestions.

Simbax Wrote:Spaces in filenames are not a good idea. They should be replaced with underscores _ (the same could be said about the other files, I prefer _ instead of -, but whatever). Dots and other punctuation signs look... weird, at best ("You lose....flac" for example).

I'm half ok with this argument, but in making this OST package I was looking mostly from end user's point of view. Those files aren't apps, scripts, sources etc. that really should be renamed into something basic and easier to type. They're rather multimedia files, so they're required to be more user friendly and clear in human way. Especially if today's software and file systems fully support most typing characters, even the 日本語 and русский ones and long filenames. Please, don't tell me that we really should go back to kinda-DOS filenames for backward compatibility. If these files are going to be shared all in the package, then I want them to be such as I proposed. If they are going to be shared separately (SoundCloud download files for example), then I have nothing against such filenames without spaces, numeration and other characters, just like other downloadable files around the Internet.

Simbax Wrote:Also, it's "Colobot" or "COLOBOT", not CoLoBoT (we agreed on official naming long time ago AFAIR)

All those variants depend of the case are correct, but for titles I would stick with original EPSITEC's pronounce "CoLoBoT" as it looks basically coherent with original, it's capitalized and it doesn't look like "just another word" in the middle of the title. The word "Colobot" isn't "just another word" and for titles it should be used like that. For the text walls - of course there should be "Colobot" in there, but not for the titles.

Simbax Wrote:A small technical detail: when you make a package, make it so the root folder is in it (so, when I say "Unpack here" it unpacks to "Colobot Soundtrack etc." folder, not making a mess in the folder I'm currently in). This part (and about filenames) is about end-user convenience.

Fixed.

Simbax Wrote:

"Official Release thanks TO TerranovaTeam", although "Official Release etc." is redundant IMHO, better leave just the logos.

Are you sure that we can legally use the EPSITEC logo like that? Just to be sure...

- Removed this unnecessary text.
- Yeah, I'm sure, as the GOLD already uses such logo in the splashscreens and nobody in EPSITEC didn't punish us for that. If there's any doubts about that, then you can just ask EPSITEC for the official statement.

Simbax Wrote:About the little txt file...

Unless we find a Kabel font with proper license, we can't use it. Especially not on official cover. I know, I'm boring with this stuff, but it'd be quite a drama if one day there would be news all over the Internet "TerranovaTeam sued! You won't believe! Like us on Facebook to view more!"

"Updated logo"...

Yes, I'm pretty aware of that. But I want to prepare this music album as close to EPSITEC/COLOBOT spirit as it can be. And... we already uses this font in processed form. TerranovaTeam/ICC logos, COLOBOT and COLOBOT: Gold Edition logos bases on Kabel and nobody complain about that. So I think as far as we only use it in processed form without font source files in repos (yet), there's nothing wrong with it. Or maybe we should remake all the logos to be based on Ubuntu now? I think we should ask KDE development team how they can use this font in their logo instead ruining and stopping all my work that isn't already officially released. So who with better English skills is going to do that? @Simbax ? @krzys_h ? @Emxx52 ? Come on, this is going to be probably only a little question on official KDE IRC channel.

So I updated the OST cover-art just to see how it should look for the release:

Simbax Wrote:@Emxx52 's opinion on the matter is as follows (note that I'm providing it to you in heavily modified version (ok, I just translated and rephrased everything) in order to avoid potential suicides caused by the tone of it):

There was no cooperation during creation of this package apparently, as @RaptorParkowsky decided to do everything by himself without consulting it with @Emxx52 like they agreed to on priv.

Album artist is TerranovaTeam and EPSITEC, not two people (especially that one of those people didn't even took part in creation of the package apparently).

Some points are similar to mine: Infinite Storm not Thunderstorm (it was apparently wrong long time ago, fixed, and then here we are again...), "Official Release etc." not needed, titles are generally "stupid".

"Updated logos"... Let me stop here, quite the epithets were thrown at this point...

Album name tag should be just "Colobot" (without "Official Soundtrack etc."), it's the standard convention for game soundtracks apparently, with an example of TF2 soundtrack.

Yeah, I admit that there was no cooperation. We talked looong time ago about changes in the titles on priv and I didn't be able to remember everything, so I decided to make this package as full as it could be, share it and wait for the feedback, but instead on priv, I wanted it to be public for known reason. Do you remember the times when half of the project was made in priv? Yah, that's why I just wanted to avoid sad complications because of priv-development.
Yep, EPSITEC and TerranovaTeam are indeed creators of it, but someone in the TerranovaTeam community actually was supposed to do the whole release stuff. @Emxx52 didn't anything in this package but he was supposed to do some changes and he is going to be maintainer of our official SoundCloud channel. That's why I mentioned him here. And releasing the OST album was mostly my initiative from 2013 if I remember correct, so that's why I'm here too.
I don't know what's wrong with long, sometimes 2 parts titles. I just wanted them to be true coherent to the game and to the music content itself. And original. But more about it will be below.
What's wrong with the logos again? Come on, 15th Anniversary is perfect time to change them. But there will be another thread about it when I'll be ready.
I wouldn't compare this release to that lazy Valve's OST releases IMO. If this is "Colobot" then where's the original game itself? No, there's music content, so it should be named fully and correctly just like other OST game/movie releases.

And now about the @Emxx52 contribution to that OST release. I personally don't like how you reduced the meta tags to look so... well, I have to say that, but it looks like another lazy Valve's OST "album" release. I personally don't like such incompleteness in any digital distribution and I would feel disappointed downloading such content. Here's the comparison between yours and mine meta tag schemes:

Why did you removed all the links, copyright and publisher notes from their intended places? This is just like removing all or almost all license informations from source file heading in repo. And this is making this release looking less legit and original than it supposed to be. Moreover you removed the link to EPSITEC - the original creators of it. And you removed the link to our GitHub - technically the second heart of our project. The year also is important. It represents the year of original game release and album release.

Ok, so finally I can tell something about the new titles that I want to propose. As @Simbax said, long, two parted titles may be considered as stupid, but there's still place for invention and making word experiments to make it look original and coherent to the game. I mixed @Emxx52 suggestions with mine, reduced two parted titles, blended with my personal imagination about the game itself and here's the result:

Spoiler: CoLoBoT - Original Soundtrack

Spoiler: And the bonus track

I hope I explained everything as clear as possible. There's no place for another s***storm in this community few months before 15th Anniversary of the CoLoBoT.

And here's my updated package.

RE: CoLoBoT 15th Anniversary Preparations - Simbax - 09-04-2016

I'd like to explain the reasons why I mentioned the problems with filenames. Yes, if we lived in a perfect world it would be great if filenames could be as human readable as standard titles. However, we don't live in a perfect world. I'm sorry that I didn't provide any arguments for that, I thought that the post is too long already and I don't have to explain it in the forum strongly connected with IT.

So, the reasons for keeping filenames simple:

Titles are already in meta tags, that's the purpose of the meta tags. The filenames have only one purpose: to identify the file. It certainly doesn't need to contain every information, you view the information when you open the file.
Simple titles are for end-user convenience. Spaces are problematic in filenames to this day, especially when you're managing them in command line. It's common in software to have problems with spaces in filenames (yes, it shouldn't have, but sometimes it happens, even in the most popular ones, usually in the most unexpected ways). Example: if we decided to put a direct link to one of the files, the spaces would be replaced with something like %20 and this would make the URL much harder to read. Well, we could argue that nobody cares about URLs or that only a small percent of users would encounter any issues with spaces and that we could just rename the files on the server, but isn't it better to keep things unified and... simple?
Punctuation signs in filenames are terrible, especially when you put dots (which are for file extensions), commas, exclamation marks... They make the filename harder to read actually. I don't agree with putting in filenames anything else than numbers, Latin letters, and underscores (maybe hyphens, although I don't like them). Any good media player will show the proper title for the user, the filenames shouldn't be forcefully the same as meta titles. To be honest, if I saw commas or weird monsters like "You lose....flac" or "You win!.flac" or "Something, something, commas, something.flac" in an official release, I'd have negative feeling and would think something along the lines "I don't know who was responsible for this release, but he screw up the job". Punctuation signs or other weird characters (Polish, Chinese letters in filenames... seriously?) just don't belong to filenames and I've yet to encounter such monstrous filenames as I've seen in the first package. Don't take it as an offense. That's just how it is.
Believe me or not, but some operating systems (yes, Windows, I'm looking at ya) still can have problems with long paths or weird filenames, as I encountered such problems not long time ago. Unfortunately, said operating systems are the most popular, so yeah. Although long paths are probably not something we should worry about, unless we get 20 nested directories.

However, I back off a little. Spaces in filenames are common even in my own music library, so I'd be a hypocrite if I'd enforce lack of them. The rest of my arguments still stand though. Here are some examples of some of the filenames from different albums (legally obtained):

Amnesia OST - 01 - Menu Theme.flac
Ben Prunty Music - FTL - 01 Space Cruise (Title).flac
01 - In the Beginning.mp3
01 The Chosen Roadie.flac
Symphony_No_5_by_Beethoven.mp3 (This one is downloaded from YouTube Creative Commons library and all of the files from there have underscores)

As you can see, the filenames are as simple as possible, the only "weird" signs they contain are hypens, spaces and underscores. No place for a comma, apostrophe or Unicode character. Note that the only dot is before the file extension. Also, notice the capitalization. It agrees with general English rules. I suggest to run all titles through http://titlecapitalization.com/ before releasing. By looking at above filenames you may also consider adding the name "Colobot OST" or something like that, but that's up to you. Just a suggestion, I don't really care about that.

The track numbers in filenames should stay in my opinion, as they then nicely sort by the default "by name" sorting option and this indicates that they are indeed part of an album, not just random files that happen to be in the same folder.

That's all I have to say in the matter of filenames. About the real titles... The new titles are ok for me, from both of you. I really love the "Fake Paradise". I'd rather not argue about them anymore myself. You should just agree on one version and let it be the end of it.

(09-04-2016, 04:50 PM)RaptorParkowsky Wrote: Yeah, I'm sure, as the GOLD already uses such logo in the splashscreens and nobody in EPSITEC didn't punish us for that. If there's any doubts about that, then you can just ask EPSITEC for the official statement.

I don't have to ask, your answer satisfies me.

(09-04-2016, 04:50 PM)RaptorParkowsky Wrote: So I think as far as we only use it in processed form without font source files in repos (yet), there's nothing wrong with it.

You're absolutely right. We're doing it all the time, in fact. Like converting text to vectors in SVG files instead of linking to a font.

(09-04-2016, 04:50 PM)RaptorParkowsky Wrote: Or maybe we should remake all the logos to be based on Ubuntu now?

I don't know if this is an irony or not, but just to be clear: my answer is definitely no, Kabel is far better. I hope I don't have to prolong this long post with arguments about that.

(09-04-2016, 04:50 PM)RaptorParkowsky Wrote: I think we should ask KDE development team how they can use this font in their logo instead ruining and stopping all my work that isn't already officially released. So who with better English skills is going to do that? @Simbax ? @krzys_h ? @Emxx52 ? Come on, this is going to be probably only a little question on official KDE IRC channel.

There might be a lot of reasons and from most of them we can conclude that we can use the Kabel font too. If you want to be certain, go ahead and ask. For me, you just need to find a font from a source which shares it with a license compliant to GPLv3. That's all we should care about. Even if the source would be wrong, it will be their problem, not ours.

(09-04-2016, 04:50 PM)RaptorParkowsky Wrote: Why did you removed all the links, copyright and publisher notes from their intended places? This is just like removing all or almost all license informations from source file heading in repo. And this is making this release looking less legit and original than it supposed to be. Moreover you removed the link to EPSITEC - the original creators of it. And you removed the link to our GitHub - technically the second heart of our project. The year also is important. It represents the year of original game release and album release.

Sorry to say that, but I don't understand the reasons for their removal either. Unfortunately, I never really cared about meta tags other than title, track and artist name, so I'm leaving the discussion about those for you and other people.

I don't think I'll say anything else on the subject at hand, at least I hope so, but, "remember, I will be watching".

RE: CoLoBoT 15th Anniversary Preparations - Emxx52 - 09-05-2016

Don't make the same mistake twice @RaptorParkowsky, I've made that Dropbox folder for a reason. I can give you access if you want to change anything or just tell me to change it here.

Regarding the metadata, again
I've deleted some meta fields as they seemed redundant and while doing so I tried to follow the convention I established for the C:GE soundtrack.
I don't think repeating the same info (Copyright notice/Description/URL) or mentioning TerranovaTeam or us as album 'artists' is necessary, hence I still don't agree with your proposition. If you want to release these tracks like that then at least don't mention me in this genuinely fantastically tagged album.

Regarding the titles

Quote:01. Colonize with Bots

Around eight months ago I created a track for C:GE called Colonize with Bots. There is no reason to name yet another track like that.

Quote:02. Mankind's Most Thrilling Adventure

You know what? Let's make that even longer!
Mankind's Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Adventure of Exploring Space while Discovering the Truth and Doing Substantial Research - Space, Science and Stuff.

Quote:04. Digitally Crystal Virus

Eh, let's just stop here. I wanted a discussion, not an immediate response with a new package of whatever that is.
I say that again: I don't agree with your methods. Let's just think about everything here and then do stuff. The files are waiting to be edited on Dropbox - give me your propositions (maybe not for the titles, these were almost as terrible as your previous ones - of course that's just my subjective opinion) and I shall change stuff or just do it yourself after notifing everyone else. I've just granted you access.

RE: CoLoBoT 15th Anniversary Preparations - RaptorParkowsky - 09-06-2016

Thank you @Simbax for your feedback. I'll think about those filenames and how to change them without losing so much of readability and directory sorting.

(09-05-2016, 09:02 PM)Emxx52 Wrote: Don't make the same mistake twice @RaptorParkowsky, I've made that Dropbox folder for a reason. I can give you access if you want to change anything or just tell me to change it here.

Yes, but if I would do any changes, then you would probably name it as sabotaging your files. That's why I decided to do this such way at this moment. And having actual package in almost finished state to work with and show is much better than just talking about the changes in this case, because I can see how people and software reacts to it.

(09-05-2016, 09:02 PM)Emxx52 Wrote: I've deleted some meta fields as they seemed redundant and while doing so I tried to follow the convention I established for the C:GE soundtrack.
I don't think repeating the same info (Copyright notice/Description/URL) or mentioning TerranovaTeam or us as album 'artists' is necessary, hence I still don't agree with your proposition. If you want to release these tracks like that then at least don't mention me in this genuinely fantastically tagged album.

How those fields in meta tags can be redundant if they are designed to be filled with such kind of informations? Are we still talking about official OST release or just about pirated MP3/another lazy music release from some digital distribution websites? Or maybe you think this is some kind of DRM? I don't think blending this release with Colobot: Gold Edition unfinished OST is good manner, because this is different game, different music, different year, different cover art design, different almost everything. And original Colobot is finished product unlike of GOLD.

BTW talking about cover art design. Today I prepared new cover art which is almost 100% accurate to the original poster of the game. Personally I like it more than the previous one. I hope someone other than just me and my sister will like it too, here's the result:

I don't know how to treat this cover art in this release. I would completely replace it in this package and in our repo. There's no need to keep that old one that I made so long time ago basing on intro splashscreen from original Colobot (maybe in some kind of Special Edition Rolleyes

?). What's opinion about this?

As you can see, all I want to achieve here is just accuracy and faithfulness to original EPSITEC design in case of Colobot related things. This is just what EPSITEC would do in 2001, but because of obvious reasons just couldn't.

If EPSITEC would release a stand-alone album with the music from Colobot game on CD, propably it would look pretty much like this. There would be mini book with some photos from the game, descriptions and creators/copyright notices about the album in the back. Exact things should be provided in digital release, but in a digitally processed way - the cover art in the lossless hi-def file, propably some extras and the meta tags.

(09-05-2016, 09:02 PM)Emxx52 Wrote: Around eight months ago I created a track for C:GE called Colonize with Bots. There is no reason to name yet another track like that.

Again don't blend original Colobot with Colobot: Gold Edition as they're supposed to be just like another "original vs remake" games. If you have a better idea how this track should be named then just say that. There really should be "CoLoBoT" some way in there as this is probably the most commonly played music in the game (intro, winmission animation scenes). That's why I think this is kinda "CoLoBoT Main Theme/Jingle".

(09-05-2016, 09:02 PM)Emxx52 Wrote: You know what? Let's make that even longer!
Mankind's Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Adventure of Exploring Space while Discovering the Truth and Doing Substantial Research - Space, Science and Stuff.

What's wrong with 4 (5th is hidden in american way) words in the title? And why do you scream like I would do actually something like that: "Mankind's Most - The Thrilling Adventure" (now that's real piece of crap...)? I just wanted to quote a text from the game clearly. Why I should be restrict to only two words in title per track in whole album? #Diversity bro!

(09-05-2016, 09:02 PM)Emxx52 Wrote: Eh, let's just stop here. [...] these [titles] were almost as terrible as your previous ones - of course that's just my subjective opinion.

So what's wrong with "Digitally Crystal Virus"? I know, it's crazy, but I think this craziness is just like in the game itself. A big organic worms that lives on crystal planet with ability to infect software by the air - that's even ridiculus, or just colomagic. Titles represents the game in the game's closest way.

For the counterargument your "Hope" title doesn't represent anything what I would connect to this game. What kind of hope do you hear in it? What's repesentative in the missions where you can hear this music?

Or the "Virus" title. Definitely one word is not enough to name this track, especially when you don't really hear any infection themes in it instead of some crystalic sounds.

So what's terrible in my titles again? Did I do some English mistakes? Or maybe you just don't feel them in the game somehow? Just tell me this in clear way here. I'm not a girl who understands what people say by their emotions and laconic sentences.

That's all that I can say now.