question about game selling & music

[InCreator]

Hm. Maybe it's a stupid question, but as I understood, MP3-player isn't excactly part of AGS, so it has its own copyright rules and terms. But module music, like XM, S3M and MOD? Are they played also by this MP3 player module or is their player an AGS's freeware part? And what about MIDI?

[scotch]

The MP3 format is patented, that means any commercial software has to pay to use it, that goes for ags's player or anything else.  XM, S3M and MOD are fine as far as I know.  OGG is the best replacement for MP3, it's free software so you don't have to pay to use it even in commercial games (there is a build of ags available with no MP3 player in it if you wanted to sell it), it's comparable in size and quality to mp3.
MIDI is also fine.

[Gilbert]

Actually MP3 is patented, if your game is a free download, I doubt anyone would really care about whether you use MP3 musics in it (same goes to the MP3 player too), unless the MP3's are copyrighted stuffs of course.

However, if your game is commercial, you should take care about it (unless you're really ready to pay these royality fees that may be charged on you). An alternative is to use OGG audio instead. And there is always a compiled engine without MP3 player ready in the AGS's official site if you really need to use it.

Edit: heh Scotch you got me

[TerranRich]

This might be a dumb question, but where is the version of AGS without MP3 support? I'm selling my game and plan on using OGG files instead.

[ThunderStorm]

TerranRich: It's on the AGS download site: http://www.agsforums.com/acdload.htm

[TerranRich]

? The 2.55 engine without MP3 support. Using this you can be absolutely certain there are no mp3-related licensing issues with your game.

Oh...guess I missed that last time I looked.

[MHawk]

I was just wondering why the engine without the MP3 support is so much larger than the engine with MP3 support.  Any insight?

[Fuzzpilz]

Because CJ didn't UPX it. I don't know why, maybe he just forgot.