I really hope you're not trying to goad me with comments like this, and an apology if I'm being overly sensitive. I'm just not doing well with some folks' responses these days and am consequently a bit punchy.

I'm not saying those older formats are less valid or anything like that - I am an Amigan and have listened to MOD and other Tracker-based tunes for years before the MPEG standard was a gleam in the industry's eye. I'm simply talking about what is NOW considered a standard soundtrack, and that is MP3 and OGG. It doesn't matter to the average punter if they can download MODPlayer or a GYM codec to play Sega tunes in WinAMP. What matters to them are MP3s or OGGs that they can drop on their player or burn to CD.

Yes, people like us know how to play a wide range of formats. But that's not what the broader market is, at least for the purposes of the list. Let me give you a comparison - how many people do you know who use the Déjà Vu (.djvu) document format? It's an awesome format for ebooks that produces documents which are generally superior to PDFs, as well as smaller. I use it a lot myself, but your average ebook buyer has never heard of it, and a lot of ereaders don't support it (yet).

At the end of the day, that's what matters as far as this list is concerned - whether a soundtrack in a consumer-expected format is available, and if so, where. I don't doubt that in future we'll see new formats, and these will be superceded.

I wasn't meaning to be goading, although that's sorta how the text comes out. It was suppose to be more playful banter, since they are actually very common formats, just the newest generation of users aren't aware of it anymore.

That's fine, I suspected as much. As I say, I'm just kind of thin-skinned at the moment. As I get to know individual members and their styles it becomes easier for me to read things in their voices. :)

And you are quite correct, those formats were indeed the standards of their day. I still love a good MOD tune, it's amazing how much gets packed into those little files. In fact one of my games was scored using MOD-styled tunes and old C64-format instruments. The graphics were deliberately C64-ish as well, so it was all of a style.

Ah, the halcyon days of the home computing hobby!

If you use a good player like the one i linked (actually i'm not really aware of another player set...) you can compress the files into individual zips and rename the extensions. So S3M becomes S3Z, XM to XMZ, and MOD to MDZ. They usually are half the space. In theory the player could compress the samples as well to get even more compression.

I think one of my favorite songs ever had only 1 sample in it, and was a total of 16k (compressed it was like 2k). I'd have to dig through my old stuff to find it again as i don't recall where i downloaded it at.

That's neat! I don't think I've used that before, pretty slick. I did have a friend who was the musician for a 64k demo scene group, and he got some awesome compression on his tracks. He scored one of my games as well, did a sterling job of it, but those were regular OGG files.

I'm one of the old fossils who still uses WinAMP for playing on the PC. I have a number of extension modules in it that let me play the older and more obscure formats. I've had a bit of luck with conversions too, such as converting the proprietary format used in the Homeworld games into standard MP3s.

The WinAmp plugins never made the music (MOD, XM, S3M) sound right to me... :(

Yah, they're not so hot with Tracker tunes. I use MODPlayer for those. But they do a good job with offbeat codecs, and the one for Genesis chiptunes is pretty decent as well.

Me too. I even have plugins for SID and TFMX installed. :-)

Added:

-- DROD RPG: Tendry's Tale to "Games With No Soundtrack [#-F]"

-- Quest for Infamy to "Games With Partial Soundtracks (GOG contents)"

Believe this is for the first Pandemonium, Bonus Content. Be sure to read the next few posts. The forum was still just pandemonium back then.

if/is

Heads up since no one mentioned it. The soundtrack can also be found in assets\audio\music in ogg format. And you should be able to replace the files there if you want to change the music.

Thanks, we'll update the entry to reflect this info.


Thanks as well, I've added this to the entry for Xenonauts, with a link back to your post so that people can find the tracks more readily.

Today's new release, </span>, does not come with a soundtrack, but Desura sells [url=http://www.desura.com/games/schein]a version that includes it. So hopefully we can find a site where one can purchase the soundtrack as a standalone.

Added Gray Matter to the Sources For Games With No Soundtrack [E-I] list, based on the info from this post and a little research for the alt source.

Let's hope that this will turn into another Bad Mojo Redux or Jack Orlando case in the not so distant future. :-)

I've removed it from the No Sountrack list, HL will have to add it to the appropriate section with Soundtrack, since that falls in his domain. Yah, the layout is a touch schizophrenic. :)

Added as well. Thanks for the info on these!