[PD] Creating auidioengines for games using PD

Thomas Jeppesen jeppesen at skydebanen.net
Thu Dec 20 15:12:07 CET 2007


First of all, thanks to everybody who have answered to my post. It is 
much appreciated!

A lot of my questions have been answered – thank you all!

The reason behind these questions is, I'm a thesis student (almost 
finished). In my thesis I've been working with gameplay in sound, 
primarily within a musical context. For this purpose I've build a 
prototype of a music game of my own design, using PD alone to build both 
the game engine (imagine that Andy ;) ) and the audio engine.

Of all the game engines I've come across, none of them would have been 
able to do what I've been able to do in PD within a few months. This off 
course has to do with the very nature of advanced audio gameplay, which 
is relatively new in gamedesign, but as we've all seen with the rise of 
Guitar Hero and Sing Star, something that has become very big business. 
In other words, the market now seems ready for this kind of audio/music 
gameplay, but the technology available within the industry is not, at 
least not for small time developers, unless PD can be integrated within 
a product without to many obstacles.

Since I'm not a programmer in the traditional sense, I'd like to 
continue using PD as my main environment for experimenting with audio 
gameplay, but if it was a dead end development vise, maybe I should 
reconsider, because of the hard sell situation it would put me in. But 
fortunately your answers tells me to just continue using PD, even if 
certain legal issues still needs some ironing out.

Any other info or theorizing about using PD in games both legally, 
design wise and technically, are most welcomed since it is highly 
relevant to my chapter about using PD for game design in general.

Thank you all again and I hope you will all have a Merry Christmas and a 
Happy New Year!

Cheers!
Thomas


Mark_Danks at PlayStation.Sony.Com wrote:
>
> Considering that I have had to deal with this legal minefield, I can 
> say the following:
>
> Work with Miller to understand what is covered by the BSD license (not 
> all of it is)
> There are a number of "game engine" issues which you need to address 
> when using Pd (this is at the technical/code level)
> Don't worry about the patches. Any game is going to have encryption 
> and other copy protection stuff on it.
>
> Please don't ask me to comment on the details of how PD has been/is 
> being used. However, if you want to talk about the theory of PD being 
> used in games, especially on a certain game console which I care about 
> :-) then ask away...
>
> Note: if you are dealing with a game publisher on the legal aspects of 
> PD, then it is likely that my company has enough legal agreements with 
> them for me to talk about concrete uses of PD. Let me know in private 
> email.
>
> Mark Danks
> Senior Manager, Developer Support
> SCEA
>
>
>
> *Thomas Jeppesen <jeppesen at skydebanen.net>*
> Sent by: pd-list-bounces at iem.at
>
> 12/19/2007 05:01 AM
>
> 	
> To
> 	PD-list at iem.at
> cc
> 	
> Subject
> 	[PD] Creating auidioengines for games using PD
>
>
>
> 	
>
>
>
>
>
> Hi,
>
> If I wanted to use PD to build an audio-engine for a game, how would the
> copyrights work if the game I was creating the engine for were commercial?
>
> Also, and I know this is going to be sensitive to some people in this
> community, but lets have the discussion anyway, I don't like the idea
> about anybody being able to open the audio-engine that I have created
> for a commercial game, as easy as they would any PD-patch out there. And
> I'm sure the people I would be working for would hate the Idea. Is there
> an easy or ”normal” solution to locking a patch so it can't be opened by
> anybody?
>
> I know that PD has been used in the production of the music-engine for
> Spore, but I havn't been able to find details about this particular
> project. Does anybody know anything about it that they could share 
> with us?
>
> I read a post from Andy Farnell on the sound design mailing list, that
> EA had created their own version of PD for Spore, is that the only way
> to go about it if
> you wanted to use PD in a commercial production?
>
> And last but not least, are there any other know commercial products
> (games primarily) out there that has used PD as the audioengine?
>
> Cheers!
> Thomas
>
>
>
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