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Licensing Ambient Musics & SFX


wildmage

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I am particularly fan of the ambient musics that you have composed for the game. They are dark, mysterious, stressful. I particularly like gregorian,s s_catacombs, ss_derelic, underground_darkness_loop, basement01_loop, church, but most of them are awesome.

I am actually looking for good ambient musics for my game, and I was hoping that maybe the authors of the respective musics would be interested to sell me the rights to use it in my upcoming dungeon crawler title ? I would be really interested to get in touch with them.

Also, your sound FX are very good. Is there any way to purchase all or some of them? Maybe it is more complicated due to their various origins and licenses.

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In regards to the ambients I dug through the soundsahders and found the authors of each of those files you mentioned:

 

gregorian - Muze

ss_catacombs - ShadowSneaker

ss_derelic - ShadowSneaker

underground_darkness_loop - Schatten

basement01_loop - Schatten

church - mrDischarged

 

As for tracking down those authors to purchase royalty rights? I'm unsure. Maybe someone else on the team can help out there, or a google search might point you in the right direction.

 

Also for the sound effects that's a whole other ball of wax. Each of those are typically sourced on a commercial-free license and come from a large variety of places such as freesound and sometimes ones that individual authors have recorded. We don't have a purchase system setup as money never changes hands here, and tracking down the authors for those would take a long time.

 

If you had individual sound files you were interested in, you might be able to track down those authors, but you would have to go to each of those. As i'm pretty sure we don't own any of the music/sfx included with the game. 

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Thanks a lot @Goldwell !

I will try to contact some of them. I already tried to contact Schatten directly by MP when I saw a post saying he did a lot of ambient sound, but no answers yet. He seems not active here and there are no coordinates.

Thanks again, I will continue my search with those authors :)

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  • 3 weeks later...

you should only sell royalty rights and not copy protect rights as that leads to a dark in dirty tunnel where the mod would be banned from using the sound effects and music that originated in the mod. Selling the other rights means the mod would lose the rights to use them.

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As i see it, you can not use the samples from TDM in your commercial game, because the music is publisched under a nc license (as for all things).
You can ask schatten (to create) for other samples, but you can't use the samples from TDM.


 

Edited by freyk
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On 10/28/2019 at 9:36 AM, freyk said:

As i see it, you can not use the samples from TDM in your commercial game, because the music is publisched under a nc license (as for all things).
You can ask schatten (to create) for other samples, but you can't use the samples from TDM.

Not exactly. For samples which were originally created by some team member, e.g. Schatten, it is perfectly possible for that team member (who is the copyright owner) to individually negotiate a separate license with somebody else, in addition to the CC-NC license which is used for the asset in the mod. Copyright owners are always free to grant additional licenses to their own work under whatever terms they wish, regardless of which existing licenses have been granted to others in the past.

What is not possible is for team members to grant commercial licenses to assets which they do not own 100%, i.e. because they include copyrighted material received from an outside source under a non-commercial license. In this situation, only the upstream original copyright owner has the legal authority to grant additional licenses.

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On 10/5/2019 at 9:53 AM, Goldwell said:

In regards to the ambients I dug through the soundsahders and found the authors of each of those files you mentioned:

 

Are you certain that reveals the actual author of the composition? Or might it just tell you who went through the process of finalizing the piece/file in some situations? 

I won't be able to see what you're seeing or hear these actual pieces until possibly later, but I think we'd want to be extra careful to make sure the actual authors are who it says they are. A few ambient files I contributed (mainly an ambient track and some machine sounds) were likely finalized by someone else (i.e., our audio lead at the time ... Schatten, I think?). Basically, someone who had access to different audio tools than me and/or different areas of expertise -- either for looping purposes, or getting the file(s) into the correct file format, or turning stereo audio into mono (or vice versa), etc. Things like that. Other audio creators were likely in the same boat as me regarding this.

By just viewing the text titles of the above pieces, I'm pretty sure I didn't compose any of those. But seeing "darkness" in the title of one makes me wonder a little (I want to verify later), since one of mine was titled Darkness_Falls, or something to that effect (had the word 'darkness' in it) and I've heard it in at least two or three maps. 

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13 hours ago, Darkness_Falls said:

Are you certain that reveals the actual author of the composition? Or might it just tell you who went through the process of finalizing the piece/file in some situations? 

I won't be able to see what you're seeing or hear these actual pieces until possibly later, but I think we'd want to be extra careful to make sure the actual authors are who it says they are. A few ambient files I contributed (mainly an ambient track and some machine sounds) were likely finalized by someone else (i.e., our audio lead at the time ... Schatten, I think?). Basically, someone who had access to different audio tools than me and/or different areas of expertise -- either for looping purposes, or getting the file(s) into the correct file format, or turning stereo audio into mono (or vice versa), etc. Things like that. Other audio creators were likely in the same boat as me regarding this.

By just viewing the text titles of the above pieces, I'm pretty sure I didn't compose any of those. But seeing "darkness" in the title of one makes me wonder a little (I want to verify later), since one of mine was titled Darkness_Falls, or something to that effect (had the word 'darkness' in it) and I've heard it in at least two or three maps. 

If they didn't put any disclaimers in the metadata / properties of the file regarding who is the author and do not specify that to nobody, anywhere, forever- that means they didn't really care about copyright that much. People use pseudonyms here anyway. Most don't disclose their real name. This is equivalent/analogic to being anonymous.

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"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."...

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

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8 hours ago, Anderson said:

If they didn't put any disclaimers in the metadata / properties of the file regarding who is the author and do not specify that to nobody, anywhere, forever- that means they didn't really care about copyright that much. People use pseudonyms here anyway. Most don't disclose their real name. This is equivalent/analogic to being anonymous.

Not exactly true.

"They didn't really care about copyright that much" is a pretty presumptuous statement. And, "If they didn't put any disclaimers in the metadata/properties of the file regarding who is the author, etc." assumes the composer of the music is some sort of professional who knew/knows how to do these things. TDM has/had some professionals working on it, sure; but some are/were amateurs, or with varying areas of expertise contributing in a variety of disciplines.

"Most don't disclose their real name... this is equivalent to being anonymous" -- again, presumptuous. A composer using a pseudonym instead of their real name does not mean they want to sever all ties with their work, or are okay with the world using their creation however they want. There are plenty of artists (musicians, writers, actors, etc.) who don't use their real name. And when it comes to a game mod, maybe some artists just want some semblance of privacy; but if/when $$ enters the equation, or the loss of their work to someone else becomes possible, or their work might be used for something not agreed upon originally, of course they'd have a tendency to speak up.

I'm 'case in point'. I contributed my audio to be used and re-used in the mod, within the mod, for free. I didn't authorize it or want it used for sale or re-sale, or for someone else to profit off of my work, or for use in other projects. That type of stuff is something I'd first want to be made aware of, to have a conversation about, and to have the opportunity to mull it over before deciding whether or not to allow. Had I not randomly stumbled upon this thread, I wouldn't have known one of my works was potentially being offered up for sale for non-Dark Mod usage, and someone else potentially being labeled the author. I still need to see what that 'underground_darkness' piece is; I may very well NOT be the composer, and probably am not; but I just want to make sure. But what if some composer other than Schatten did that piece or one of the others listed. Respectfully, the original composers may, similarly, want to know and weigh in; just as I would like to on my work.

And *if* I didn't originally mention myself being the author in the metadata/properties of the original file -- or if that info didn't get transferred from my original file to the finalized file that someone else processed for eventual inclusion in the mod -- that's not me saying "I didn't really care about copyright that much." I just ask that you please don't try to speak for me or other artists, or put words in our mouths. You've been incorrect on every front so far when trying to represent my thoughts, my position, or my desires, I'm sorry to say.

Just play it safe and don't assume the owners of the music files are who the file says it is, and don't assume the original artists think exactly like you do. Talk to the artists directly, which is what this thread aims to do and is what I wanted to make sure it does; which was the main reason for my initial post above. And if the original owner is not absolutely determinable and cannot be contacted for whatever reason, then don't use it.

You know, this type of thing is why The Dark Mod is free and always has been; and why every instance of "you guys should sell TDM and profit from it" becomes a can of worms that eventually gets shut down. The original intent/spirit of the mod was not to sell it or the assets, and tracking down all the original owners who might lay claim to profits, and determining percent-outlays of cash, etc. would be a nightmare. In the end, it always seems to come back to the same mantra: "Leave the money out of it." It's the safest bet. In the case of the musical pieces, it might be the safer bet, as well.

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While announcing yourself as an author of a copyrighted work (e.g. with "Copyright (C) 2019 Joe Bloggs") may be recommended in some circumstances, it certainly isn't required. Copyright protection is automatic, and applies regardless of whether you know (or can find out) who the author is.

To assume that it's OK to relicense somebody else's work simply because they didn't put their name in the shader file wouldn't just be presumptuous as Darkness_Falls says — it would be unlawful.

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On 11/5/2019 at 8:36 AM, Darkness_Falls said:

Are you certain that reveals the actual author of the composition?

 

Nope, I wasn't around back in those days. I just noticed that there were some author tags on the files they were asking from and put two and two together. I'm certainly not the leading authority on that, by your description it seems like Schatten might be the one to talk to try and discern who should be credited for what.

 

Personally I think it's way too much of a minefield to try and navigate through and think it's easier to just keep everything as it is, non-commercial. But if someone really wanted to try and track down permission, I guess the authors attached to the tracks would be a good starting place. They could at least confirm if they want to give their permission, or offer up any extra info on who else worked on the song.

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Very true. Copyright disclaimer or no copyright disclaimer - your rights will not be protected if you don't defend them.

"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."...

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

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