Привет! Here's some quick announcements regarding several music stuff.
Soundtracks
The music moderators and I have been deliberating potential changes to the music section to improve the end user experience, and as part of these discussions, we have decided to begin phasing out the Soundtrack classification of submissions. This will involve dissolving soundtracks that currently exist in the music section into individual submissions (like we did with music packs during the remoderation), and no longer accepting Soundtrack submissions compiled as a whole.
The main benefit of this is searchability: people will be better able to find a song in the section, without having to resort to downloading giant .zip files just to find the one song they're looking for. Some soundtracks also cannot be played on the site SPC player, making them impossible to preview without downloading.
This will not affect soundtracks already in the queue (all one of them, at the time of writing this), as they will simply be dissolved if accepted.
BRR Remoderation
We'll be undergoing a remoderation of the BRR section following the rules update that it received in the beginning of June. Since this section is much smaller compared to the music section, this won't become a 1+ year long effort like the music section was. As usual, all items removed from this remoderation will be archived as it happens.
72hoSPC #7
Lastly, look forward to a special 72hoSPC contest starting August 7th. It's 72 hours in name only, as we'll be experimenting by extending it to five days: the 7th to the 12th. So technically, it's a 120hoSPC. But semantics. As usual, the theme will be revealed when the contest drops. If you're looking for an excuse to procrastinate on your VLDC levels, why not participate?
Ayyy, that's some exciting development. I do indeed think it'd be way more organized not having single soundtrack submissions.
Looking forward to the 120hoSPC too, though admittedly it lands flat in the middle of two busy days for me. Here's hoping I can still do something productive for it!
Well, removing soundtracks have huge pros and cons, which will make it easier for some to find by the song name, while will be harder and time consuming for someone look for a whole soundtrack of a game (depending on the game).
and I know, it takes longer to moderate a whole soundtrack, but I dont think it's worthy to just give the boot to the soundtracks tho
but whatever, I'm just an average smwc user
The nice thing too about just doing single port submissions is a few ports needing more work will no longer mean the whole ZIP archive has to be deleted, because who knows if the author will be around to resubmit the soundtrack anyways? At least the stuff that is already fine will get its deserved pass.
What is planned with BRR remoderation? Is it mostly to do with stuff that's not looped well, incorrect tuning provided, too mute/loud, or is practicality also being considered?
Just look above you... If it's something that can be stopped, then just try to stop it!
I can only see pros by abolishing soundtracks: searchability, filterability, previewability, etc.-ability. As a bonus, moderators won't have to freak out every time one is submitted (having to claim 50 files at once is quite the responsibility and I get anxiety from the mere thought). Also, what Counterfeit said.
Looking forward to 72hoSPC! I promise I won't babyrage at my own frustrations when it's over. <_<; >_>;
isn't it possible to create some sort of in-site soundtrack compilation function? for example, showing related tracks whenever you open a DKC track of other tracks within that soundtrack.
I don't know how much coding work and manual labor this would require, but it's only a suggestion.
Gotta be slightly honest here: not a big fan of the "diminishing" of soundtracks. I understand the logic of having everything be separate so people can find a specific track from a specific game, but (like a few have stated already) if the entirety of an OST exists, wouldn't it make a lot of sense to have a way to download all of them at once without painstakingly downloading each and every file from that series? I would at least keep the OSTs while also having the separate downloads.
I don't mind the other announcements. 120hoSPC sounds like something I can actually attend.
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I also find dissolving soundtracks a mixed bag. Sure, if the soundtrack is made of unrelated songs (where I really appreciate the separation of the soundtrack), the list is incomplete (at the worst, only a couple obscure songs must be missing to count as a "complete" soundtrack) or there are only a couple songs in the soundtrack, I definitively can see individual submissions but on the other hand, there are soundtracks like the Yoshi's Island soundtrack where you can easily replace most SMW songs and other soundtracks where all submissions belong together (up to the point of using the same sample group).
It's kind of the same as separating BRR Samples submissions into individual samples and not sample packs.
I can see what Daizo means - it's too bad Game Name/"Source" isn't its own separate field from the rest of the Song Title field, since that sort of thing would be addable in a cinch if "Port" and not "Remix" nor "Original" were true and "Source" was a match while abolishing complete OSTs: a link could be added next to Download for "Download All Ports from this Source." Perhaps a script could be run to auto-update a lot of what's in the music section to split the two fields but I can see not everything parsing exactly as intended due to having strange names - that - use - hyphens - in - them so there would have to be some hands-on sanitation. Maybe some database editing could be done offline to catch the few songs that come out funny so it doesn't screw up anything online if this thing were pursued?
I think a Game Name/Source field would also help fine-tune search results if you could get a perfect match, for example let's say you want "Super Mario Bros." or "Kirby's Dream Land" the way it is now - You're also going to pull in NSMB and NSMBW, KDL2 and KDL3 ports due to the naming convention, although this sort of thing isn't super-common. If such a thing would come out, being able to type in and tab-complete a title until you see the completion you want PLUS the option to select from a drop-down list I think would help give people better ideas when they go to the music section but really don't know yet what they want.
Small OSTs such as Yoshi's Island or Top Gear I can see being used in full in a hack, but it's unrealistic to, say, expect anyone would ever use an entire Chrono Trigger or Anything of Mana soundtrack in their SMW hack, for instance, nor have use for all these extra unused files unless they were real SPC enthusiasts who love to listen to everything SNES SMW-style.
Just look above you... If it's something that can be stopped, then just try to stop it!
I can see what Daizo means - it's too bad Game Name/"Source" isn't its own separate field from the rest of the Song Title field, since that sort of thing would be addable in a cinch if "Port" and not "Remix" nor "Original" were true and "Source" was a match while abolishing complete OSTs: a link could be added next to Download for "Download All Ports from this Source." Perhaps a script could be run to auto-update a lot of what's in the music section to split the two fields but I can see not everything parsing exactly as intended due to having strange names - that - use - hyphens - in - them so there would have to be some hands-on sanitation. Maybe some database editing could be done offline to catch the few songs that come out funny so it doesn't screw up anything online if this thing were pursued?
I think a Game Name/Source field would also help fine-tune search results if you could get a perfect match, for example let's say you want "Super Mario Bros." or "Kirby's Dream Land" the way it is now - You're also going to pull in NSMB and NSMBW, KDL2 and KDL3 ports due to the naming convention, although this sort of thing isn't super-common. If such a thing would come out, being able to type in and tab-complete a title until you see the completion you want PLUS the option to select from a drop-down list I think would help give people better ideas when they go to the music section but really don't know yet what they want.
Though it hasn't been discussed extensively yet, I actually had this exact same idea a couple days ago and brought it up amongst the music team. I think it's a great solution, personally, although I don't know how much effort it would be to implement successfully. One kink that was mentioned is that it could be an issue for a game like Sonic CD, with multiple soundtracks, which happen to share some songs between them. Maybe the answer to that is to label them all as Sonic CD and put the version in the song title rather than the game name? I'd be interested to hear further thoughts on such a system, since I think this is moreso a question of user experience than of moderation.
The only thing that has bugged me about soundtracks is that there are songs that are found within them that can be missed easily by searching with the title of the song in the sections. I sometimes forget the possibility of soundtracks being the reason a song could not be found. On one hand, dissolving the soundtracks does make this easier. Doesn't seem like a terrible solution but, I do think there may be something better than phasing them out entirely.
I feel like what would make it all easier is to just have it so that when you go to the music sections, you select the game/series of the song you're looking for, then select the song to choose from a list of what's available. Something like what VGMusic.com does to organize all their downloadable MIDI files. Dunno how convenient that would be, or if it's worth the effort to go through. I'm just throwing ideas out.
Personally, I feel like this will be a extreme pain in the ass for any porter who is going to have to deal with submitting a fuckton of files at once individually, but otherwise I agree with the pros; just please have a way to mass submit files because otherwise I really doubt people would be willing to go through all of that
Personally, I feel like this will be a extreme pain in the ass for any porter who is going to have to deal with submitting a fuckton of files at once individually, but otherwise I agree with the pros; just please have a way to mass submit files because otherwise I really doubt people would be willing to go through all of that
It's not really any different from mass-submitting a bunch of completely unrelated songs. I don't disagree that a bulk submission option would be useful, but I don't think it is a priority, since really the only point at which it becomes relevant is C3 (otherwise if you're holding ports in a soundtrack or collection back from submission for some arbitrary reason, that's on you).
I'm also going to drop a semi formal sketch of what I would expect a "game picker" system to look like, for the sake of encouraging discussion about it. I do not know the specifics of how difficult the implementation would be, so maybe a dev can weigh in if they happen to see this. Of course, this comes with zero promise of any of this actually happening, but that's all the more reason to talk about it.
Firstly, Game and Title would be split off into their own fields (but probably still displayed as a singular field on the section page).
When submitting a file, the game field would be a dropdown, similar to C3 voting. You could search for and select a game from the list, or enter your own if it isn't there already. Presumably, this would be left blank for custom tracks. The title field would remain just as it is now, without the game included.
For browsing the section, when filtering, you would be able to select a game name from a dropdown just as when submitting. If an existing game is selected, a "download all" link or button would be displayed at the top of the results, which could potentially also aggregate all the song info into a text file packaged with the songs (though that may be slightly excessive).
As I mentioned earlier, this may pose an issue with some games, and so we may want to consider keeping regional versions to titles rather than the game names themselves. This may certainly be a point of contention, depending on how strict or loose we want to be about how we pack things.
Also to be considered, as Counterfeit mentioned, is dealing with the current songs in the section. It would probably be quite easy to run a script, but how much cleanup would remain is a big question, since it's hard to tell with thousands of songs whether there will be many issues with hyphens, or how many slight inconsistencies there are in game names that could cause issues. This is more for the moderation team to worry about, but it may be worth discussing anyway.
Is a system like this something the userbase would be happy with? Are there more flaws being overlooked? The more input we can get the better, since after all, the section is there for YOU to use. Thanks!
Specifically about Sonic CD, I think the tracks are more commonly known in the format "Game - Title (Good/Bad Future/Present)" so I think the the most natural way to deal with it would be to put the "time" as part of the title field.
With the different information that must be put in each field (namely description, port/remix/original status, as there is no way to automate that no matter what supplementary scripts you have running server-side to automatically detect features that AddMusicK would) I don't know how much more of a help Bulk Submission for music could be. Sometimes AddMusicK even thinks my ports are 0:00 so I am not even sure length can be reliably automated and may be better off pulling from the comments field if defined, which again is not a guarantee it is done or done properly. "Submit and Upload Another File" seems like the way to go.
It may be better to just upload as you go so you don't have to do it all in one sitting, but if you are intending to release everything for a specific occasion or decide abruptly that you do not want to keep your accumulated works private, those are logical reasons I can see such a huge amount of time spent submitting content: I think that's just the nature of the beast and all you can do is be ready for the time sink if that's the way you intend to present the ports.
@Sinc: I like what is suggested though I am not quite sure of the purpose of the additional text file would be, as I don't think the average user is going to be so interested in the technical data as long as it sounds good and just works. If anything, they may just want a reminder of who ported the song since people have a tendency to attribute credit. Maybe it can't hurt, because a text file is not very big amd compresses to nothing easily.
Just look above you... If it's something that can be stopped, then just try to stop it!
Sonic CD - ______ Present (JP/EU, NA)
Sonic CD - ______ Good Future (JP/EU, NA)
Sonic CD - ______ Bad Future (JP/EU, NA)
Sonic CD - ______ Past
or have Sonic CD listed as the JP/NA variant?
One other thing to note, do we want that labeled as JP/EU or just JP. The other one I'm personally for NA for North American since "US" doesn't only count for our NTSC region.
JP/EU eliminates any research/guesswork on the downloader's part. NA accurately describes the geographic region for NTSC-U. I support these ways of dealing with it.
Just look above you... If it's something that can be stopped, then just try to stop it!
Personally, I feel like this will be a extreme pain in the ass for any porter who is going to have to deal with submitting a fuckton of files at once individually, but otherwise I agree with the pros; just please have a way to mass submit files because otherwise I really doubt people would be willing to go through all of that
It's not really any different from mass-submitting a bunch of completely unrelated songs. I don't disagree that a bulk submission option would be useful, but I don't think it is a priority, since really the only point at which it becomes relevant is C3 (otherwise if you're holding ports in a soundtrack or collection back from submission for some arbitrary reason, that's on you).
Yeah, suppose I can't disagree with that honestly; still tho, I do feel like it'd be a useful feature despite only being necessary in specific moments, and personally it's definitely one I'm surprised isn't a option by default here, so it'd be nice to have it at some point
What is planned with BRR remoderation? Is it mostly to do with stuff that's not looped well, incorrect tuning provided, too mute/loud, or is practicality also being considered?
Everything except practicality.
Re: everything regarding a new overhaul for the submission and search system: I'm not opposed to change if it's feasible, and I'd love to hear more discussion on this. I'd like to focus attention to Sinc's proposal - is it something the people would like? If it is, and if it's feasible to put together, it may be something we can further look into. I'm not making any promises on this just due to how uncertain it is at this time, but hypothetically speaking is it something we'd prefer?
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