Just an idea I had...

[Azzco]

Yeah I think that mods and themes will benefit from it but songs is another idea. However the seperation of songs and per user configs of each song would be good for everyone (moving away scores and career completion from song.ini). But that's going a bit OT.

[KTownEgghead]

Yeah, I put my songs in an archive too. I was referring to the original idea more than anything. Reading RARs would be better, but it really won't be that useful as far as I can tell.

I'm just saying it would save time, because when you download a song, you won't have to extract them from the .rar/.zip archives (Which is great for career packs).

[Lysdestic]

Not to mention the elimination of these posts:

New user: "Hi, I downloaded a song in rar/zip/7z and putted it in my sungs folder, lol, why fof no sees it?"

Many FoF-FF users named Richard: "Search first, noob, your a noob, we hate you, you suck. This has been answered many times before, what do you think we are, a forum?! NOOB!"

Notice the lack of helpful info...

Kind user: "Hmm, sorry about our idiots. Try 7-Zip/WinRar/WinZip, you must first extract the packages before inserting them into your song folder. Next time, try searching to prevent the idiots from coming out, but don't let this discourage you from asking for help should you ever need it again. :)"

One Year Later

Post Whore: "lolololol that guy wuz a noob!"

Vedi: Hurr, thread necromancy, hurr!

[hckyfrk2k7]

I was in the shower (LOL) and I had a pretty interesting idea. Now, I don't know if this is entirely possible, but hear me out.

What if we took the files that were in a song folder (guitar.ogg, song.ogg, song.ini, etc.) and merged them into one file (*name*.fof, for example) so we could just upload the .fof file instead of having to compress them into .zip or .rar? It could also have a compression tool to make the file size smaller. A program could be made to combine all of the proper files.

I'm not sure if this is possible, but it would be the coolest thing ever :P

I absolutely love the idea. I think the best part about it is that it might help to eliminate (or reduce) piracy issues. What I mean by that is that with the current format we have, you could download a fretted song, take the song.ogg and convert it to mp3 format, thus making it pirated and therefore illegal (unless you already legally own the song). If someone was to make a stand-alone program that combined said files into one, .fof extension file, I would think it would at least reduce the "piracy", and possibly increase the legitimacy of FOF, making it impossible to extract said files. Then, we could possibly incorporate the reading of these files into FOF and the song editing software too....

[pimpinpalomo]

this is a great idea! a separate file would need to be created for scores and career completions though. this would greatly reduce the number of files (and folders), reduce stolen charts, and save a little disk space.

[raynebc]

But I also totally agree with what jstump said. You're really not gonna save any space at all. Maybe a few MB to a GB but that's all.

Maybe a few MB if someone had hundreds of charts in this format. I don't think it's worth all the setup to gain so little.

I think the best part about it is that it might help to eliminate (or reduce) piracy issues. What I mean by that is that with the current format we have, you could download a fretted song, take the song.ogg and convert it to mp3 format, thus making it pirated and therefore illegal (unless you already legally own the song).

Piracy is piracy, no matter what the format. The act of taking a pirated OGG file and converting it to MP3 does not change its legitimacy in any way. I don't really know you were going with this argument.

[arfn24]

WARNING:

VERY BAD IDEA INSIDE

I've done a little bit of research, and it actually looks really easy to to this to zip files under OSX.
All it would involve doing is making it so that it scans the songs folder for zip files ( I don't know how hard that would be.), then use command line (I know python can do that,) to send the command "unzip something something something" then delete the folders you're not using and when you're done with a song, it would delete the old folder, and compress the new one with the updated score.ini

I guess most of this could be avoided pretty easily with maybe, the first time you use it creates an ini file for each song so that it displays the name without unzipping, such as:

[songs]
songZip1 = examplesong.zip
songName1 = Example song 1
songArtist1 = example song 1 artist.

Everytime it would see a zip file, it will check this to see the names, and then use that as sortof a substitute song.ini

Still, a lot of work for something so teeny.

[hckyfrk2k7]

I think the best part about it is that it might help to eliminate (or reduce) piracy issues. What I mean by that is that with the current format we have, you could download a fretted song, take the song.ogg and convert it to mp3 format, thus making it pirated and therefore illegal (unless you already legally own the song).

Piracy is piracy, no matter what the format. The act of taking a pirated OGG file and converting it to MP3 does not change its legitimacy in any way. I don't really know you were going with this argument.

Obviously you don't know where I'm coming from either... What I'm saying is that the utility would combine the notes file, song.ini file, and song.ogg file into one file, with the file extension .fof. It would be like adding files to an archive, only with a stand-alone utility that won't be able to extract the files, meaning people could not download the said files just to keep the song. It would make it so the file is a game specific file, only for use with FOF and the different editors, therefore taking the burden of pirating songs off as it is not a straight song download, and more of a game-specific package. I was using the conversion of OGG to MP3 file conversion as an example of how piracy can take place today, and why if an artist found out about FOF and disliked it, could potentially take legal action.

[vedicardi]

Not to mention the elimination of these posts:

New user: "Hi, I downloaded a song in rar/zip/7z and putted it in my sungs folder, lol, why fof no sees it?"

Many FoF-FF users named Richard: "Search first, noob, your a noob, we hate you, you suck. This has been answered many times before, what do you think we are, a forum?! NOOB!"

Notice the lack of helpful info...

Kind user: "Hmm, sorry about our idiots. Try 7-Zip/WinRar/WinZip, you must first extract the packages before inserting them into your song folder. Next time, try searching to prevent the idiots from coming out, but don't let this discourage you from asking for help should you ever need it again. :)"

One Year Later

Post Whore: "lolololol that guy wuz a noob!"

Vedi: Hurr, thread necromancy, hurr!

But this would only be implemented in a mod, which would need winrar/winzip to extract in the first place, so it really doesn't eliminate any of that does it?

[Lysdestic]

But this would only be implemented in a mod, which would need winrar/winzip to extract in the first place, so it really doesn't eliminate any of that does it?

If I understand the original idea correctly, there would be no need for end-user extraction. The game would read the files from inside the archive -- no extraction necessary.

Of course, we'd still have the "lololol where dus this go at?!?!?!?!", but hey, progress is progress.

[vedicardi]

Right, but only FoFiX would be able to read the RARs, not the original game. FoFiX is downloaded as an archive. I understand that you wouldn't have to extract the songs to play them, which is a plus for sure, but we would still get people asking about how RAR files. Unless this was put in the official version of FoF those questions would still be asked was my point lul

[Lysdestic]

If people would download the full release executable, instead of SVN, beta, or whatever else they should not be using, well then, that would be irrelevant.

[vedicardi]

The full release of FoFiX isn't released as a RAR?

Looks like my memory is **** and I'm talking about things I don't actually know anything about again ;D

Well if that's the case, you're right. People whom are too lazy to read FAQs might bother the forum less about RARs. That's a plus.

[jstump91]

Any copyright infringement-related arguments in favor of this approach do not hold water.

If we do implement this (I'm not saying one way or the other yet, but I'm personally leaning toward not, though the other devs may think differently), what prevents people from just renaming the file to the proper extension then unpacking it if they really want the audio file? (Note that the whole ogg vs. mp3 issue is completely irrelevant here!)

[raynebc]

Obviously you don't know where I'm coming from either... What I'm saying is that the utility would combine the notes file, song.ini file, and song.ogg file into one file, with the file extension .fof. It would be like adding files to an archive, only with a stand-alone utility that won't be able to extract the files, meaning people could not download the said files just to keep the song. It would make it so the file is a game specific file, only for use with FOF and the different editors, therefore taking the burden of pirating songs off as it is not a straight song download, and more of a game-specific package. I was using the conversion of OGG to MP3 file conversion as an example of how piracy can take place today, and why if an artist found out about FOF and disliked it, could potentially take legal action.

Obfuscating the format of the pirated music doesn't make it any more legal than it already is. Any artists that ran across FoF would still immediately recognize that the pirated music was there, and would have the same ability to take legal action. People that wanted to obtain the original audio would be able to find a way to extract it. Using encryption on top of the obfuscation wouldn't work unless the private key was distributed to whomever made charts, or the private key would have to be distributed with FoF itself, and it would be easily compromised because of this.