Sheet music

[pppp]

Requests to make a music bot and for playing music together surface periodically in discord chats and in forum. As I have already written a music playing plugin for Salem I can already tell a simple approach at that is doomed to fail because of server, network and client lag and because of fixed note length on top of that. The complete rant is to be found under the link.

I am suggesting adding a sheet music mechanics, which would be resemble current drawing sketch mechanics.
- A player can write or import music scores on a prepared parchment or shop-bought staff-paper
- optionally a score can be written for a specific instrument, for any instrument or for a set of instruments.
- the written score can be played by using the score when the instrument is equipped.
- the really important part of the idea is that the whole sheet is sent to listening clients as a single sound resource, which means the whole timing will be done client side and stuttering caused by server and network lag will be eliminated.
- the written score can be placed on a music stand so it can be accessed and played by multiple players
- optionally only a one voice can be written on a single sheet but the stand can accept more sheets, one for each voice.
- if more than one players is using a stand, the music starts only if all people start playing

EDIT: Ability to import one of formats handled by MuseScore would be nice. MuseScore is a FOSS released under GNU GPLv2.

[Hrenli]

I agree that network kills the music in current implementation. There is no point even trying to plug MIDI and trying to wrap it into keyboard commands as timing will be lost forever on the way.

[Granger]

Yea, would need to be synced on the server.

But I think the ability to upload sheet music for multiple instruments (for the server sending the different channels to the respective characters in sync) would be a nice thing to have, as it would turn the instruments from (in the hands of nearly all users) violating the geneva conventions into something bearable.

[Griffone]

I know Starbound has music in multiplayer, apparently it uses ABC notation.

I believe (not from source code, just by playing the game) the whole song is sent to listeners along with a starting timestamp and current instrument info. One can change instruments on the fly (if I remember correctly) without stopping the music. Also other players can join playing the same tune and they are synchronized somehow (I presumed by a timestamp, but it can be anything, we have authoritative server).

Generally though, I think changing music mechanics is not important for a new world, unless there are gameplay changes to it as well (bard buffs and such).