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MP3's In Palace

Making and playing mp3's in palace is fairly simple you would think until you start thinking about how to do it for a PC and then how to make it work for a mac and by the time you get done, you want to pull your hair out. I know NOTHING about riff headers and all of that stuff you will see people talk about. All I know is if you use the right compressor, make sure they have codec installed on their computer, and dont force a download on a mac, it has worked for me with all clients. Maybe Ive just been lucky, but I dont see all these differences in how the different clients react that others have experienced. Like I said, Ive been lucky. Before we start, I think you should read Peter's explanation on how to do this to be all client friendly. It helped me to understand somethings.

I'll take you through the steps for making mp3's for palace.....

Record the music from your CD and save it as a .wav file. The best option to do so is by using a "ripper". There are many around, visit the mp3.com site for a large collection of good mp3 software. You will have the original CD track but in 44.100 16 bits stereo PCM wav format which means it will be a HUGE file.
Keep in mind that the palace client will not play files that are over 1.1 meg in size compressed. This means the song should be 6 minutes or under.
A mp3 wav file is an ordinary mp3 but with a riff-wav header. The riff-wav header is only needed by the client to trigger the file.
The program I use to convert wavs to mpeg layer 3 wavs is called MPEG Layer 3 Producer which I had to pay for. Its at mp3.com. Im told there is a good free one at http://www.goldwave.com, but Ive not tried it.
After you've ripped the song from the cd, you need to encode it to an mpeg layer 3 wav using the program you've downloaded from goldwave. Finally, we need to name the file. Say the file is called rocket layer3.wav now. You want to name it either of these names......rocket, or rocket.mp3, or rocket_m.
The script would be one of these below depending on how you named the file......

ON SELECT { "rocket_m" SOUND }
ON SELECT { "rocket.mp3" SOUND }
ON SELECT { "rocket" SOUND }

You click once to download and again to play once youve downloaded the song. Make sure the mp3 is in your media folder for people to download.

As with any script, there are numerous ways to do them. This particular script and with the added burden of figuring out which script will/wont work with what client, we can have many possibilities. Things to keep in mind are not to use the .wav extention for a mac, not to use the SAY and SOUND command in the same script for a mac, and SOUND works for all new clients now.

If you want to make a script where they auto download and auto play it, you can write something like what Im about to show you here, but you need to test this and adjust the timing of it.

ON ENTER {
"rocket" SOUND
{ ")rocket" SAY } 500 ALARMEXEC
}

Change the 500 lower for quicker play and higher for a longer time to download.

I found a site on the web that compares decoders and tools you will need to convert your sound files. Check this out before you go to find the software you need.
http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~djmrob/mp3decoders/index.html

You need the codec installed on your computer to be able to hear these mp3's. Win98 second edition came with it, but before that did not. You can put it in your media folder and put a script in your palace like this...

ON ENTER { "codec.zip" SOUND }

which will cause them to download the codec into their sounds folder. They then have to go find it there, unzip it, and it will install so they can hear the mp3's.

The best thing to do is make a test room for mp3s for people to go to so they can see if they hear them and try to fix the problem. They can download the codec in that room also. Here is how I did it. I first made a room with a picture of an mp3 player as my background. Over my mp3 player I put a door that said "Click once to download and once to play" with this script....

ON SELECT { "tm_prettyfly_m" SOUND }

The tm stands for my palace name (twisted minds), the name of the mp3 is prettyfly, and I added the _m so macs would trigger their external sound app. I added this script to another door......

ON ENTER { "codec.zip" SOUND
"Click the spot and wait until you see that you have received the file, then click again to play
it. If you didnt hear the mp3, read next how to install the codec." localmsg
"@473 29 This is the room to test to see if you are setup to play MP3's in palace. On enter,
you downloaded a file to your twisted/sounds folder called codec.zip. You need
to unzip and install that after we test and you did not hear anything." localmsg
}

I reallllly hope Ive not confused you and this makes it easier. If you are still having any problems, just email me and I'll come help you set it up.