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  #91  
Old Sep 5, 2013, 01:36 PM
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Would it be possible to add "Licensed" or "Unlicensed" next to "Doujin/Indie" in parenthesis? I think that would work for the purposes of helping appease the confusion.
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  #92  
Old Sep 5, 2013, 01:45 PM
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indie in doujin/indie refers to what?
because if it's what I think it is, so it's not a good term to be used here

afaik, it refers to labels not affiliated to majors of the music industry, I doubt you could put some doujin indies in the same bag as nippon columbia or king records
I suggest to remove this from the category or find another word (it could be confusing)
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  #93  
Old Sep 5, 2013, 05:25 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Secret Squirrel View Post
The original intent for the classification "doujin" was to filter out all those old Key and Ragnarok Online albums from comiket for people who didn't want to see them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Secret Squirrel View Post
I suppose one way to encapsulate its general use, would be to change it from "Doujin/Independent" to "Unlicensed Fan Arrange".
This should probably be discussed with the people who want to filter out these albums: do they want all of them gone, or just unlicensed ones? If it were me, I'd want licensed ones hidden too, because licensing doesn't change that they're fan arrangements. However, I've never filtered them out and probably never will, so my opinion is pretty moot.

Maybe related: do we want the same filter to hide works albums by doujin artists too? (Alternately: a separate filter for that? Filter out all works albums regardless of composer?)


Quote:
Originally Posted by Secret Squirrel View Post
I'm not sure we really want 3 fields (publisher type, publication type, rights type) for this. Although we like to be thorough, I'm not sure that it adds anything that the user wants. I am not sure the distinction between large publisher, independent publisher, and self-publishing is that significant anymore.
Yeah, I get that adding more complexity to an already complex form for minimal gain isn't necessarily a great idea. The thing is that I don't think the complex and inconsistent way we've been using that field is really any better. That's why I've been trying to nail down and separate all the different things we mean by "Commercial" and "Doujin/Indie": so we can figure out which of them we truly care about and the best ways to represent each. I'm not necessarily in favor of three fields if we can come up with something better.

~~~~~

Here's an imperfect idea to get the ball rolling: (1) remove Publish Format entirely and use whether the linked publisher is a commercial label, doujin group, or bootlegger; (2) add "Fan Arrangement" as a Classification; and (3) have a Rights listbox for "Licensed" and "Unlicensed," allowing multiple selection.

To get it out of the way, the glaring problem with this scheme is that it requires a publisher entity for every single album. This would mean having to make a lot of new entries and pull more information from the publisher table into album pages and color coding, so this could be a big issue. There are also a lot of albums that we simply can't know are licensed or not, but that would also be a problem if we changed "Doujin/Indie" to "Unlicensed Fan Arrange."

If we take care of those, here's how it would work in practice:

wall o' text:
Doujin albums: This gets rid of the confusion of classifying doujin albums differently based on content by just not doing so.

Filtering out doujin albums: We could filter out all albums with "Fan Arrangement" classifications, as well as albums with doujin publishers and "Original Work" Classifications. This leaves doujin-published OSTs alone.

Official doujin arrangements: Some doujin albums have official arrangements because the group arranged their own compositions, so differentiating between "Arrangement" and "Fan Arrangement" is important for filtering.

Licensed & unlicensed fan arrangements: Both types of album would have a "Fan Arrangement" Classification, so there would be no inconsistency. If we want to leave licensed fan arrangements unfiltered, we can do that too.

Bootlegs: There are a couple of really weird cases where a bootlegger published a legitimate release, so a Rights field would be necessary to properly classify bootlegs. We can't just inherit it from the publisher.

Original soundtracks and fan arrangements on the same album: Here's one that's all fan arrangements except for a special in-game track by ZUN. So we'd want both "Licensed" and "Unlicensed" for this album, which is why I suggested a listbox instead of a checkbox.

Original soundtracks and bootleg soundtracks on the same album: Here's a soundtrack containing several pieces for which publishing rights weren't actually acquired. Combining both Rights options helps here too.

Official arrangements and fan arrangements on the same album: I can't think of any specific examples right now, but I'm pretty sure we have at least one doujin album where someone arranged both one of their original compositions as well as other game music. "Arrangement" & "Fan Arrangement" plus "Licensed" & "Unlicensed."

How does that sound? I think it takes care of most of the inconsistency and weirdness by clarifying the fan arrangement and licensing statuses without adding too much: +1 Classification, +1 simple field, -1 complex field. Any improvements on this, or huge holes that it wouldn't be able to deal with?
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  #94  
Old Sep 5, 2013, 08:13 PM
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I'm one of the people with the doujin filter set to hide them. Personally, I do not want to see any of them. There are multiple reasons but the main three are

- Fan arrangements don't interest me (I don't want to have to look through the 95% bad to find the 5% good)
- Availability: I just don't have the initiative to go and find all these Japanese-only, con-only, limited-only things.
- Sheer volume: There really are just far too many. And they come in giant waves (tsunamis???) that coincide with the komiket events.

To be honest, the filter isn't even consistent across pages. I forget which ones it's supposed to work on and which ones it doesn't but I know it's not filtered everywhere.

... rant

I don't have the answers to the simplification question. I've been stressing simplification and "general use" for years to no avail. There's too many phantom standards, inconsistent standards and just plain sloppy application of existing standards to add any more. I have no problem with detailed data, that's obviously one of the goals of the database, but people tend to forget that kind of data is really only for the very, very minority of us on this site that actually care about it. The end users largely don't. They come here for tracklists, translations, artist and product databases, cover art, collection functionality and the marketplace. They don't come here to discuss the differences between doujin, fan original, fan arrange or compliation albums. And they don't care what the final outcome of said discussion is, either.

What would be nice, would be a top level set of data for the general case and a drillable, searchable, sortable level for the specific case. Go to an album page, see that it's "doujin" by specification (or color highlight). Want to know what detail that really means? Click a "+" and expand it to see it has fan arrangements and original work. Want to find all works by ZUN? Search for it. Want to find all works by ZUN that are doujin with [...]? Advanced search it.

Of course, that requires modification to the database, the sql and the HTML. Which I realize just isn't going to happen. The amount of proposed changes by and large far outweighs the amount of actual changes that happen.

... /rant
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  #95  
Old Sep 5, 2013, 09:29 PM
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I'm one of them too, I don't care doujins
however, filtering them only on update pages is not enough to me (but I understand why that must be viewed)
(I'd like an option to completely hide them, not just update pages)
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  #96  
Old Sep 6, 2013, 12:53 AM
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Let's keep things simple: everything that is fan arranged, regardless of licensing, is doujin, as in orange-colored. In this case, when a new album entry is being created that happens to be a doujin, a third field appears when that category/release type is selected asking if it's licensed or not. If the doujin happens to be licensed, then add that word next to it in parenthesis or some other derivative like a check mark or an asterisk, or anything else that helps differentiate between the two.

I don't think we should over-complicate this more than it, apparently, already is.
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  #97  
Old Sep 6, 2013, 09:44 AM
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I'm also in favor of keeping the system simple.

The only concern I have with classifying all indie/doujin releases as such, regardless of licensing, is the general assumption that doujin implies fan-made; unlicensed; illegal.

The cover/remix scene is largely underground because the world of copyright is difficult, and many folks simply don't bother. That's one of the main sentiments I want to change. That's why I'm building things like Joypad Records.
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  #98  
Old Sep 6, 2013, 10:01 AM
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I firmly believe that assumption has been long lifted with the vast interest VGM has gotten over the years, and fan-made arranges/remixes have actually helped with that. Not to mention websites like this, OSV, YouTube channels, the indie bundles... Most everyone these days recognized VGM, it no longer is the kid that's sitting alone in one corner.
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  #99  
Old Nov 1, 2014, 03:56 AM
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Gwise from your gwave...!

We still are inconsistent about albums with "original source music".
Ie.- music directly from the composer, before being converted for the game (like MIDI to SNES sound chip).

Sometimes we use "remaster" or "arrangement", but I don't think either are accurate (implies "newly done after the game's music", this case is "source before generating game's music).
We could handle it with a new classification:

Original source / original version (new classification)
For albums with music BEFORE being altered for the game.
ex. NDS high quality "composer" music vs NDS low quality "in-game" music conversion.
examples:
FF XII (not PS2-source)
FF Tactics Advance (GBA source + original MIDI)
FF Tactics A2 (not NDS-source)
Okamiden (not NDS)
Assault Suit Valken (original source, vs: SNES OST)
Ape Escape (original source, but used in the PSP ver.?)
Tactics Ogre (SNES source + original MIDI)
Ogre Battle (same)
Tales of Legendia (original MIDI for several tracks, may be debatable)
God Eater (may be debatable too, since Shiina alters the music)
Sword Maniac (originals)
Dodonpachi (original source + PCB source)
Rage of the Dragons (original HQ wavs, Neo-Geo streamed very LQ wavs)
NOT: Blazing Star (contains LQ Neo-Geo wavs, though one would expect HQ originals)

Remaster (old classification)
For albums with music AFTER the game's music.
ex. an album mastered from a source album (or maybe re-recorded).
examples:
FF IV OSV (SNES line-in) > FFIV Remaster (redone line-in or remastered from the prev)
(OR: get rid of this and use notes; it's hard to quantify this since only a few tracks/discs may be altered: ex. Rockman X vs Rockman X: only Rockman X1/2/3 were changed)

So one album could be classified as "original soundtrack" (to keep consistency) + "original version" (to signal "contains source music").
I think the term "original source" (or "original version") is easy to understand and complements "original soundtrack" nicely.

Any thoughts...? :3
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  #100  
Old Nov 7, 2014, 12:23 PM
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Rage of the Dragons is kind of interesting... so how different does it have to be though? I remember reading a post where the streams in Fuujin Ryouiki Eretzvaju were actually different from what was on the soundtrack but only slightly, like different mixing or something (but I checked the Eretzvaju thread and can't find that post). But I remember taking the streams from the game after reading that post and they are different, possibly because streams are compressed for game discs but maybe there's also intentionally different mastering for the game. So couldn't that be considered a "lower-quality wave"? But the difference is very small and probably exists in pretty much any game with streamed audio.

Also, there's stuff like SoulCalibur II where they change stuff for the game? I actually dislike the soundtrack compared to the in-game audio. I can hear certain things better in some songs from the game audio, and some instruments are changed completely, for example like in Hubris: the erhu that plays the main melody in the game's audio is a boring violin or something on the soundtrack, there's no tremolo effect or that neat Chinese sound to it. But isn't the soundtrack "first"? There's also Dark Cloud, in which a handful of the songs on the soundtrack are like an entire octave higher on the soundtrack and also it's possible they used a different synthesizer for the songs? (I read that second part in a post.)

I think I'm just trying to understand how different the audio has to be between game and soundtrack and also what kind of changes qualify. "Original source music" seems like a myth. I remember reading that a lot of the original material for the Rockman SNES soundtracks had been lost, so that's not technically the original source music either. In the Rockman X1~6 thread, there's a discussion about the opening song to X2 having sound effects in it that are not present in the SPC set, and the Rockman 1~6 thread mentions some kind of an audible hum so none of that may technically be "source" music.
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  #101  
Old Nov 7, 2014, 01:44 PM
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I'd mostly mark when the albums are identified as containing source music (liner notes, shop descriptions) or being clearly different (DS OSTs). Mastering or alterations done for the OSTs (like adding fade-outs) should be expected.

Rockman X, source music would be MIDI + original synths they used before downconverting to 64kb SNES music.
(btw, Capcom had a webpage where you could DL original MIDIs, while the OSTs were recordings=after conversion).


Anyway, I thought people would find useful having such info at a glance, instead of notes/thread-diving but maybe not :(
So let's ignore what I wrote and move on.
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  #102  
Old Nov 7, 2014, 06:57 PM
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Well, it would be particularly useful because then you could use that classification in an advanced search or something. So if you were looking for original audio and some other parameters, I don't think you could find that right now with such info only being in the notes field. I never meant to argue it wouldn't be useful. I just think it's hard to pin down. But when you say that you'd only mark albums identified as such, that makes sense, it's at least a good starting place.

I'm curious about the examples of SoulCalibur II and Dark Cloud. What would you do with those? I don't know if the liner notes say anything about the differences, but there are clearly differences in those soundtracks releases compared to the games. If it's not clearly stated, don't mark it?
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  #103  
Old Nov 8, 2014, 05:09 AM
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Soul Calibur 2 I believe the OST is the arcade (~2002) release, while the console versions (~2003) arranged some tracks, which actually were compiled here!
This case would be handled changing the platforms + using the notes, though.
(I didn't know this, though I played the game quite a bit, so it was neat you mentioned it).

Dark Cloud in-game uses sequenced (MIDI) music, so very likely the OST is source audio (before downconverting to PS2). Not just octaves, several tracks have better-sounding instruments or different rhythm patterns.
Several similar cases I'd like to mark fall into this category (Shadow Hearts series, FF 12/Tactics, etc)


The main distintion to me is "does it sound noticeably different compared to a mastered line-in recording?". We could be using it as a simple "contains changes compared to the game" marker I suppose --just think it would be neat to properly classify those cases.
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