There was a MIDI mod made here a year or so ago. It might be easy to fold existing .VST files into that mod.
As for downloading music tracks from a server, the track should be mixed down to the lowest possible bit rate, ensuring file sizes stay small. Once downloaded, they exist in cache, which kinda makes that issue a bit mute.
There is also Sofars' Media Server option, storing the files on a public media server.
I checked your soundcloud, they are released under Noncommercial licenses, which means they are not freedom culture licenses. Unfortunately, that means they cannot be used in a lot of our projects because of this. I personally don't include NC content in the game because it limits freedoms downstream from me and also limits what I can do with the project in the future. I suspect MineClone has the same philosophy on this, but I will not speak for Wuzzy and that project. Also, commercial derivatives like MultiCraft likely won't consider using it either.
We recently had a big discussion related to this about non-free NC content being allowed in the ContentDB before it was locked by rubenwardy. viewtopic.php?f=5&t=24785 Its somewhat related and we had some debate about the issues involved with it.
Either way, I respect your decision, hope you'll reconsider sharing your excellent music, and wish you good luck with your project.
Hello. Thank you for the awesome answer. I am using NC license because I thought the majority of Open source games are free and developers are not selling the games. Am I missing something? I thought that NC indicates the possibility (By the developers) to use your song in commercial products where they can earn money. The fact is that I am also a creator and I don't think it's fair enough to earn money thanks to my music without telling me or sharing the revenue. Given the fact that I thought the majority of the games made with minetest are not being sold, I thought this was the right license.
Anyway I am always open to debate and, if creators of a commercial minetest game asked me and contacted, I could be interested to give them permission to monetize from the game using my music.
By the way I would like to understand more about the matter and about why non including NC in a free game should be better.
Some of us are not building open source software, we are building free software. Non-commercial is open source compatible but not free software compatible. There is a difference and its substantial. I don't want to turn this thread into a debate so I would recommend you seek out arguments, information, and ethical essays about some of the problems with non-commercial licenses. Instead let me leave one more brief point of view I have in the context of my own project.
If I used your work in my project, I would never be able to make money, ask for a donation, sell a copy to a friend, etc. etc. Not that I plan to do any of these, but its limiting my rights to do so if I decided to. So the trade-off in using noncommercial software to limit my freedoms is simply not worth it. I'm OK with sharing my work to others. However, your license would put restrictions on how I could share it in monetary ways. I already have a project that is completely free/open-source and creative commons compatible. It would be a downgrade to include non-commercial components. This would also cascade downstream from me and cause other users, artists, and developers to be subject to the same limitations. So I can't ethically include it in this project.
I understand your initial view as an artist is that you want to profit from your work or share in profits one might earn from using your work. But consider what implications that might have on a project. Also, a project should consider how to help artists too, in my opinion. I think donations, contracted work, or keeping credits to the artists are very helpful. However, I also understand most people will use works and never donate.
