rat patrol radio WIP

[stlkrash]

My idea is to link a radio chanel with this: http://www.ratpatrolradio.com/ Any help or thoughts would be appreciated. I think it would make a really cool mod IMHO.

[tater]

I know the guy who owns that site, I'll send him this way.

[Torgen]

Hi!

The station is hosted on the Live 365 radio network (www.live365.com). I used to be on iTunes, but when the RIAA threatened all the massive *retroactive* royalties, I (among others) got dropped in an effort to lower their exposure to liability.

You can tune in to Rat Patrol Radio using Winamp or another mp3 player, instead of the Player365 browser plugin. Player365 uses DirectX, so I dumped that when I dumped IE and went to Firefox.

IIRC, you have to make a free membership to Live365.com after listening for a certain number of hours. You can also get the stream (and ALL of the thousands of stations at Live365) commercial-free for something like $5 a month.

Used to, you could listen unlimited minutes on a free account, but now (again thanks to the greedy bloodsuckers at the RIAA) they send a query after a few hours to see if you're still actively listening, or the computer is unattended. They have to pay the RIAA royalties for every second that they stream to EACH listener, so they're checking to see if anyone is actually listening after a while.

Short version, and soapbox aside, it used to be a lot easier, but still is probably possible. The only hang-up will be the limited time for listening before getting "pinged". I would run it in the background while playing SHIII by starting it before starting the game, before I dug into my huge library of WWII songs radio clips and made an mp3 folder for it, and of course it was great to listen to when on those long drives in WWII Online.

You may want to check around on the tech forums at www.live365.com and see if there's any info you can use. Good luck!

-Torgen

[stlkrash]

I have a live365 acct. You are prob right. I was just looking for way to get more programming over the waves. I could plug through say Team Speak on my server rack.

[kylesplanet]

I've been to this site before and it was a really cool experience. I would love to some how get this worked into a mod for SH4. What the RIAA did was just plain silly. I'm a free market, capitalist from the word go and they don't realize they are cutting thier own throat by doing this. Even Rush Limbaugh had to stop playing music during breaks of his online streams due to this. I don't think they realize how many people listen then turn around and purchase a song they like. Its a way to market music (new and old) to another crowd but they can't see three feet in front of thier face.

[retroflow]

Would anyone still be interested in Historical music files for the Gramophone, etc? They'd be in the neatly compact .ogg vorbis format. Project Collaborations may be welcomed. Feel free to PM me.

[Torgen]

What would really be neat is to be able to have certain mp3 files tied to the in-game date. For example, being on the surface at night and catching the news about the invasion of Iwo Jima or something. I have a ton of public domain WWII news programs that could be chopped and edited for that.

[fred8615]

Originally Posted by Torgen

What would really be neat is to be able to have certain mp3 files tied to the in-game date. For example, being on the surface at night and catching the news about the invasion of Iwo Jima or something. I have a ton of public domain WWII news programs that could be chopped and edited for that.

The game does allow you to do that. You create an "Events" folder inside the radio station folder, put your files in "Events," and then create an "events.ini" file that will call the media file at a certain date and time. The below is an example of the first CBS report of the D-Day invasion:


[EVENT]
StartDate=06.06.1944
StartTime=00.00.00
MediaFile=1944-06-06 0300 CBS News Uncomfirmed Reports Of Invasion.mp3


Note that "StartDate=" is in Day/Month/Year format, and I adjusted the time because this is from a west coast station.

Writing or editing a station is even easier using this:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=120510

If you'd like more specific info, just drop me a line here or PM or e-mail. And check the link in my sig for the stations and stuff I've created, so you'll know I know what I'm talking about.

[stlkrash]

These all sounds great. So who's up for it? Imagine having a few seperate channels on team speak. Then its open for every one, as example the channels could do some up to date news, or something like strange news, just example. But it would be brodcast from a site or app the all players could get. It's a rough idea and it's still the first cup of lifer juice, bear with me lol.

[stlkrash]

I have a server box and the connection on it to host a radio kit. So if we can come up with the plan we are good to go.

[Front Runner]

Originally Posted by Torgen

What would really be neat is to be able to have certain mp3 files tied to the in-game date. For example, being on the surface at night and catching the news about the invasion of Iwo Jima or something. I have a ton of public domain WWII news programs that could be chopped and edited for that.

I am interested in a project along these lines. I have Adobe Audition 2.0 and I'm willing to do some editing toward that end.

PM me and we can discuss this further.

BTW, I'm in Bradenton.

[stlkrash]

in order to keep the time lines right is there a way for sh4 or 3 for that matter (cant leave them out) to get a time stamp from a server running the radio station?

[fred8615]

Am I correct in that what you want to do is somehow have this "Rat Patrol" station play through the SH4 radio? Without putting any files in a station folder?

Or are you looking at saving the stream, editing it in to parts, and then creating a station from them?

[retroflow]

Obtaining vintage Broadcasts from WW2 is not at all difficult. Dozens of sites archive them. Most seem to be in the Public Domain already, royalty-free.

Once again, I'm not generating MP3s.. I'm turning audio into the more stable and compact .ogg vorbis format.

As for music, I'm already working on it. News stories are easy since they're always sorted by date of broadcast. But music from WW2 isn't always. In some cases, Discographies conflict significantly. For my own uses, my idea is simply to have songs appear in the game by the year/date they appeared in History, rather than a mish-mash of WW2 era music all at once. For example, Doris Day's "Sentimental Journey" from 1944 won't be heard if your in-game date is 1943 or earlier. If possible, you wouldn't hear it until just after it was first released or charted to simulate realistic distribution, etc.. Likewise, to keep the music from getting boring, I want to be able to start with a "Base" collection at the start of a game. This would be all music available up to the year you start. As each year progresses - if you're lucky - more songs will be added chronologically and accurately to the base set you start with. If you survive the War, you can relax to the newest Hit Parade songs for September 1945.

EDIT: Umm.. Nevermind. Fred8615 seems to have already addressed this last year. At least insofar as to be enough for me to abandon my own (similar) project.. To quote a line from the film "1941" - "We've got to find a way to make these things smaller". 749MB for one year's file? Whew..

[fred8615]

Originally Posted by retroflow

If you survive the War, you can relax to the newest Hit Parade songs for September 1945.

Except the game stops cold on August 15th, 1945, so you can't hear anything past that date. I originally had audio covering the surrender ceremony on September 2nd in my stations, but took them out after finding this out.

EDIT: Umm.. Nevermind. Fred8615 seems to have already addressed this last year. At least insofar as to be enough for me to abandon my own (similar) project.. To quote a line from the film "1941" - "We've got to find a way to make these things smaller". 749MB for one year's file? Whew..

That's because there are over 300 songs in the file. And that was after removing "duplicates." It seems many times the same song was recorded and released by different artist's in the same year. So I would keep either the longest version, the more famous artist version, or the vocal version, and deleted the others.

As noted in my radio mods thread, the impetus for me to break up the music was hearing a song about Iwo Jima in 1942. After that happened, I thought "there has to be a way to fix that." I found it.