Create Music

From The Battle for Wesnoth Wiki

Musicians usually meet on the Music development forum. This is the best place to discuss new music and potential contributions, as well as to hear what is currently being worked on.

Wesnoth's music is stored in the Ogg Vorbis format. This is similar to the MP3 format, only it is completely free. All music shipped with the game can be found in the music folder in core (see EditingWesnoth).

Music composed for Wesnoth should be orchestral with realistic sounding samples, and 3 to 6 minutes in length. Most of the pieces in the "Core Music" section of Available Music are good examples of this.

To be included in the Battle for Wesnoth, music must be released under the Gnu General Public License. Read this forum post by Jetrel and Wesnoth:Copyrights for more information on this.

Where Should I Start?

The first thing any potential music contributor should do is read the Music Contribution FAQ. It outlines what Wesnoth's music development team is looking for in terms of contributions, and who is likely to be able to contribute work that will be accepted into the core Wesnoth distribution.

If after reading the FAQ you believe you can contribute something to the project, introduce yourself on the music development forum. You will most likely be asked for a sample of your previous work, so if you can provide a link to one in your post it would be very helpful.

Helpful resources

  • Music Contribution FAQ - read this first!
  • Tools for Creating Music details some of the hardware and software you will need to create music for Wesnoth.
  • Music Tutorials provides some links to useful tutorials and general advice on creating quality music in the style that Wesnoth's music development team requires.

Using your music in Wesnoth

Core music is always available for use in all campaigns, both mainline and UMC. Custom music is stored in a music folder in [binary_path] (see AddonStructure). You can then either listen to your tracks using the Playlist menu in the map editor, or utilize them in scenarios.MusicListWML has information on using the [music] WML tag to add music to a Wesnoth scenario.

Available Music lists all the pieces which are shipped with the game and already available to use in scenarios and campaigns, as well as providing some links to works in progress.

This page was last edited on 5 June 2014, at 11:32.