I just noticed that Rocks'n'Diamonds now only comes with four music loops (three used during gameplay) instead of eleven. (I hadn't noticed before because on Windows, installing a new version of Rocks'n'Diamonds does not delete the files of the previous version.)
(Even though the included loops were short, low quality and given credit . . . )
I guess that just demonstrates one of the difficulties of trying to offer a great game for free: you have to get music for free somehow...
(From HARDWARE.txt:)
About music
-----------
The background music loops are ripped out from several nice music albums.
Just have a look at the info screen to find out from which album each
sound loop came from -- they are all very well done pieces of music [ . . . snip]
So, if you have a non-Linux system (which cannot play sound loops) or
don't like the "telephone quality" of the music loops, just get some of
these CDs and play them while your playing the game!
> (Even though the included loops were short, low quality and given credit . . . )
So they are merely a citation of the original music and, together with the detailed credits, even a promotion to get the great original music in full-length and high-quality.
But with the rise of broadband Internet, the issue of sharing music files came up, and the copyright law in most countries was sharpened. Also, the copyright owners (the music industry) changed the way they treat such (even very short) "excerpts" (which are/were allowed in some countries and disallowed in some others), which in the end forced me to react before something unpleasant happens. (And no, there were no complaints that I know of -- it's just a pro-active step from my side.)
> I guess that just demonstrates one of the difficulties of trying to offer a
> great game for free: you have to get music for free somehow...
That's right, and music (especially good music which also fits to the game) is a much harder part than graphics or sound effects are. And it's even more tricky if you create a nostalgic kind of game, for which you don't want "new" music, but which just requires also a musical style of the time of the classic game. (A good example of solving this issue was the game "H.E.L.D captive" -- a clone of the classical C64 game "H.E.R.O." -- which has newly composed, chiptune-style MOD music. (Unfortunately, this game clone seems to have disappeared from the net.))