[Proposal] Better multimedia formats.

[Imagic]

Nice.

I have added a page for readable formats (like for audio formats) on the wiki: Image Formats

[desttiny]

can we please get webp support? i can't use png's due to their enormous size which leaves me .jpg at the sacrifice of alpha channel. if i need a .jpg like file with alpha channel that can easily be viewed without special conversion process and have it work in love2d, tell me what is the solution?

i am making a a VN-type of game and if i could retain alpha channel in my jpg it would mean a world to me because then my game would not be 5 gb in size when it should only be 1gb. it really baffles me to see developers fail to understand the necessity of a easily readable format that is compressed like jpg and has an alpha channel, what is there not to benefit from? not everyone is making spritesheet type of games, it is a general purpose 2d engine and it should support modern formats. at this point i have no solution but to use png's and inflate the game size x5 or use .jpg and be severely limited with what i can make due to lack of alpha channel

please consider webp or some equivalent that has proper alpha channel, is compressed and does not require special software, special plugins and special conversion process to read and convert. thanks

[raidho36]

How big is your game that you need to sacrifice texture quality for smaller package? 250 GB? Because at 100% quality JPEG is the same size as PNG so there's no reason to use former over latter. This isn't 1999, 5 GB of high quality assets versus 1 GB of low quality assets is not a decision you should be making.

if i need a .jpg like file with alpha channel that can easily be viewed without special conversion process and have it work in love2d, tell me what is the solution?

Same as always: you create a script/macro that exports the RGB channels JPG and A channel black-and-white JPG, and your asset loader functions pick up the first file and then add alpha to the texture from the second file. You have no concern as to what form your assets are taking between the editor and the game so doing it like this should be fine by default. It would be marginally more convenient if it was a single file - provided your editor can export WEBP, otherwise you have to install plugins at which point it's the same process as with JPG.

[desttiny]

How big is your game that you need to sacrifice texture quality for smaller package? 250 GB? Because at 100% quality JPEG is the same size as PNG so there's no reason to use former over latter. This isn't 1999, 5 GB of high quality assets versus 1 GB of low quality assets is not a decision you should be making.

if i need a .jpg like file with alpha channel that can easily be viewed without special conversion process and have it work in love2d, tell me what is the solution?

Same as always: you create a script/macro that exports the RGB channels JPG and A channel black-and-white JPG, and your asset loader functions pick up the first file and then add alpha to the texture from the second file. You have no concern as to what form your assets are taking between the editor and the game so doing it like this should be fine by default. It would be marginally more convenient if it was a single file - provided your editor can export WEBP, otherwise you have to install plugins at which point it's the same process as with JPG.

slime already agreed that my use-case is significant altho i don't know if webp will actually be implemented.

apart from that, all that you said is just excuses. there is simply no excuse to use something outdated and obviously inferior in every way or to do something that is significantly more complicated if the solution can be implemented at a higher level. webp is smaller then jpg, has alpha channel, looks better and there are other features too. there is just no excuse, in my opinion. but you are entitled to yours, i guess time will tell who was right.

[zorg]

Technically slime agreed with someone else, before you made your first post...

That said, i'm really not against the inclusion of webp into löve as a supported format (both import and export tbh), but the "a easily readable format" line is a bit of a stretch considering there's probably tons of older software that probably won't retroactively get webp export support due to it using a video codec that's not at all self-explanatory to implement either encoding or decoding for (assuming they wouldn't or couldn't just toss like a libwebp into their project for whatever reason) or just because the dev(s) working on those applications simply stopped developing them altogether.

[raidho36]

all that you said is just excuses

Maybe. That however is a minor inconvenience, not a deal breaking flaw. As a developer should be well equipped to deal with small problems like this without as much as raising a complaint because of how trivial it is, on account of having to deal with orders of magnitude greater problems within development process itself.

On a side note, WEBP is not a free format, a ton of patents on it are owned by Google and other tech giants, they "promise" not to cause any trouble but sure enough if it's not codified in license/law they not gonna honor it, as soon as it becomes inconvenient to them this promise will be broken immediately - their patent license basically says as much, in legalese. All JPEG patents have expired so now this is a free, public domain technology. PNG was free technology to begin with.

[desttiny]

all that you said is just excuses

Maybe. That however is a minor inconvenience, not a deal breaking flaw. As a developer should be well equipped to deal with small problems like this without as much as raising a complaint because of how trivial it is, on account of having to deal with orders of magnitude greater problems within development process itself.

On a side note, WEBP is not a free format, a ton of patents on it are owned by Google and other tech giants, they "promise" not to cause any trouble but sure enough if it's not codified in license/law they not gonna honor it, as soon as it becomes inconvenient to them this promise will be broken immediately - their patent license basically says as much, in legalese. All JPEG patents have expired so now this is a free, public domain technology. PNG was free technology to begin with.

Frankly I don't want to deal with it in some different way unless I really have to and i know for certain things will not change in few months. If you think I should that is your right to your opinion. To me it is obvious everyone will benefit from this format if it is supported natively, to you it is not obvious and you are biased in this direction so trying to find any reason why it should not be done. Yes it will benefit me if webp gets implemented but it will many others too, so it is not just about me. When it comes to your opinion that I should just "deal with it", nobody benefits from that. Not me not anyone else, you just get a kick in your bias for it.

In regards to the license webp is free. It is intended to be widely used especially on the web. Google cant just turn around someday and change everything upside down no matter the clever language. Licensing is licensing and when it comes to things of huge impact context of everything is then expanded if things go to court. You cant just give something for free then turn around and claim it is not free anymore, it doesn't work like that. I mean, imagine just the backlash google would get for trying to meddle with the license like this in a malicious way, it is just not worth it even if it was possible which i do not think it is.

"he BSD license is a simple license that merely requires that all code retain the BSD license notice if redistributed in source code format, or reproduce the notice if redistributed in binary format." - thats webp licence. nothing esoteric here.

I understand it is a free software and if developers feel it is too much work or too much maintenance then I cant argue with that. But excuses like lets not do it because google might at some day change the licence - are ridiculous.

[raidho36]

Adding virtually anything whatsoever can be argued to be beneficial. It doesn't mean that you should go ahead and add virtually everything. Every single thing you add increases program complexity and makes it more difficult to maintain - you should argue FOR inclusion of any specific feature, as strong arguments against it exist by default. The devs think it's a good idea, in my opinion it isn't because it's a duplicate feature. If I argue my singular point too much it's because of that effect where you think that if you explain yourself more thoroughly then people will agree, which is rarely the case.

If they reserve the right to revoke your license then it's not free. It's simple. And it's a corporate product so they're doing it for profit and not out of goodness of their hearts, if there's ever a reason to do it, they will turn on a heel about the whole deal, and absolutely no one is gonna care about things like reputation (the things they already did should have firmly made them the enemy in public eyes and yet here we are).

[Imagic]

On a side note, WEBP is not a free format, a ton of patents on it are owned by Google and other tech giants, they "promise" not to cause any trouble but sure enough if it's not codified in license/law they not gonna honor it, as soon as it becomes inconvenient to them this promise will be broken immediately [...]

Please don't write stuff without putting sources, which cultivates fear.

Additional IP Rights Grant (Patents)
"These implementations" means the copyrightable works that implement the WebM codecs distributed by Google as part of the WebM Project.

Google hereby grants to you a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this section) patent license to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, import, transfer, and otherwise run, modify and propagate the contents of these implementations of WebM, where such license applies only to those patent claims, both currently owned by Google and acquired in the future, licensable by Google that are necessarily infringed by these implementations of WebM. This grant does not include claims that would be infringed only as a consequence of further modification of these implementations. If you or your agent or exclusive licensee institute or order or agree to the institution of patent litigation or any other patent enforcement activity against any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that any of these implementations of WebM or any code incorporated within any of these implementations of WebM constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, or inducement of patent infringement, then any patent rights granted to you under this License for these implementations of WebM shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed.

sources:
https://github.com/webmproject/libwebp/ ... er/PATENTS
https://www.webmproject.org/license/additional/

If a patent issue arises, it would come from external claims.

Also, the FSF supports WebM and VP8: https://www.fsf.org/news/free-software- ... bm-and-vp8

You can also find on wikipedia:

Although Google has irrevocably released all of its patents on VP8 as a royalty-free format,[54] the MPEG LA, licensors of the H.264 patent pool, have expressed interest in creating a patent pool for VP8.[55][56] Conversely, other researchers cite evidence that On2 made a particular effort to avoid any MPEG LA patents.[57] As a result of the threat, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) started an investigation in March 2011 into the MPEG LA for its role in possibly attempting to stifle competition.[58][59] In March 2013, MPEG LA announced that it had reached an agreement with Google to license patents that "may be essential" for the implementation of the VP8 codec, and give Google the right to sub-license these patents to any third-party user of VP8 or VP9.[60][61]

I would add that some big media companies are trying to create their own web image format (mostly proprietary). There is the AV1 based image format that may be interesting in the future, but we are talking about more unknown factors about features, patents and more years for adoption (WebP is already 10 years old).

Be sure that this message is only about spreading facts, because the whole discussion seems full of fallacious arguments like this one and I don't want to be a part of that.

[raidho36]

I think it's fallacious to think that, if a group of best available lawyers wrote a license in a way that it can be revoked, they didn't do this for the express purpose of having the ability to revoke the license. If the intention was to create a free format, there wouldn't be patents filed, which would prevent them from getting filed in the future due to prior art clause. WEBP is not getting adopted because popular editors don't adopt it, and they don't adopt it because they have sensible lawyers.