Topic: Game Music

[ShadowFlame]

Well, it may be too early in the stages of development, but I would like to offer my services to help create music for this game, that is, if you already don't have music for it. If it's too early for thoughts of adding music to the game, then I'll shut up and help at a later time :P

Otherwise, any ideas for what types of music you would want for this game? You could possibly have a cool-feeling ambient type song for flying around in space for example. Or maybe if something kicks into overdrive and something exciting happens (confrontation with a major enemy, traveling at some insane speed) you could have something heavier/faster. Just ideas.....if it's one thing that I feel can make a game better, it is having some killer and fitting background music. I'm open to all sorts of suggestions!!

I can write music out in Guitar Pro 4, although that would come out to a Midi file. I could, however, take those Midi files and string them together with another program and create mp3's. These midi files are cool, but could be higher quality....any ideas on writing music with a program using higher quality sounds, or possibly finding other sounds to use in writing the music?

I'll keep brainstorming on stuff, and I am open to all suggestions and ideas.....I hope I can be of service!!

-Dan

[whitelynx]

Dan: You're going to be at fredonia this coming year, so just make sure you visit the house a lot... as soon as i get a chance to go down to visit my cousin in NYC, i'm getting an old Mac recording computer. I already have a good amount of stuff for recording, so we can do a good amount of music that way. If we want to do generated stuff on the computer as well, i have some ideas on programs to try... but it's probably easier to talk about that in person. (don't have the equipment here in Baltimore to try out any of the programs)

I'll probably see you in a week or two.

Dave

[Morgul]

Right now we don't have anything figured out for music. Reaka's cousin has shown an interest in doing some more techno-ish things for it, but he'd not registered on the forums yet, nor is he 'officially' part of the team... I would love you have you, and whatever skills you have, helping out. I have *somewhere* a copy of Acid Pro, if that helps this any .

I need to think about (and get time to write about) the kind of music I'd like to have in here. Something I've always wanted (which could go into the game at any time) is a built in music player so instead of listening to the game music, you can change the playlist to something of your own... like play Backstreet Boys constantly....


.... No, never mind. That, and a few other bands won't be allowed to be played. No one should ever play our game, and listen to those bands.



--Chris

[Chii]

I think my biggest concern here is that it'll be cookie cutter music....no offense, but a lot of game music sounds the same to me. You guys should definitely try something different where this is concerned...  No talk about a generic feel...

Maybe have different music depending on the character you choose. Like music for the different classes or something.  I don' t know, maybe that would be too hard to do, but I think it'd be neat.

Another idea while I'm kind of brainstorming: having some sort of a way to post what your character is feeling so the music can change depending on their mood....then totally separate music if their in battle.

Don't be afraid to have singing either. That's another thing, most is all instrumental.... I think it'd be neat. If I were more confident in my singing I'd offer my services as a vocalist, but I'm not. But if someone else is confident in my singing feel free to volunteer me. Just let me know  :P

[ShadowFlame]

Sounds like a bunch of awesome ideas to me!!

Chris: I already have Acid Music Studio 5  8) and yes, I have seen it where on other games you can just put in your own MP3's into the music directory for the game, and then you can always play your own music instead of listening to the music you get with the game (i.e. Battlefield Vietnam.....although I am still partial to a lot of the music on that game :P ).

Sounds great, it seems like if we wanted to get actual recordings of people playing instruments for the creation of the songs, I can write out each part in GP4, and that way each instrumentalist can study it (it writes it in both tablature and standard music notation). I'd offer my services in drumming and possibly backup vocals if we were to do that. Keep up the good ideas!!

Oh yeah, and I'll see a bunch of you in about a week or so 8)

[topher]

Having a full fledge mp3 player along with our own music is my vote.  Not, just like the EA games where you have to copy and paste your stuff to a certain directory, but a full winamp style player.

[whitelynx]

Reaka mentioned that a lot of game music sounds the same... If you look at movie music, the same could be said. Basically, music for games and movies isn't supposed to stand out, because it's not the focus of the game/movie. It's meant to provide mood and background for a scene. I still do think there is a lot that can be done on that front, as far as making the music more integrated into the game environment and making it respond more to the current state of the game.

One issue that we need to decide first... Do we want our music to enhance the feeling and setting of the game, or do we want it to be user-controllable? (the mp3 player idea) The problem is that you only get one of these at a time... As far as programming it, we'd have to do a completely different system for the integrated music than we would for the mp3 player. We can still have both in the game, but the user has to choose which they want.

I don't have a problem with including the user-controllable music player, but I definitely lean toward trying to integrate things into the gameplay more. With the previous game project I worked on, I had also started to do some work on "interactive music". We can still provide some user-configurability depending on what music style they choose.

The first thing to do would be to break up gameplay into a number of different "states" that would correspond to different music tracks. For instance, if the player is getting shot at, then fight music should probably be playing.

Dave

[contingencyplan]

The first thing to do would be to break up gameplay into a number of different "states" that would correspond to different music tracks. For instance, if the player is getting shot at, then fight music should probably be playing.

I'm pretty sure I've made mention of Total Annihilation elsewhere in the forums, so allow me to make another reference to it:

TA has the ability to play music CDs.  MP3 wasn't popular when the game came out, so music CDs were as close as you could come.  However, it had the ability to control it via several means:

1. You could do random tracks off the CD
2. You could just do a straight play-through

Naturally, those two are standard on any CD player out there.  However, it also had #3:

3. The ability to assign tracks to certain events, and play them when those events occurred.  For instance, if you were just sitting around building, it would pay tracks that had been selected for "Building."  If you were fighting another player (shooting his units and such), then it would play tracks from "Combat."  If you were losing, or had lost a bunch of units and whatnot, you could select "Defeat."  There were a few others, but those are the ones I remember (and I'm in Linux, so I can't check it right now).  

I think we could have something along this line - get the best of both worlds. If the player wants to simply play tracks from the playlist, then they can.  However, we can also assign meaning to particular songs, having them play when certain things were happening in the game.

So in short: What whitelynx said. ;-)
~Brian

[topher]

I like that contingencyplan...that way we just put in defaults, just like the gui and the user can fix it to their liking.

[Chii]

I guess the only problem I'd have with people putting in their own music is that the music won't take on the life of the game. Every game has music that's associated with it...Mario music....you listen to that music soo much that it's embedded in your skull and you associate it with the game. That's lost if you don't create music for the game.  I suppose you could say you'd associate it with your music...but it's not the same. But that's just my two cents.

[topher]

Ask me what any of the music in the last 5 MMORPGs i played was and I'd say I have no clue.  It's the first thing I do when i get a new game.  My wife on the other hand always has it cranked to the max....

[fehknt]

if people want a winamp-style player, then they can turn off the game music and use winamp.  I think that the TA-style music should be used, with certian tracks ascribed to certian events/places (battle in desert planet different from jungle planet) (battle near sun different from battle near spaceport) (battle with pirates different from battle with cops)...

I'm divided on if the music should be user-replaceable.  I think that if they want to do that, they can turn off the music in the game, but if we're going to go to the trouble of putting in really good music, then i don't want it too easy to screw with.