Dynamic Music in games

[defanatic]

In writing my game, I've gotten up to the point where I have started to think about music and sound in general.

What do you guys think of dynamic music?

It can be applied very ham-handedly (Red Alert 3), and it can be done a lot better. One of my coders has suggested having several tracks that are run simultaneously (which are one or two instruments each), and depending on the battlefield intensity, the emphasis and tracks change around at particular points.

[adam_grif]

One of those old EA Extreme Sports games used it (a snowboarding one maybe? I forget the title). This was back in the PS2's heyday.

As far as implementation, I imagine it works by splitting the song up into lots of discrete parts instead of one continuous song, and then it has some kind of algorithm to determine which parts to queue up next. Each part would be at most a few seconds long.

As events happen on screen it alters the queue.

[Steel]

Didn't the original TIE fighter have some clever system that changed the pacing etc based on what was happening?

Not sure though, and I think it disappeared in the cd version.

[Bakustra]

Didn't the original TIE fighter have some clever system that changed the pacing etc based on what was happening?

Not sure though, and I think it disappeared in the cd version.

It did, but that relied on using midi files for music, which is why it disappeared in the CD rerelease- the music was higher-quality, but couldn't be blended like that. Of course, if defanatic is doing something so retro that midis would be appropriate, then that system might be worth looking into.

I think that your coder's way is probably the best if you're going for higher-quality music, but I would suggest making several such "families", say one per map style or something, to diversify the stages even further.

[defanatic]

Well, I'm intending on having a few different rhythms per instrument (obviously, this means a lot of work for whoever I get in to do the music), less for the drum beats etc. Doing that for each team, and a few ambient ones for various maps/missions (I'm trying to write it so that MP maps can be used in missions, but it doesn't feel unnatural or tacked on).

Of course, we'd have to see how difficult doing this is.

[FSTargetDrone]

Didn't the original TIE fighter have some clever system that changed the pacing etc based on what was happening?

Not sure though, and I think it disappeared in the cd version.

It was called iMUSE.

My problem with dynamic music is when it anticipates there is going to be some action after you've been quietly moving along, say, in a FPS. I don't know if triggers are hit that activates the "action music" with certain shooters or whatever when you reach a specific area, but if I find a game was doing that, I'd turn off the music. This may be related to what Destructionator XIII was just talking about.

I don't want the music warning me of something that's coming. I want to be surprised.

[DPDarkPrimus]

In my opinion, the best example of dynamic music is Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. The music would change intensity based on actions taken and how aware enemies were to your presence, and it was all seamless thanks to Amon Tobin being a master at creating multi-layered music.

[Oskuro]

I don't want the music warning me of something that's coming. I want to be surprised.

Some games take the lazy route and trigger music changes based on the alert status of enemies in the map, that way you don't need to set up triggers, just check for any "aggro" flags that go up.

That could be fixed by changing the music after the threat is relayed to the player through other non-aural means (so the music, appart from not warning you, doesn't hinder your ability to actually listen to what is going on), but, of course, it would require more work. Then again, it can be quite rewarding, specially if you include special themes for special situations, like a particularly scary theme for a really tough monster.

As for changing music tracks, I guess it'd be worth it to look at mixing software of the type a DJ would

[Admiral Valdemar]

In my opinion, the best example of dynamic music is Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. The music would change intensity based on actions taken and how aware enemies were to your presence, and it was all seamless thanks to Amon Tobin being a master at creating multi-layered music.

I agree with this. Also, the MGS games relied a lot on the incidental music during gameplay changing tempo or tone depending on what you were doing, where you were doing it and so on.

[Dooey Jo]

In writing my game, I've gotten up to the point where I have started to think about music and sound in general.

What do you guys think of dynamic music?

It can be applied very ham-handedly (Red Alert 3), and it can be done a lot better. One of my coders has suggested having several tracks that are run simultaneously (which are one or two instruments each), and depending on the battlefield intensity, the emphasis and tracks change around at particular points.

It will probably work, but you have to be careful about how and when the tracks change. If you simply crossfade two tracks at the wrong time you can get some serious cacophony going on, and it probably won't really feel like "one" piece of music. A musician would probably want to be able to have proper transitions between pieces with one feeling to pieces with another, and then it might be easier to use adam_grif's solution. How fast the music will be able to "adapt" to the situation will however, of course, depend on the length of the pieces.

In the Zelda game Ocarina of Time, which used this system in the fields, most pieces were about 14 seconds, so that's at worst 14 seconds of "happy" music while being chased by some big flying thing until the dangerous music kicks in (although in my opinion they could have added a few variations to the "to danger" transition because it's always the same and it gets annoying). In Twilight Princess they had something similar but I haven't bothered checking out the specifics.

We also used this system for game a few years back and it worked fine, but it wasn't exactly a fast-paced game, so 15 seconds or so of "lag" when going from the bad to the good state didn't really matter (and the music was perhaps the most obvious indicator that things were going well anyhow).

Also, at what point do you start thinking about sound and music? The sound design of a game really ought to be as integral as the graphics, so that everything will fit together.

[adam_grif]

In my opinion, the best example of dynamic music is Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. The music would change intensity based on actions taken and how aware enemies were to your presence, and it was all seamless thanks to Amon Tobin being a master at creating multi-layered music.

I love Chaos Theory so fucking much. Which makes it all the more disappointing that DA was such a pile of shit.

[DPDarkPrimus]

In my opinion, the best example of dynamic music is Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. The music would change intensity based on actions taken and how aware enemies were to your presence, and it was all seamless thanks to Amon Tobin being a master at creating multi-layered music.

I love Chaos Theory so fucking much. Which makes it all the more disappointing that DA was such a pile of shit.

Well that's because the first Splinter Cell and Chaos Theory were made by Ubisoft Montreal, while Pandora Tomorrow and Double Agent (2nd and 4th games, respectively) were made by Ubisoft Shanghai. Although the OXBOX version of Double Agent was made by Ubisoft Montreal, they had to incorporate similar gameplay designs as the 360 version, and while it's a poorer game than Chaos Theory, it is a better game than the next-gen one.

[adamalexandru]

I played a vice city and in that game there was an option where we can switch on the radio and play music and that music was dynamic. There was one more option and that is play our selected songs.

[DPDarkPrimus]

The music in your car in Vice City was not dynamic, not in the sense of the word that it is being used in this thread.