I haven't seen a lot of threads about the OST of this game, even though I think it could be considered a fundamental element, since a nice music playing in the background of whatever mass scale battle you are fighting makes it wayyy more epic. I don't have any particular suggestion on the genre of the OST, I just want to ask if it would be possible to have a dynamic one, like the Portal 2 one. Let me elaborate. Let's say you start the game with only your commander, now only a single track music is playing, at slow and calm pace, and as you start creating a base, more and more tracks join in, one for every kind of building you create, and the music builds up more and more until you reach an orchestral climax during a gigantic battle with asteroids falling down from the skies and tanks blowing each other up at an incredible rate. It would be also nice if the battle music and the "base music" (or whatever you call the music that is playing when not in battle) were a variation on the same theme, and they slowly faded into one another, so that you get a constant feeling during the whole game. Or something along these lines.
TA switched tracks based on whether units were taking damage or not. There were peaceful tracks and battle tracks. I don't know whether Uber have any people skilled in generative music. I think they're just going for a TA-like approach. It's a really nice idea though.
What if each unit made a unique dub-step styled sound-effect when you interacted with it? Add a back beat and after a few battles the resultant cacophony would put you well on the way to making the next Skrillex album.
I'd have it dependant on the zoom level. Zooming out to a grand scale would play the heavy bassy classical music. Zooming in to a frantic skirmish would violently switch it to something fast paced, preferably some kind of a neverending rock solo, portraying the chaos of battles and war.
I don't want this. I want to hear the soundtrack. Play the tracks. Always. Don't make it dependent on whether something is happening or not. I hate that. ... So make it optional.
The music system in Portal 2 is an excellent example of what you can do in a game when you effectively have infinite time and money. We have neither. As mentioned by comham TA switched between audio tracks in and out of combat. There are other things we can do, like altering the music based on zoom level or based on what units are selected, etc. but this can get complex very, very quickly. Portal 2 treats almost every object or device in the game as a separate element of an orchestrated song that change the composition based on that piece's current involvement. We'll likely stick to at most two or three tracks we switch between to keep costs down.
To be honest I still like Demigod's system, in which music got more intense as the battle drew closer to a close. I imagine in Demigod the music was dependent on your war rank, but if a similar system could be implemented it could have a really cool effect and still keep costs down.
Well if zoom level is a single variable it should be relatively easy to link it up to the audio system?
But when will you be completely zoomed in - and therefore hearing specific soundtracks (on the other hand, it was just said we'll only have three or so tracks so it shouldn't be much of a problem in this case)? I just want the usual system; there are a few pieces of music, and the game cycles through all of them again and again, no matter what. However, if it isn't hard to implement, why not implement the other ideas (zoom levels, combat intenseness...) as an option?
The number of songs and how they're played is up to Howard, our sound guy / composer, not me. I was just giving an example of something that might be plausible with our constraints. He may have plans for something completely different. I suspect what we end up doing will be a product of trying stuff out and iteration to see what works just like the rest of the game.
