Seamless adaptive music depending on the in-game situation

I know the music has been provoking some serious discussion, and I've done a search through the forums but can't see anything that directly seems to reference this.

Something that bugged me on the original TA was the fact that the music would often jump depending on what the situation was (although that could well be my scratched to death CDs). I totally agree with music that adapts to the situation, but what could be absolutely and utterly awesome is adaptive music. Blocks of music that can flow together, increasing in intensity as the battles pick up, and calming down as things subside, rather than explicitly seperate composition. I know this may not be the easiest of tasks to work out, and it means there wouldn't necessarily be a definitive set of tracks (or they'd end up slightly mashed up in-game) but to have a seamless musical experience, with a crescendo and increased intensity happening without you even realising it would really enhance the game, in my opinion. I know it's not out there with huge developments/gameplay/etc, but it's like proper seasoning on a meal - do it right, and you can enhance the flavours that are there hugely.

It could also be influenced by intense building (early on, for example), concentrated building via assists for massive armies, assembling armies ready for deployment, sending out a bomber wave, scouting out the map, deployment of massive artilleries and mega-units, that sort of thing (especially towards the end of their construction, to raise the tension up). There's a lot of possibilities, and it'd require some calculation to work out what got prioritised and the chunk of track to select with a certain amount of randomness and a little sanity sprinkled in to ensure the tracks flow together (obviously some will work better than others), but the core concept is something I've wanted to see for a very long time.

As a side note, what other people have mentioned about not firing off epic battle music for a few units skirmishing is an important one. Perhaps elevate it slightly, to increase the tension a little, but not full on epic battles - that should be reserved for the huge troop movements towards the enemy, or massive battle engagements. It'd also be quite interesting to have different music for attacks, defence, and combinations of the two, if it's at all feasable (distance from buildings to battle combined with density/amount of buildings perhaps? Epic defence music would probably be inappropriate for a bunch of units next to a forward radar array and a couple of point defences.)

Technical considerations aside, what do people think?

Re: Seamless adaptive music depending on the in-game situati

That's a really great idea! But technically, artistically not an easy one I guess.
That would be a Next Gen Music for a Next Gen RTS

Re: Seamless adaptive music depending on the in-game situati

That's what I mostly wanted from many games.

Re: Seamless adaptive music depending on the in-game situati

I remember seeing this in an earlier thread.
Neutrino said that something like this comes if you have a lot of time and a lot of money...which is what Valve had when they made Portal 2.
Portal 2 is an example of such power.

Re: Seamless adaptive music depending on the in-game situati

Rats, I couldn't find it when I searched, although the search function did seem to dislike me somewhat earlier. Didn't mean to create a new thread resurrecting an old topic.

That said, it's something I feel pretty strongly about. However, the time and money part is a bit worrying, as I know this is fairly budget constrained... final stretch goal anyone? ;-)

Seriously though, I wonder if with a little time and a little bit of foresight on the composition, we could have something that ebbed and flowed like this. It'd be the epitome of awesome when it came to soundtracks.

Re: Seamless adaptive music depending on the in-game situati

I really hope this will be an option though, if it's implemented.

I want to hear the whole awesome soundtrack, I don't want it to be dynamic. I don't want to hear three seconds of intense battle music and five hours of build up music (exaggeration). I just want to hear it all, cycling through all 'songs' (or maybe randomise it, could be another option).

Re: Seamless adaptive music depending on the in-game situati

Seamless music pretty much died when you crazy mob funded the game over the 2 million mark.


Back to the days of TA, where super-quiet tracks were interleaving with bombastic battle tracks that more often than not didn't fit the action on screen.

Okay I'm being cynical. It'll probably sound great (game music has come a long, long way), but you can't really do seamless. But I'd like some fading / shorter themes and longer themes. Unfortunately, it's almost impossible to know IF a battle is going to end early or later, from a game media perspective.

Re: Seamless adaptive music depending on the in-game situati

It depends. If it's done right, with the right merging between the spots, you could. It also doesn't have to be directly seamless, just leading on from one musical bar to the next, so the audio could be physically seperate files, and just sequenced to run gapless together. It's not a small feat, and I don't want to imply in any way that it is, but it really would make the game stand out, it's very much "shooting for awesome" as far as a soundtrack goes. I'm pretty sure nobody has ever done it in this fashion... and it'd be absolutely utterly immense.

Re: Seamless adaptive music depending on the in-game situati

We won't be able to go for the perfect solution like Portal 2 did, where the music was composed in realtime based on the objects in the scene.

But what i imagine COULD work, is if the different tracks where aligned in beat and melody so you could fade from one track to another without causing breaks in the music. This would make it possible to switch tracks at a high frequency without the need to wait for the end of a track or breaking the track in half.

Re: Seamless adaptive music depending on the in-game situati

I'd consider simple things like DPS in an area I think to influence it, rather than going overcomplicated, or perhaps a combination of DPS issued with DPS taken, with extra bands for massive damage taken/made (e.g. nuclear attacks etc).

Re: Seamless adaptive music depending on the in-game situati

This is very much what I had in my head. Sections of the soundtrack that can be switched across as needed. You could theoretically have tracks with certain sections marked with flags for "attacking", "defensive", "marching", and have linked tracks that they could follow or be followed by which would sound appropriate and not sound like it's randomly jumping across completely different tracks.

Re: Seamless adaptive music depending on the in-game situati

This is pretty much what Phantasy Star Online did. Each area had a multi-stream OGG associated with it (typically split up into 5 second tracks), where almost half of the tracks were exploration music, almost half were battle music, and the rest were transitions between the two, with transitions set up for each section.

For example. (no spoiler tags?!)

Re: Seamless adaptive music depending on the in-game situati

I'd be happy with just the base and treble fluctuating based on the situation. In space with nothing happening? Lower the base or raise the treble (or = and/or).

On the surface with hundreds of units dying? MastaBlasta Base x1000 or lower the treble.

This should be noticeable enough to be beneficial, and be very low cost (?).

Re: Seamless adaptive music depending on the in-game situati

If R-Type Delta could do this seamlessly back in 1998 on the PlayStation, I'm surprised that by now it hasn't become expected of sound directors.

Because an actual orchestra can never record multiple simultaneous tracks and have them mixed later on. Oh wait, they can.

Re: Seamless adaptive music depending on the in-game situati

For the same reason that its not standardized that all games should have window transparency, draggable UI elements, fully customizable XML-defined UI elements, 100% configurable keyboards, and probably a dozen other things I can't think of off the top of my head. The gaming industry really isn't building off of earlier designs. Some of them may carry forward their own designs, but not someone elses. Game X may be new, and innovative and wonderful, and have features that every future game should have. But then Game Y made by the same company will have an all new developer staff, and they'll do things their own way starting from scratch all over again.

It takes forever for standards to develop, and even then they still get broken. Most of us are pretty confident that Ctrl-1 will create group #1, or that there'll be crates to break with a crowbar, but I'm willing to bet that somewhere theres a game that decides there just has to be a different way to do it. *eyeroll*

I'd love it if there was a repository of gaming standards (things like "interface must have X" or "Ctrl-# must always create groups), but its never gonna happen.

Sorry for the rant. Its irked me for years when I see a new feature in a game thats so amazing that everyone should use it... and no one does. Like Everquests fully XML-defined UI. But on the bright side, this isn't the first run for the PA crew, so its a fair bet that features will be similar to TA, SupCom, and other titles they've worked on. Music adapted well enough in those two, IMO (in fact, just today I reinstalled SupCom and noticed the music shifts).

Re: Seamless adaptive music depending on the in-game situati

That's brilliantly done, and makes perfect sense, and exactly what this sort of game is crying out for. Sprinkle a bit of randomisation in between the tracks (as you said with multiple battle music, multiple exploration music, multiple building music etc) and it would be absolutely epic.

This could be the difference between a soundtrack and total musical immersion...

There may also be something to be said for the suggestion of increasing the bass level for exploding areas, but I'm not sure how well it'd work - would definitely need experimentation. Still, it's another potential atmospheric alteration you can make. The key is to have it all so it's not immediately obvious to the player, but enhances what they're seeing on the screen and feeling as they play.