Any music requests?

For collaboration between the different artists creating music and sound for vegastrike.
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Post by kensuguro »

chuck_starchaser, you're right about the scale tunings. It's part anthropology and part science, and different cultures use different tunings. Personally, I wouldn't concentrate too much on finding new alternate alien tunings and have that become a central composing methodology for the whole vegastrike project.. here's why:

Alternate tunings require a whole new set of harmonic theory, which means, you have to create an entirely new musical culture. Playing an instrument with alternate scales is one thing, but writing music for it takes LOTS of time. This would in effect create an alien musical atmosphere, which is what we want. But we definitnely want to do that without spending a few hundred years, which is how long it takes for human beings to fully develop musical cultures. It takes too long to develop one, let alone a bunch for different factions.

So, you're definitely right... too right in this context. But it may be possible to try alternate tunings on a certain faction.. Remember, it's a game. Not everything has to be scientifically real.

Klauss, what do you think about the relative choosing of music? That way we can work with a limited set of music, and still cover a large range of factions. Also, about the multitrack, does the soundserver play them in perfect sync? Anyway, I'll wait for more feedback.
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Post by klauss »

ken: Relative choosing of music? I'm not sure I know what you mean. Multitrack: No, most definitely they won't play with perfect synch, if by that you mean sample-precise alignment. However, if a couple milliseconds is enough for you, then that's a yes. I'm guessing you're worrying about phase cancellation, which requires sample-precise synching to avoid. If that's the case, I'm sure I can work something out. However, it's quite some work, and I'm not sure it's justified: unless you're mixing copies of the same track, you never need sample-precise alignment.
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Post by XV-745 »

Ohh... so much to say. But, today is my wife's birthday and we're out the door in a few minutes. I've only got time for a couple of comments.

First, I think the original music is just great. Sure, we need more music, but I'd really like to see some of those themes stay in the game (specifics later). I guess the original files for those songs are gone. So, a reinterpretation of some of those melodic themes might be the way to go.

I have some limited compositional experience and a long non-professional musical background. So, I'd like to volunteer to at least help with a) the creation of new tracks, b) the reinterpretation of some of the old tracks, and/or c) the creation of sound effects for weapons, engines, etc.

Also, I agree that we could get carried away with the alternative tunings thing, but I think we should seriously consider an alternative tuning for the Aera. Flying in Aera space should seem a little unnerving, I think. An alternative tuning could make that a relatively easy task for the composer. (<-- this thought greatly simplified for lack of time...)

My Ensoniq supports scads of tunings. I could try to whip up a few bars and post them just to get some feedback.

Jack's idea of getting some samples (i.e. - not whole songs) for faction-specific music up for general comment is a good one. I think it makes good sense for each composer (if there are enough) to focus on one faction (or faction "set"), as long as there is plenty of feedback and crosstalk among the composers and the devs.

Anyway, this post was mainly to answer Ken's "who else is a composer" question. *raises hand* I haven't got loads of time, but I sense that I'm not the only one.

OK, I gotta run... have a good one, everybody.
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Post by hurleybird »

Klauss:

Wow thats great. That system would fit well into the ambient system that I proposed earlier. Its great that we also have multitrack support. Perhaps we should have a backlayer of ambient sounds/music with a foreground of multitracked songs like ken suggested (I dont mean that songs play on top of the ambient tracks, just in case theres confusion). That would be ultra cool, and greatly decrease the workload.

Also, with locational audio, do you have support for song selection based on the individual planet screen you are in? Like, if your in a bar could you then trigger a different song than the base's theme?

ken: Multitrack is a great idea! I think there is still some room for traditional non-multitracked songs though (for the likes of menu's, credits, etc.)

Humm, multitrack could also be pretty cool for base audio, with different tracks playing for each portion of the base (like background music in the bar; mechanical sounds in the upgrade room; landing, and take off sounds; chatter in common areas). This could build atmosphere extremely well.

I also think we should make a diplomacy/comm screen track for each race in case we ever get a starflight/star control type comm screen happening (and this would also incite the development of said feature as well).

One quick question that anyone can answer... Do you think it would be better to have ambient sounds or song tracks in bases? I still havent made up my mind on the matter yet, but I'm thinking ambient would be pretty cool. With ambient sound you could have sounds from other adjacent locations play quitely (with maybe some reverb effect thrown on top) and it could be super cool. I guess you could also do this with song tracks, but it probably wouldn't have the same effect.

XV-745:

Great. It looks like we now have three people interested in composing, and one person taking care of both programming and mastering. We seem to be building quite a solid team.



Anyhow, tommorow I will hopefully find the time to put up a few examples of this ambient stuff I'm blabbering on about, as well as some samples for jacks, and maybe an updated (and hopefully better) mechanist diplomacy track.
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Post by hurleybird »

kensuguro wrote:
Actually, before we start on anything, who composes here? I think it's good to know who is comfortable with composing in what style. Then we can kind of figure out what styles we can choose from when we figure out the faction styles. Not that the faction styles have to fall within the available styles of the composers, but just so that we all have an idea of what's vaguely possible and what's rigidly impossible.
I can do some mechanical, dance, and electronic. I'd like to do mechanists for one if thats all right, and bar music as well perhaps. I'm still kind of green at this composing stuff, so this is going to be a learning exercise for me as well.
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Post by kensuguro »

klauss wrote:ken: Relative choosing of music? I'm not sure I know what you mean. Multitrack: No, most definitely they won't play with perfect synch, if by that you mean sample-precise alignment. However, if a couple milliseconds is enough for you, then that's a yes. I'm guessing you're worrying about phase cancellation, which requires sample-precise synching to avoid. If that's the case, I'm sure I can work something out. However, it's quite some work, and I'm not sure it's justified: unless you're mixing copies of the same track, you never need sample-precise alignment.
By "relative choosing", I was referring to my other post, where I talk about the music being chosen according to the player's political standing versus a certain faction. So, if the player's standing is very bad against a certain group, then sound set 5 gets chosen. If it's very goo, sound set 1 gets chosen. So, by making things relative, then we can cover all the factions without having to worry about having something ready for all factions. Then from there on, we can make exceptions for specific factions who get their own set.

In terms of timing accuracy, sample accuracy isn't at all necessary, but as long as the tracks can loop in sync. (like, musical count-wise) Problem with not being sample accurate would be that the tracks have the possibility of drifting out of sync after a while, but depending on the accuracy this may not be a realistic problem if we can get maybe an hour of in-sync playback time. Chances are, the music will switch within that hour, where they'd get re-synced again. (right?) I'm guessing 5-6 stereo tracks at the same time is okay in terms of cpu overhead?

The sync thing isn't a biggie. Like you say, it's probably not worth days of re-coding. So, maybe we can do multi track music with no distinct count for the "peace" tracks, and then for rising tension and the other more incidental material we can use a normal 1 stereo track music. How does that sound?
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Post by spiritplumber »

another scale than the octave... you could use the decative?


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Post by klauss »

kensuguro wrote:By "relative choosing", I was referring to my other post, where I talk about the music being chosen according to the player's political standing versus a certain faction. So, if the player's standing is very bad against a certain group, then sound set 5 gets chosen. If it's very goo, sound set 1 gets chosen. So, by making things relative, then we can cover all the factions without having to worry about having something ready for all factions. Then from there on, we can make exceptions for specific factions who get their own set.
Well... it's tricky.
First of all, I wouldn't want to loose the "feeling" of being in aeran territory, for instance, or the feeling of being in rlaan territory. It's nice to have distinct feelings for those. And I wouldn't make them exceptions either. What I'm thinking would multiply possibilities, but the workload too. So I'll just list the problems I see, and the niceties too:

a) Rlaan. IIRC, a third of the known universe is rlaan territory. I would like to have a distinctive "rlaan space" feel. However... is it the same if rlaan are allies than if rlaan are enemies? Nope. Same with aerans. There's a war going between confed and aera. Normally, you would see aerans as hostile, so aeran space could have a dark, somber feeling to it. But it wouldn't be the first time someone made friends with the aera nevertheless... would we keep the same darkness in such a case?
b) Fixed "relations" embedded in the trackes are definitely a problem, as shown in a. However, basing track selection solely on relations is also a problem: I'll repeat myself, and say that I would like rlaan and aeran territory to have a feeling of their own. And I don't think it would be the best to have neutral soundtracks for aeran space.
c) So... we have, for each "special case", we still need relative tracks: Aeran friendly, Aeran neutral, Aeran hostile. Rlaan friendly, Rlaan neutral, Rlaan hostile. 3x workload.
d) Forget about the extra workload. Can it be coded? Yes. Easily. Instead of just per faction group lists, get also the 3 bands: hostile/neutral/friendly for each. Hey, even we could add more bands, like very hostile, or very friendly. That's not a problem.
e) What about the extra workload? Well... playlists are just that... tracks can be shared among playlists. So... if somehow we can share tracks among the different "aeran relations" playlists, we can save some work. However, I don't see that happening.

Ken... I only have the problems, not the solutions. If inspiration hits me, I'll post immediately. But until now, I don't see a solution. I think relational stuff must be thought through previously, to avoid the mentioned pitfalls: poor customizability.

Anyway, some sort of relative choice is there already: in peaceful situations, you have a list for being in hostile territory and a list for being in friendly territory. So, for faction groups we don't care about, we could rely on this. If friendly/neutral/hostile is not enough, I could add more shades.
kensuguro wrote:In terms of timing accuracy, sample accuracy isn't at all necessary, but as long as the tracks can loop in sync. (like, musical count-wise) Problem with not being sample accurate would be that the tracks have the possibility of drifting out of sync after a while, but depending on the accuracy this may not be a realistic problem if we can get maybe an hour of in-sync playback time.
Not a problem, actually. Even if tracks don't start all at the same time, supposedly, clock rate is centralized (the soundcard has a single clock), so all samples will be consumed at equal rates. So... no gradual shift, only an initial offset.
kensuguro wrote:Chances are, the music will switch within that hour, where they'd get re-synced again.
Anyway, yes. It would re-sync.
kensuguro wrote:I'm guessing 5-6 stereo tracks at the same time is okay in terms of cpu overhead?
Well... each track takes up about 3% CPU in my PC, which isn't a slow one, but not a supercomputer either: P3 1Ghz. 3x6=18% - a little high, but too much. The soundserver can be compiled with less than perfect noise shaping, which takes the 3% down to 2% more or less. That makes it 12% CPU load in the end, which is much better. If that's too much... we'll have to have less tracks.
kensuguro wrote:The sync thing isn't a biggie. Like you say, it's probably not worth days of re-coding. So, maybe we can do multi track music with no distinct count for the "peace" tracks...
I wouldn't. Having the same count (I guess you mean bar count... length... don't you?) will make them loop as if it was a single track. Not bad, but much better is to have quasi-infinite tracks by having each subtrack with relatively prime counts. So, 4 tracks with 17, 23, 27 and 31 bar counts would repeat itself only after the 327267th bar... I call that infinite.

Oh: And post the link to the wav files. I don't know if you noticed, but the link in the first post is totally messed up.
Last edited by klauss on Tue Oct 04, 2005 7:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by hurleybird »

klauss wrote:
kensuguro wrote:I'm guessing 5-6 stereo tracks at the same time is okay in terms of cpu overhead?
Well... each track takes up about 3% CPU in my PC, which isn't a slow one, but not a supercomputer either: P3 1Ghz. 3x6=18% - a little high, but too much. The soundserver can be compiled with less than perfect noise shaping, which takes the 3% down to 2% more or less. That makes it 12% CPU load in the end, which is much better. If that's too much... we'll have to have less tracks.
Why not have different quality settings that can be selected in the configurator? Make a "max tracks" setting so if you have an older computer you might set it to 2 or 3, while an A64FX would have it set to unlimited. Besides just number of tracks, why not quality too? Include a few different versions of the soundserver which can be selected from the configurator (ex. one with low quality noise shape handling, and one with high quality sound shape handling)

I wouldn't imagine this would be a difficult task, but correct me if I'm wrong.
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Post by kensuguro »

I wouldn't. Having the same count (I guess you mean bar count... length... don't you?) will make them loop as if it was a single track. Not bad, but much better is to have quasi-infinite tracks by having each subtrack with relatively prime counts. So, 4 tracks with 17, 23, 27 and 31 bar counts would repeat itself only after the 327267th bar... I call that infinite.
That's a nice idea, if the material isn't too harmonically dynamic, then it may be possible. Definitely worth a try.

In terms of having negative, neutral and positive sets for each faction, I guess it'll work, just the workload become unmanagable. It's definitely something I want to see become realized though. But we'll have to take smaller steps to start things off and to create some foundation.

Which probably means we're back to the basic question of which factions should we start off with? Which factions do you all think require more attention? What traits would they have? Then from there, we can work into the details.

For the wav files, try this link:
http://www.iface.ne.jp/~ken/vegastrike_audio.zip
it's 460mb. It's got some of the radio chatter and cockpit feedback sounds in there. Don't remember if they got implemented in the game..
Last edited by kensuguro on Tue Oct 04, 2005 10:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by jackS »

/aside with all the talk of theme mixing, I keep getting mental images of "Peter and the Wolf" (not that this is necessarily a bad thing)
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Post by zaydana »

Took me a while to notice this thread... woops :? Anyhow... I can compose. Pretty much whatever - I do funk, electronic, rock, ambient, even tried symphonic but its limited by the samples and software i can use. As for software, everything i do is in FL Studio 5. As the other guys said, mission.ogg is about the extent of what i've done atm, with a lot of other partially completed tunes sitting on my hard drive for 5 weeks from now when my finals finish and i get a year of "free time" :)

As for how to do the music, I have always thought along a multi-track, mood-dependant, faction-dependant ambient style. Thats a bit of a mouthful, but it seems you've discussed pretty much everything that that sentence talks about anyhow :) Why? Ambient, because people generally don't get "bored" of nothing, and it doens't intrude much on the gameplay (the wrong music can be a real killer for immersion). Faction-dependant, to create an atmosphere. Mood-dependant, as it will make the game more fun, and multi-track, as it makes for a _lot_ more variety.

Of course, we need to start somewhere, and we can't attempt to do this all at once. I reckon we start by just making a few ambient tracks that fit into the current system, using 3 or so tracks on the multitracker. The idea that somebody said about using different bar lengths for the tracks will only work if there is nothing except ambience. Its a good idea, but we'll need to figure out a way to go into and out of weird-bar-length-multi-track tunes... as i don't think that will work too well in fighting-mood pieces.

I think we try to get a single factions music working at the beginning... probably terran, since we are them :) That includes mood-dependant tracks and multitrack stuff. That might take a while, but then we can keep it consistant, and it lets us expand on we've done later on with another set of tracks for different factions.

Last thing - I think base music != flight music. It would be great to have some sort of "radio" with lots of different songs played at bases, dependant on the faction, with songs dependant on faction mostly, and ocasionally a few base-specific songs. Of course, thats deep future type stuff... for the meantime it would be nice to have songs themed to the planet type tho.


Another idea... do you guys want me to setup a forum specifically for music development, if we are going to have such a large team n all? Cos I can imagine that some of the threads in the artwork forum are going to get rather large otherwise...
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Post by klauss »

It's not a bad way to start: Pick a human faction group, and compose the full set for it. First concentrate on neutral variations, since they can be placed ingame easily without trouble by themselves, then specialize on hostile/friendly variations. Anisometric multitrack should be limited to 3 tracks for now, and the technique would work only for ambience tracks. Isometric multitrack, though, can be used all over the place. I'll start writing specs for both paradigms: Singletrack, Isometric multitrack, Anisometric multitrack. They're different:

Singletrack - obvious
Anisometric multitrack - simple reproduction of all tracks, which loop independently.
Isometric multitrack - reproduction of all tracks looping in sync, but each track has a "relative mixing". Some tracks will be base, and always present, some may fade in at a certain "hostility/friendship range". You know, zay, your system.

Don't concern yourselves with issues like "Can we switch between multitrack and singletrack?", because ideally speaking, that's a yes: we only need to code it. Practically speaking, when the need arises, I'll code it (or earlier, if I'm sure what I'm doing). So... compose as if everything was inplace. Whatever isn't, will be.

Thing is, after completing this set, the gained experience will speed things up greatly for composing the other sets right from start.
Last edited by klauss on Wed Oct 05, 2005 4:55 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by klauss »

Oh...
jackS wrote:/aside with all the talk of theme mixing, I keep getting mental images of "Peter and the Wolf" (not that this is necessarily a bad thing)
Quite right. I think that's the whole idea.
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Post by klauss »

(Sorry for the triple post)

I think we should start with confed (grouping almost all human factions) and pirates. Throughout the game, you find yourself dealing with them most often.

Someone should take confed, and populate the playlists.
Someone else should take the pirates, and do the same.

The required playlists are, for faction X:

flying in X open space, player is friendly towards X.
flying in X open space, player is neutral towards X.
flying in X open space, player is hostile towards X.

flying in X space, close to base, player is friendly towards X.
flying in X space, close to base, player is neutral towards X.
(note: no hostile list, as this would fall in the threat/battle category)

threatened by X: player hostile towards X, near X, but X is not attacking him.

battling X: player hostile towards X, near X, and X is attacking him.

Perhaps, a few other playlists should be thought about, and possibly populated as well - they're not coded, but we could:

X enters battle, friendly: a battle is in progress, and a new faction, X, comes into play. The player is friends with X.
X enters battle, neutral: obvious.
X enters battle, hostile: obvious.


Now...
...populating playlists does not mean composing a track for each list. It only means, out of a selection of tracks, choosing the ones that fit that particular situation. Of course, one should compose those tracks thinking about their use in populating playlists already. Almost a chicken and egg situation.

Most sharing will take place among the peaceful playlists.
Also, as a first sketch, all the friendly/hostile playlists could be identical the the neutral playlists, and compose only neutral tracks: as neutral, they fit equally well to hostiles and friendlies. Of course, the selection would be much more moody and immersive with hostile/friendly variations customized, so the next step after finishing that, is to star specializing the playlists.

Any doubts? Any ideas? Any objections?
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Post by hurleybird »

Klauss: I think your going too fat.

ATM, before anything, I think we need to dicuss where (if at all) ambient music will fit in. Your post seems to assume that ambient music is not being used.

After that, I think we should start fleshing out the terran playlists.


Last thing - I think base music != flight music. It would be great to have some sort of "radio" with lots of different songs played at bases, dependant on the faction, with songs dependant on faction mostly, and ocasionally a few base-specific songs. Of course, thats deep future type stuff... for the meantime it would be nice to have songs themed to the planet type tho.
Im beginning to think that ambient music would fit the bases better than tracks (not that location specific tracks couldn't be played in the background, eg. chattering, bar music). Strangelets art seems to be fairly dark, which would be better reflected with ambience. One good one would be the oceanic planet, which would have all sorts of underwater ambience to it.
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Post by klauss »

I think ambience would be part of the playlists. It's just a different kind of track. IMO, the only place where you can place ambience tracks is in threat and peace-away playlists. Anyway, I'm not assuming they're not there, I'm just assuming the composer will decide when to use ambience or not. It's an artistic consideration, after all: do I want vague, static harmony (ambience), or a more dynamic and well defined one (music)?

And about bases...
...I think they could use both. Ambience would be the only kind of tracks at bases... but ambience can include music, if the surroundings could use music. Bars, for instance, would have music - or TV/radio shows going on. The concourse in most places would feature some kind of functional music (they do this everywhere), along with ambience. Great example among the existing tracks: cosmostation. Just make that per-room (It's not possible right now, I think, but it may become possible), and you have all you need: ambience for once, and music for dice.
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Post by hurleybird »

Ok, I get what your saying, though I do have to disagree on a few details.
I think ambience would be part of the playlists. It's just a different kind of track. IMO, the only place where you can place ambience tracks is in threat and peace-away playlists. Anyway, I'm not assuming they're not there, I'm just assuming the composer will decide when to use ambience or not.
Each individual composer should not choose when to use ambience, as thats quite sloppy. There does need to be some structure that the composers will conform to regarding ambience. We need to, as a group, decide where ambience is used, when it is used, or if it is even used at all.

Also, ambience would likely not be defined on a per-faction basis, and would be shared between many different factions. If we, as a group, decide that ambience should be used in open space (as I'm thinking it would) then that would modify your structure a bit.
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Post by klauss »

hurleybird wrote:Each individual composer should not choose when to use ambience, as thats quite sloppy.
I had the impression you would say that. I tend to give artists as much freedom as possible. If you want guidance, which is also good, take my last words: open space and threat... those could use ambience-like tracks.

But let me work on that thought:
hurleybird wrote:Also, ambience would likely not be defined on a per-faction basis, and would be shared between many different factions.
IMO, completely wrong.
Ambience is the most direct way of setting a mood. If you ever played Doom3, you know: First "level", the ambience sound was full of activity, people working, that kind of stuff. So... it was a comfortable place, filled with well known sounds, not disturbing at all. Then, hell breaks in. You have "ghost" noises all around... otherwise a kind of silence (not complete silence - only unrecognizable sounds), which is really unnerving. That's another mood. Then, you go to hell. A whole different setting there.

Ambience is a supreme mood setter. Of course, it's not like music, where you directly trigger feelings and emotions. With ambience, you appeal to immersiveness, to convey a "situation". A mood just gets derived from the situation.

Hence, it can be factionalized with supreme efficiency: if you want aeran territory to look strange, you make it sound strange. Use unrecognizable sounds. If you want confed space to "feel at home", use recognizable ambience, musical sounds (but still ambience-like). You can say just as much with ambience as with music... just a different way of saying it.
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Post by hurleybird »

klauss wrote:
hurleybird wrote:
hurleybird wrote:Also, ambience would likely not be defined on a per-faction basis, and would be shared between many different factions.
IMO, completely wrong.
Ambience is the most direct way of setting a mood.
Which is why, IMHO it can be shared. Music for each faction will have a different style, but mood is something that is universally shared. You can have a happy mood, sad mood, frightened mood, etc.. However, you cant have a 'terran mood' or a 'rlaan mood' as you cannot define mood along those lines.

There are, of course always exceptions...
klauss wrote:if you want aeran territory to look strange, you make it sound strange. Use unrecognizable sounds.
...Like that one, and thats a good example. for some races, like the aera, you are going to want to set a certain atmosphere that might be used by only a few races. The ambience is still dictating mood and atmosphere though, not style, and should not be labeled as such.

The majority of ambience is going to be shareable and IMO we shouldn't base our system off of the exceptions. Instead we should base the system off of the majority, and make room for exceptions when they come along.
klauss wrote:And about bases...
...I think they could use both. Ambience would be the only kind of tracks at bases... but ambience can include music, if the surroundings could use music. Bars, for instance, would have music - or TV/radio shows going on. The concourse in most places would feature some kind of functional music (they do this everywhere), along with ambience. Great example among the existing tracks: cosmostation. Just make that per-room (It's not possible right now, I think, but it may become possible), and you have all you need: ambience for once, and music for dice.
Yeah, that pretty much sums up my thoughts on the matter. One thing that would also be cool would be to hear trace amounts of the sounds from adjacent rooms. That would almost give a "3d-landscape" feel to the current point and click interface.
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Post by klauss »

Now I get your point.

But if you want to know what kind of ambience tracks to create... don't you need to know where you intend to use them? Otherwise, we could end up with tons of unused tracks.

So... I would just create them as needed. If terran open space calls for the classic wind-like sounds, along with some musical tones and harmonies, I would create it, and stash it somewhere for all to see and use. If someone else has a use for it, great. After all, it's as you said: most are pretty much exchangeable.
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Post by zaydana »

i'm with klauss here.

On another train of thought tho, it would be great to put some music up which is actual ideas, rather than just talk. For one, i think a station called "drone zone" is a good model of the type of music we'd want in bases sometimes, and space sometimes (depending on what is on).. Have a listen: http://www.somafm.com/dronezone.pls

Anybody else got exaqmples like that?
Last edited by zaydana on Thu Oct 06, 2005 4:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Zeog »

Well, not of that kind. But rather different. I aslo would like to oppose the "compose only tracks we need"-thought.

I noticed that there seems some kind of conflict between composers just making the music they like and they're good composing in and the "style-people" having their list of "missing themes/styles for party/situation foo". If I might have a tiny suggention to that: How about characterizing each and every piece of music with some attributes e.g. minor based progressions, latin feel, instumental, ... -- as the people of the music genome project did. Based on these meta-data the sound server/mission designer picks the right music for the right situation only via those attributes "hey fellow, now the battle is over and that pesky Uln is sucking void, give me the music to that". This way I don't think we would end up with tons of useless tracks.
The user might help the sound server to learn which music style is the proper one for the current situation by skipping track. (That way the sound server also adjusts to the users preference.) Something similar is done in Pandora.

And concerning the noise: I don't get why one would want to encode noisy tracks. There isn't any information in noise (apart from its distribution). Why couldn't one store the sounds without noise and then let the sound server apply one of many noise filters to it. This way we could also overcome the encoding issues.
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Post by zaydana »

Heres a few ideas for different styles of music for different races:

Terran, i'm thinking industrial music on the inner planets and ambient on the outers which mostly is made of sound effects like clicks and drums n stuff. Basically, the idea is terran music needs to portray dirty, tied up with sticky tape, that type of stuff. Maybe a bit of funk could be put into the inner planets too, and lots of variation too.

For aera, strings i think should make a big part of the stuff up. Of course, we can't invent new instruments for each race, so we are gonna have to go with different styles :) I think one cool trick would be to get a different main time signature, like 3/4 or 6/8 for aera, which would sound quite "civilized" with strings. Think waltz. Also, baroque type of stuff for them. For outer aeran space, i think we go with ambient strings, whistles, bells, etc. We still want the grand ideas, but just not so grand :P

Rlaan I think need to be a real whacky time signature, say 5/4. I imagine it would be a lot more synthy somehow, electronic in nature. In the inner inner planets, it would be quite agressive electronica. In the mid planets, maybe we could have some lessa greesive synthy music. I think outer rlaan space would be fun to write for :P Ambience again, as per usual, but with lots of pads, techno type sounds, etc.

I've got some quick mockup examples of the ideas just to show what i'm talkin about, i'll put them up as soon as i get back from dinner :)
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Post by klauss »

As anyone who used CVS must have noticed, I already did some theme matching for aera/terran/rlaan stuff... with splash music.

Basically, I completely agree with rlaan (except that it should be very, very orderly - they're supposed to be obsessively bureaucratic from our POV, I guess orderly industrial stuff would make that point). The best match I found is industrialmixed from the current tracks.

For terran music... I would leave a whole lot of freedom. The idea is to convey the stratification of human society, and the heterogenous composition of most human groups, in all regards. So, there should be diverse styles. The constant should be variety, and chaos. IMNSHO, most popular music lacks form. Let's show that. But let's show classical too... with paramount form. The two opposites.
Now... the balancing act will be not to show too much heterogeneity, I guess.

For aeran music... I don't know. I don't understand them. But aeran ambience for open hostile space, I would make as I already described earlier: nonrecognizable sounds only. That will set the mood. If you need samples, send some samples my way, and I can twist them into unrecognizable things.

I can find classical stuff as samples of which kind of classical stuff I would like... I have a large collection of classical music from which to choose. But notice that classical is not the only stuff for terran.

Oh... and Ken: I've been listening to the wav files... awesome. How much compression did you apply? I had to decompress at 1.2, which is barbarian (I've only reached 1.15 with other jobs, and that's a logarithmic scale). Anyway, decompression and high-frequency reconstruction (the sinthesizer was a little poor in that regard) does a lot, and does it all... nothing else needed, IMO. If we'll retain some of the old tracks, I can restore their quality easily.
Also, I loved the SPEC sounds... those should be ingame. I guess they didn't include them because it needs quite an advanced soundsystem, and current VS' soundsystem is everything BUT advanced. Lame, would be my qualifier (no offence intended for the author, just my objective evaluation). I've been meaning to rewrite it for a long time, but that's something I don't want to rush... I want to make it right.
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