Situational / Dynamic In-Game Music

Tremulous Assets Factory
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The purpose of this thread is to define the requirements for in-game music to be played, which will be an appropriate sounding track to respond dynamically to the situation that is currently happening for a player within the game.

Two critical concepts that any game-music artist should understand, is the difference between “diegetic” vs. “non-diegetic” audio. The former comes from “within the world of the game”, and the later “from outside of the world of the game”.

Musical-sounding audio which is emitted from the map, such as the hum of machinery, beeps from electronic equipment, are examples of diegetic audio. Situational music that comes on in reaction to various events is non-diegetic.

We can blend both of these harmoniously (and melodically!) to enhance the mood of play.

Take a listen to this audio clip, recorded from the game DOOM 3:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16088580/temp/doom3_musicalprops.mp3

You can hear a tiny bit of orchestral non-diegetic audio at the very beginning, then the rest of the audio, even though it sounds musical, is in fact diegetic audio, which is being emitted from various props as you pass them.

[Note: Some players will prefer to play their own music collection (or have no music at all), so a CVAR will be needed to disable situational tracks.]

An (incomplete) list of situations which a client should “react to” by playing unique (non-diegetic) music:

  • Player is idle (camping)
  • Player is rushing with teammates
  • Player is attacking an enemy
  • Player has been hurt by an enemy
  • Player is almost dead
  • Player has died
  • Player is placing/building new structures
  • Player is in-base while it’s under attack
  • Player has selected new classes or gear
  • Player has destroyed the enemy team’s “main” structure.
  • Player is the last-one-on-their-team-standing

All music and samples must be licensed appropriately for inclusion. Only CC-BY, CC-BY-SA, and CC0 / Public Domain tracks will be considered. -NC and -ND will not be considered, as we don’t want to needlessly restrict the reuse nor limit remixing them.

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Please post more potential “situations”. Serious suggestions only, don’t be cynical / snarky / sarcastic please OR ELSE. :slight_smile:

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A player is lifting a tyrant over ATCS bunker, while jetcamping.

/s /rip Don't be sarcastic

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here’s a real description:

separate music tracks for in-game situation classes like: combat, building, etc.

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2 posts were split to a new topic: Chaccaron Maccaron

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A post was merged into an existing topic: Chaccaron Maccaron

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2 posts were merged into an existing topic: Chaccaron Maccaron

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Wouldn’t one of these requirements also include proper licensing?

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also:

why ? the links give example musical themes; nowhere it is stated that the links contain ready-to-package audio.

also, how do u handle mixed situations like „combat + rushing” or „combat + almost dead” ?

also, how do u define (detect) situations like „rushing” ?

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######Ignoring the part of your last post which is clearly b8, m8.

Possible solution: Player has > 75% HP and is outside of their base’s main power for > N seconds, and has done > X dmg to enemy players within the last Y seconds.

Possible solution: Player has < 25% HP, has received > P % of that damage from enemies, is outside of their base’s main power for more than N seconds.

Possible solution: Player has been outside of base for > N seconds, has gear/class worth > C credits/evos, and teammates have done > S damage to enemy structures within enemy’s main base power zone.

I’m saying possible because in reality, I have no fucking clue. What I do know, is that other games use similar situational/dynamic music, and that you even created music to be used with a system like this (once upon a time).

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WRONG. ≥2 admins disagree with u moving posts.

no. what happens if:

  • the conditions for „combat” hold (implying „combat” music ?), and
  • the conditions for „rushing” hold (implying „rushing” music ?)

? awesome1 solution: play both musics at once (one in left speaker, other in right speaker) !

1 NOT

WRONG.

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WRONG. The difference is the following:

Feel free to dispute this further in the Chaccaron thread, a flag or a PM, not here. OR ELSE™.

Irrelevant. Its quite interesting you decide to poke about the particulars of how a system would work when its clearly stated:

Even to your own admission:

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3 posts were merged into an existing topic: “this particular (thread) proposes new situations and sample musics”

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@Bluefire:

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This isn’t going to work with more than two or maybe three tracks. Take a look at how it’s done in Return to Castle Wolfenstein. It (most often) plays one of two tracks: a calm one or one that plays during combat. The track set changes depending on the map, so there’s a lot more variety than you’d think.

You’ll have serious problems not only defining the conditions (as they’re listed in the OP right now) but also composing a soundtrack that won’t end up a total clusterfuck in practice.

1 Like
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Was the changes to IdTech3 in RTCW ported to ioQuake3? Can Tremulous in it’s current state be able to do this?

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What changes? You can already play music in Tremulous, so all you’d have to do is program cgame to play tracks based on what’s happening around.

The coding part is actually very easy. What’s not very easy is finding good and free (as in freedom) music that fits.

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Hence why this topic exists in the “Tremulous Assets Factory” category.

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I think we should first develop map sound ambience rather than developping a player-actions-regarding-map ambience.

When it comes to sounds, Tremulous is more about the fear of silence than the fear of tension music. Tremulous is fabulous in the way it has simple sounds ambiences and then if you walk away you get scared by the total silence you find there (example : try playing arachnid2 alone)

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Add audio for the following:
-A vote has started
-A player has voted Yes
-A player has voted No
-Vote passed
-Vote failed