Varying ingame music possible?

#1 We were discussing this in another thread - look for my "underscore" threads. I created a sort of test track which has a few loopable sections (look for the third underscore thread). It is not especially difficult to have several loopable sections and good transitions from one to another, however, being able to jump at any time to a different section is a bit tricky.

Opinions ran thus:

1) It's best to have one track that captures the mood of the level. Advantage: very simple. Disadvantage: doesn't respond to events.

2) It's best to have one track with several loopable sections. Advantage: allows for a musical enhancement of changes in intensity of game play. Disadvantage: it is a little tricky to compose and record (a MIDI track, it should be noted, is MUCH simpler to deal with, but doesn't sound as good).

3) It's best to have multiple tracks playing at once. Advantage: it is easier for the composer; the new track can be turned in immediate response to game events. Disadvantage: eats up a lot of CPU cycles.

I'm waiting to see how this shakes out here. "Halo" has been highly recommended for my playing. I don't have an XBox, however, so I have to skulk around in some Best Buys to hear how the track works.

Nick

#2 halo does this very well
another one that i think is probably the most responsive and PERFECT musical score in a game is Jedi Knight 2.
play it.
watch how as soon as you see storm troopers, the french horn comes in or whatever, it's just...
wow.
you feel IN the universe
I AM A JEDI mwhahaha! =D
thanks for the response, i'm thinking of using an IDM song for a sound track, so the transitions IN the song already are chopped up, so it wouldn't sound too wierd =)

#3 The best use of this concept I've ever encountered is found in SSX Tricky (PS2, GC, XBox). The better the player is doing, indicated by the Tricky meter, the more tracks that are layered on to the music. If you max out the Tricky meter, the full music is playing and you hear a sample from RunDMC's "Tricky". They created tailored versions of that sample to match the tempo for every music track in the game.

Another great effect occurs when you perform a jump. As soon as you take air, all the track layers are muted except one or two vague percussion layers. It creates a suspenseful moment as you attempt to pull off a trick. Then the muted tracks kick in again the moment you land. If you performed a really good trick, chances are you'll have more track layers playing when you land than when you first jumped, making the effect even more potent.

They really built a fantastic system - a brilliant example of using audio to enhance the gaming experience.

#4 If the engine would support "tracker" music files like .mod, or .s3m, a command could be given what modules to play of the file (tracker files consist of patterns that are repeated...so one could basically give the command to play pattern 10 and repeat it until another command is given, or one could give the command to loop between pattern 10 and 15 until said otherwise)... Tracker files are a bit of the old days, altough a lot of musicians still use it. Qualtiy is a bit avarage (rather low) in my opinion, but with some work this could work out. I would look into such a system if I were you, this would be the easiest thing to do in my opinion. (becuase the format already exists, and there's code available for playing these types of files...)

#5 Why can't you just stop playing one song (the ambient song) when a player get's hurt or fires his weapon or reaches a certain velocity for example and start playing a more up-beat tune? Then when those 3 conditions are not met, change back to the ambient track. Surely this can be done.