What kind of music do you want in Armagetron?

[Lucifer]

Ok, I'm only listing the types of music I have the ability to write right now. If you don't care for some reason, you probably shouldn't vote, and let the people that do care vote, because this will decide what I'm going to write.

I intend to make 2 mod files approximately 2 minutes long each, maybe longer if required. I'd like the game to just loop them, you know, play one, then the other, then the other, then the other, over and over. If code changes are required for it, I'll look at if I can make them. They shouldn't be required based on what klax was saying awhile back when I first approached the subject.

I only have until the end of summer to do it, so I've set it as a goal that no later than August 1 I will have the two mod files made.

Also, for format, I intend to make mod files, but that's not a set in stone thing. THe consensus right now is "No midi, no long downloads". 4 minutes worth of ogg vorbis at a reasonable compression rate should only increase the download by about a megabyte. If you'd prefer 4 minutes worth of real recorded music compared to 4 minutes worth of mod, please say so in the discussion. If there's enough variety of opinion, I'll run a poll for that.

Now, I'm not gonna go out and hire a symphony. If the consensus is Techno or Symphonic, you're getting mod. For imitating the movie, I can go either way (the movie is a mix of symphonic and techno music, and I understand it was all done with a computer too).

[Tank Program]

Something that fits into the background would be best. No jarring things like the Indiana Jones or Star Wars themes...

[Lucifer]

Something that fits into the background would be best. No jarring things like the Indiana Jones or Star Wars themes...

I did "something that fits into the background" for Crimson Fields and a year later I'd rather delete it and erase the memory of the song if I could. It's also a midi song, and that certainly doesn't help.

So I'm not going to try to fit into the background here. The way to put the music into the background is to turn down the volume. Other than that, it has to be exciting to do its job. The music in INdiana Jones (and pretty much any other movie) doesn't try to fit into the background, instead it tries to express the story, and it certainly doesn't distract from the movies. So it's gonna be the best of whatever I can do when I do it. (That doesn't mean it won't suck, heh)

[philippeqc]

O my! What a good idea!

I voted for symphonic, but it could have been techno. I was tempted to vote for "imitate the movie", but someone felt it was a bad idea. Not that the movie's music was bad, nor do I remember it, nor should you limit yourself and refuse to inspire your creation from it, but rather because I feel it didnt have a character strong enough to hang in the collective memory as something that really needed to be preserved, like the indiana jones music for example ;) But that's me!

As for the file format, I think CPU resources will be more critical than download time. Even at 4megs @ 56kbits, its about 9 minutes to download. I spend more time just reading this forum. So someone could just start the download, read the forum (and/or some mail, and/or the funnies, etc) and be done. But if the format requires too much CPU, then you have to decide yourself which crowd you want to please. Its a really though call when the audience ranges from 1-2fps to 5000+fps. But for me (15-20fps @ crappy resolution), the quality and mood of your music will be more important than the actual format.

Said otherwise: use what you need to create the true effect you want. That's what will make me keep it on my disk whatever its size is. ;)

-ph

[ROCK]

I'd say don't emulate the movie, the movie music was really... dumb, as I remember it at times it was just DUN DUN DUUUNNN repeated over and over. I thought the music was a big throw-back in the movie. I think it should be something high teck, and blippie, you know like the begining of doogie howser, before they hit the piano chords, but a little more edgy... if that explanes it well enough. And do you think there would be a way to speed it up when action gets more intense? Like when you bike goes faster the tone increases, that might be cool.

[Lucifer]

Unfortunately, right now there's no way to speed it up when the action gets more intense. Although there was a guy who wanted to implement my fancy soundtrack architecture, I don't know where he went.

As to the format, wav is the least CPU-intensive format, except that stereo tracks of 4 minutes worth is about 40MB. Now, if you made the installer (or the game) render the tracks from their compressed format to wav during installation, they could be distributed as ogg, do the decoding once, and then go. Or at least make it optional. Possibly make a separate tool to do just that and have the game automatically pick it, somehow? (or just distribute a tool that does that, plenty available) That way, people worried about CPU performance could do the conversion themselves, get the same quality of sound, and then go.

Now, that 40MB is 16 bit 44.1khz. While I would love it if the soundtrack was CD-quality, we could distribute it as 8 bit 22khz, which would cut it down to approximately 10MB, which might well zip up nicely.

Anyway, if the consensus on file format is "don't care as long as its good" I'll run some tests on decompressed/lower quality samples vs compressed higher quality and see how it goes.

[Lucifer]

Here's an interesting idea for a soundtrack. I'm about to start playing with it and see what comes up.

http://www.kootenay.com/~bvdpoel/mma/mma.html

The part that's really entertaining me is that it was written in Python. Anyway, what I was thinking is that midi is an acceptable solution for music if it made it possible to have a very dynamic soundtrack (to me, anyway, no doubt there are plenty here who would rather not use midi no matter what).

So I installed mma to use it to generate accompaniment to practice soloing and to see if I could rapidly prototype new songs with it and so forth, you know, getting ready to work on my album (the new Mandrake definitely has everything you need for music). And the it occured to me that it might work as a soundtrack engine of sorts, generating the music itself. Anyway, just thought I'd throw that out there. After I've fooled with it I'll post some oggs or something for y'all to investigate.

[Lucifer]

bump

When the poll expires I start working on it. As it stands I'll probably be doing a harder-edge rock thing (metal and zztop are the most voted), but there isn't enough votes for me to think the soundtrack will be satisfactory.

[philippeqc]

Lucifer, feel free to make the music that your creative mind tells you to make. Its not because I voted for symphonic that I wont like a heavy metal track. Its not because heavy metal was popular that a uplifting jazz track with a very good solo in the middle wouldnt be appreciated and loved. Nobody could have voted in a pool for anything that would have lead to any of Lady-X's models.

That relatively empty comment being said, I put all of my thrust in your creative ability to make music that will complement the gaming experience!

-ph

[Lucifer]

Lucifer, feel free to make the music that your creative mind tells you to make. Its not because I voted for symphonic that I wont like a heavy metal track. Its not because heavy metal was popular that a uplifting jazz track with a very good solo in the middle wouldnt be appreciated and loved. Nobody could have voted in a pool for anything that would have lead to any of Lady-X's models.

That relatively empty comment being said, I put all of my thrust in your creative ability to make music that will complement the gaming experience!

-ph

bump again.

Phil: of course. But it's usually a good idea (at least for me) to set reasonable parameters before starting, so I'm polling the community to hopefully get the reasonable parameters that will be set.

Think of it like this. Phillipe shows up and wants to implement shaped arenas, so he asks people what kind of shapes they'll be interested in making. Then Phillipe takes this information to figure out how he'll implement it, makes sure it supports all the shapes past, present, and future that phillipe would like to support, and then Luke-jr shows up and does it.

Er, something like that. (yes, that's meant as a joke, but you see what I mean anyway )

In any case, it's looking like I should be looking not to create one specific type of music, but to blend several types in a cohesive fashion. It probably isn't self-evident on the list, but in my mind, all of those different types of music are the same because of the way my mind processes it.

ANd also, let's assume for the moment that everyone decides "zztop". Now, I'm not going to go grab a few zztop riffs (I know quite a few of them) and string them together, and I'm not necessarily going to imitate them. It just so happens that I play a style of rock-n-roll that frequently comes off sounding like zztop. So I'll actually do that, and if it comes off sounding like zztop, fine. But there may be disagreement. One thing will be certain, though. In such a situation, seeing as how I live in and love the heart of Texas, it will be genuine Texas Rock, even if all of you outsiders don't think it sounds like zztop.

[philippeqc]

*realise my comment was so stupid that Lucifer had to explain slowly, being carefull not to use any big words, holding my hand and patting my head* ;)

Lets go 2 messages back.

Is there anything I/we could do about this situation?

-ph

just an idea: what if people had to pick not one, but 3 items on the list. Could that generate more significant statistics?

[Lucifer]

*realise my comment was so stupid that Lucifer had to explain slowly, being carefull not to use any big words, holding my hand and patting my head*

Lets go 2 messages back.

Is there anything I/we could do about this situation?

-ph

just an idea: what if people had to pick not one, but 3 items on the list. Could that generate more significant statistics?

It would be nice if the polls weren't so anti-democratic by only allowing one vote. I mean, you know, if there are 6 choices on the poll, then a person has 6 different preferences, you know what I mean?

Maybe it would be better to run it as "What kind of music do you *not* want in armagetron?"

Aaaa, this is good enough. If theres no clear preference or consensus, I'll do whatever feels like the right thing at the time.

[Lucifer]

bump again

This is probably the last bump, the poll should be ending soon. Which also means its your last chance to vote if you haven't already.

[Lucifer]

bump again? Is this poll closed?

[Tank Program]

I think it's whatever you think is best.