From: Paul_Trauth@agwbbs.new-orleans.LA.US (Paul Trauth)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.games
Subject: Re: Music in games
Date: 11 Apr 92 04:42:36 GMT
Organization: The Amiga GateWay BBS * New Orleans, La.

In a message dated Fri 10 Apr 92 04:25, Gerald@seas.gwu.edu (gerald G. Wash
wrote:
(responding here both to the person quoted and the person HE'S quoting...)
 GGW> exuhag@exu.ericsson.se (James Hague) writes:
>Once again, no matter how incredible the music, repetition
>will eventually wear it thin (not to mention that everyone
>has different musical tastes).
 GGW> Yes, this is obviously a personal preference.  It is interesting,
 GGW> though.  I have never met anyone who had such a dislike for music
 GGW> in games.
he does have a point here. about the only game whoes music DIDN'T get on my
nerves EVENTUALLY was "Faery Tale Adventure". a GREAT example of effective
background music. the music actually MEANT something - when that combat
music kicked in, you knew there was something to kill close by...
>Having an option to turn game music off is wonderful.
>Unfortunately, the absence of music often shows how little
>effort was put into other sound effects.  But for games
>with great sound, I hate to turn the volume down--explosions
>and such can really add a lot to a game's overall
>atmosphere.
definitely. I've been toying with ideas for REAL fx. Two audio toggles in
the game: music->background FX->silence, AND foreground FX/silence. Music
might be expanded without any fx whatsoever.
By "background" FX i mean things like this: imagine if, in Beast, you got
birds chirping, insects thrumming, wind whistling, water dripping, and so
on, at appropriate places in the game. (forest noises in the forest, etc)

>Non-stop background music is actually kind of silly; imagine
>if you were forced to listen to "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun"
>*constantly* at every major league baseball game?
 GGW> Okay, I am imagining this.  You are right; it does seem quite silly.
 GGW> Baseball games and computer games are two entirely different things,
 GGW> however.
I remember one company interviewed a *long* time in a magazine that said
something about more selectable music. They were going to have a system
where there would be a fair-sized bunch of tunes to choose between for each
game segment.
>Even
>movies and TV shows give you a break from music, only using
>it for certain scenes and breaks between scenes.
 GGW> Yes, but movies and television do not allow you to blast your
 GGW> enemies
 GGW> to pieces with a laser cannon.  They do not allow you to hack a fire-
 GGW> breathing dragon into rat food with a mystic sword.  Musical effects
 GGW> serve different purposes in games than in the media.  However, this
 GGW> is all a matter of personal taste.  I, for one, would like to see
 GGW> the
 GGW> programmers take advantage of all of the audio capabilities of the
 GGW> machine I am using.  Maybe this is not ideal; it is just my
 GGW> preference.
Music has *not* been explored to its full possibilities in any game i've
seen yet. A friend and i have come up with some ideas for a music routine
that syncs with the on-screen action, similar to what Lucasfilm claims to
have in their latest adventures, tho i haven't seen these yet.
Imagine a side-view runandjump game with background music. When things
happen, the music jumps to a theme for that event, such as the
"door-opening theme" and such. Plus, as the player penetrates deeper into
the game, the main tune and all the little event-triggered themes are
slowly replaced with new ones that reflect the goings-on.
I've even come up with a sort of "tension-driven sequencer" idea. Imagine a
standard tracker song, with most of the patterns written so they flow from
any one to any other easily. Now, assign "tension levels" to each pattern;
some of them sound a lot more tense than others. The game would analyze the
on-screen action, throwing in variables such as lives/energy left,
number/size of enemies, etc, to arrive at a "tension level". An
appropriately-classed pattern would then be randomly selected and played...

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- be zorch, daddi-o --------------- paul (raccoon) trauth ----------------
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