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| Re: Context-Sensitive Music? | |
| Posted By: h'biki <hbiki@dumphuck.com> | Date: 1/8/00 8:49 a.m. |
In Response To: Context-Sensitive Music? (Loren Petrich) > A simple version of such triggered music had been promised for
It is possible to do within the Myth series tho; it is part of the engine. You never know, I may just put some into Jinn - just to make it that much bigger :-) As probably the only musician on this list, who has had to consider, in the past an interactive music system, I'm going to rant for a bit. > Each bit of triggered music comes from a single soundfile,
This would be the best solution, but requires alot of storage space, and unless Halo uses fractals (to an extent) in colourmapping and terrain, this is unlikely. > However, there are some alternatives. > One is to use multiple soundfiles and change their mix; this
This would be my first choice and is the most likely solution. Good composers (as Total Audio are, as well as that h'biki guy ;-)) could write music in a module based format, where certain parts would be combined to produce a certain response. It would not be all that difficult, it would just need be well planned. Such a modular approach is not new to composition either; Stravinsky was doing it at the turn of the 20th Century... The biggest problem would be storage this could be counteracted by using a compression format like MP3 (there is another which is better quality, smaller file size, but requires greater processing power). However, decompressing compressed audio files and mixing them in realtime would chew up quite a bit of CPU on top of what will already be a CPU hungry game. If Bungie could perhaps introduce support for the next-generation soundcards that have started to reach decent penetration in the market, then such mixing could be passed to the soundcard. Easiest way would to be to use the ASIO API, maybe even TDM ;-) In fact, if Bungie didn't include support for NG soundcards :) Now if only low/mid-range soundcards would appear for the Macintosh... Though I still want a Creamware Pulas (4 32-bit SARC DSPs!!!!!!) > Another is not to store soundfiles, but to store music
This will definetely not be the route Bungie/Total Audio will take. Total Audio hate MIDI as it is entirely inappropriate for creating orchestral music; it sounds utterly horribly fake. Admittedly, in Myth 2 the IMA 4:1 compression made Total Audio's music sound reasonably midi-ish. Here's hope that Halo will support 24bit/96khz! ;-) As for MOD. Well, having been a tracker for many years, who now works on Cubase VST, I can happily say MOD bites for anything professional sounding. Though (very strangely) in Sydney a number of tracker-groups have reached notoriety and get regular air-play and interviews and such forth... Then again, what they write is very urban, very dirty, very raw hardcore/hiphop/drum'n'bass. Incidentally, I detest the Unreal Tournament music - then again, being a musician/composer I have taste and get finnicky about such things :) There could be another solution, somewhere in between real-time mixing and MOD. Which is for Bungie to develop their own internal music engine - one which is essentially a sampler and a sequencer. This would be MOD on steroids. Full midi-control over large samples of musical parts would work well. Not as natural sounding as live-mixing, but far more natural than (pure) MIDI/MOD. Of course anyone who has used a softsampler (Unity) knows how much processing power they can chew. Certain things could also be put in the hands of algorithims, ie 'composed' on the fly, while still retaining a degree of non-computereeness. You'd be surprised how much musical composition is just tricks of the trade, which can (and have been) put into code... Personally, I'm not sure I want Halo to have in-game music. If they want immersion, it ain't going to work. We don't hear music IRL coming out of nowhere to enhance the moment we're living :) Unless you're in a cyrogensis tube, reliving your past, while an all-string version of a piece from a musical is playing outside your tube and you hear it in your dream ;-) That, and I'm the kind of person who listens for everything going on in my environment around me. One of the things in Q3A that is lacking in UT and which really bugs me is footsteps. While in Q3A I keep track of enemy movements using my ears. I think that kind of stealth will be really important in Halo. Don't want no music to screw up my attack. I'd like the option to be built into the Halo engine, simply so I could consider adding it to any TCs I work on :) | |
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| Replies: |
| Halo stuff from the Expo | SiliconDream=PN= | 1/6/00 2:35 a.m. |
| Addendum... | SiliconDream=PN= | 1/6/00 3:21 a.m. |
| Re: Addendum... | Forensic | 1/6/00 7:09 a.m. |
| A note on scale | L. Tankersley ("Cap'n Carnage") | 1/6/00 10:28 a.m. |
| Re: A note on scale | Forensic | 1/6/00 10:44 a.m. |
| Re: A note on scale | Tyrbiter | 1/6/00 3:19 p.m. |
| Re: A note on scale | Otokam | 1/6/00 3:32 p.m. |
| Re: A note on scale | Picky | 1/6/00 5:23 p.m. |
| Re: A note on scale | Nemesis | 1/6/00 5:47 p.m. |
| Re: A note on scale | Mark Levin | 1/8/00 12:54 a.m. |
| Context-Sensitive Music? | Loren Petrich | 1/7/00 1:50 a.m. |
| Re: Context-Sensitive Music? | SiliconDream=PN= | 1/7/00 2:47 a.m. |
| ROFL n/t | CyberBob =PN= | 1/7/00 3:55 a.m. |
| Re: Context-Sensitive Music? | Mark Levin | 1/7/00 11:17 a.m. |
| Re: Context-Sensitive Music? | Butcher | 1/7/00 4:31 a.m. |
| Re: Context-Sensitive Music? | h'biki | 1/8/00 8:49 a.m. |
| Re: Context-Sensitive Music? | Butcher | 1/8/00 12:50 p.m. |
| Re: Context-Sensitive Music? | Chris Huff | 1/8/00 6:08 p.m. |
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