Expansion Music

[RCIX]

Are you planning on adding music for the expansion?
If so, i'd expect it to be more dark and foreboding -- It's a rough galaxy out there, and you don't know what you might run into!
Of course, there coupld be a couple of upbeat or excessively sad/dark tracks...

What am i thinking? i hardly ever listen to the music anyway!

[quickstix]

From the pre-order information page:

30-40 minutes of new in-game music tracks

Really like AI War's music myself, it always seems to suit the situation I'm in.

[Spikey00]

I only wish there was dynamic music (peacetime/incoming/battle)--though I understand why this wasn't done in the first place.

[raptor331]

Try converting your favorite music into an ogg file, then add it to the music file in your files for ai wars, this is located in Your computer, then program files, then arcen games, though I'm not sure if it has any side affects since this could be considered a hack....But I personally enjoy listening to the Halo Theme song while sending large scale fleets to destroy the enemy 

[El-Ravager]

I only wish there was dynamic music (peacetime/incoming/battle)--though I understand why this wasn't done in the first place.

this is obviously not implemented because then it would be all battle music, all the time

[raptor331]

not really, if you keep them on the defensive, or take out their warp gates

[Spikey00]

Well, it still would be a nice feature for the music to be dynamic.  It could be done so that if < X amount of ships are being attacked, then battle music would play, instead of just being one.

[x4000]

Pablo and I talked about having dynamic music when we were first talking about the score for the base game. But, I felt in the end that there was simply too much a pecentage of most games where the battle music would be playing, particularly in multiplayer. The expansion definitely will not have dynamic music, but future expansions might add that in. As with many puzzle games, out upcoming puzzle game will include msuic that gets more animated when you are about to lose or win, etc.  So that's something that will be in some of our products at least, where it makes sense.

[Spikey00]

Are you sure there isn't any other way to implement this?  Maybe a Sins of a Solar Empire style, where the appropriate music plays only when you are focused onto a planet where such an action is taking place?

eg. Planet X being attacked, player viewing sterile planet Y would have the peacetime music playing.  When he/she switches to X, war music will play (vice verse).  Switching from peaceful planets would not change the music--and zooming back out from a planet in war will resume the original peacetime song.

[x4000]

Yes, we talked about all sorts of various options, including one like that. But in most battles, our alpha testers are switching back and forth between planets as it goes. There is usually more than one front to pay attention to at a time.  So we had discarded it for that reason

Granted, we may revisit it at some point in the future, but there is no chance of it making this expansion because there is simply no time for it with all the other content slated for it, etc. Perhaps in a future expansion, though!

[raptor331]

how about adding voices, i know the ai taunts you when you lose an assualt, but how about when your attack you hear a worried voice from an assistant "commander we are under attack!!!!" or "Our scouts have succesfully gathered intel."
it sort of adds to the realism, plus i extremely agree with the dynamic music, but i think it should only be switched to batlle music when they send in cross planet attacks.

[Baleur]

Pablo and I talked about having dynamic music when we were first talking about the score for the base game. But, I felt in the end that there was simply too much a pecentage of most games where the battle music would be playing, particularly in multiplayer. The expansion definitely will not have dynamic music, but future expansions might add that in. As with many puzzle games, out upcoming puzzle game will include msuic that gets more animated when you are about to lose or win, etc.  So that's something that will be in some of our products at least, where it makes sense.

So true so true.. I love all things dynamic, but one thing that CONSTANTLY gives me a headache in strategy games is the battle music.
At first its cool, but after 10+ hours (in one or multiple sessions/games), you just sit there and your brain is predicting each boring drumbeat, and its just driving me crazy, i almost dont want to enter combat because of it (examples, Sword of the stars, sins of a solar empire, TW games, etc).
I dont have anything against battle music in general, but almost all games that feature dynamic music has such an utterly BORING uncreative soundtrack that it doesnt even last a day before you hate it. If there were actual good quality non-boring battle music in a game, i'd like it.

More games need options to turn off just the battle music, or just play normal ambient music at all times (my fav, as in Starcraft, always ambient and always fitting, never intrusive).

I very very much agree on adding more voices though. If it was up to me there would be an individual "Selected", "Order recieved", "Death scream" sound for each and every unit in the game! I dont know, i love voices in rts games. They add immersion, like your units actually matter.

[raptor331]

Yea but you could also make it to where you can edit the battle music as well as the ingame music by adding ogg files, that wouldn't make it as annoying

[x4000]

I am a huge fan of Warcraft II, and one of my favorite things about that game was always what the guys would say when you click them a bunch.  "Why do you keep poking me?" and all that are absolute classics, and some of the funniest video game speech ever.  I also love the two-headed ogres, amongst many, many more.  One of the cheats in AI War is actually a reference to the WCII Goblin Zeppelin multi-click voiceover, incidentally.  So I'm totally on board with the idea that this sort of thing is cool.

However, a few things (in descending order of importance):
- Voice actors are very expensive for that amount of dialogue and we don't have the resources of Blizzard (the current voices were all made by our Composer).
- There are a ton more units in AI War than in WCII or many of those other games mentioned, which would make our cost even higher than the norm.
- Voicework generally has to be localized, which makes the game more expensive to localize for our partners, and thus less attractive.
- All of those voicework files take up space, and could double, triple, or far more increase the size of the game and demo if there were a ton of them, thus making it more of a pain to download for people.  There is something to be said for being fairly lean and quick to download, especially for a newish company.


All of that said, we are planning more voicework in the future, but I don't know exactly how that will really play out.  For the current expansion we have our hands full just with everything that is currently on the slate for it, but we'll see where things go in the future.  Lots of potential out there!

[raptor331]

 Yes i too do enjoy that sort of thing on star craft, lol i found it very amusing, I'm not saying you do it for each individual unit, I'm saying you do it for important events like waves and cross planet attacks and scouting intel for new planets, plus, just use one of your staff, doesn't matter if its cheasy, it would be very nice to add some human qualities to a game based off of a human struggle against a merciless computer