Poll: MUSAK!

[Mayjori]

Hey, just started playing the game and the music is bloody amazing! The only thing is, it gets a bit stale after 10 hours of gaming.... SO, I think you need to have Pablo do more, cause all of the music fits. Hell, if you released an expansion that all it did was doubled or tripled the amount of music in game, I would totally pay for it .

For those of you who will respond "listen to your own stuff" etc., its not the same, none of it fits as well :/.


Awesome game btw, but the music is what bumped it from very good to great for me

Edit: Does pablo have a website or music i can purchase anywhere?

[keith.lamothe]

Just checking: do you have the expansions?  Each of them adds more music

[Mayjori]

yes mam

Edit:
BTW thats the quickest response I've ever seen by a dev, ever... lol

[NickAragua]

It's not bad, but I've played the game enough that I just turn the music off and listen to something else streaming off the internet.

But yeah, when you have a game that takes 15+ hours to finish, and you have maybe an hour of music tracks, you're going to get repetition.

[keith.lamothe]

But yeah, when you have a game that takes 15+ hours to finish, and you have maybe an hour of music tracks, you're going to get repetition.

The base game ships with about 58 minutes of in-game music (excluding the title theme and the victory/defeat tracks), the expansions, um, expand that a fair bit

But yea, even 3 hours of music (dunno how much there actually is) will repeat a fair bit over a long game.

One of the things I most look forward to in each expansion is more of Pablo's music.  Makes great coding listening too.

[BobTheJanitor]

I agree that after a 15 hour campaign, even AI War's extensive music selection can start to feel repetitive. I still greatly enjoy it though. I wouldn't be opposed to even more music, but I wouldn't want to just ask for it for nothing. I wonder how viable a music-only DLC would be? I don't think anyone's ever tried that before. I would gladly chip in some amount of cash just to get more of Pablo's awesome work playing for me while I crush/am crushed by the AI. I have no idea if there would be enough of a market to make that a good idea, though.

[keith.lamothe]

I think Pablo's pretty busy with AVWW stuff, but it is an interesting idea.  I don't think Chris and I would be willing to let an opportunity to make more other stuff go by, though   There's only so many SKU's we can push out per year under the "AI War" label before people start to not-buy just because it feels like a flood, so that might be a disincentive for us there to go too far into "micro" expansions.  CoN was smaller than the others but even it was pretty significant.

[superking]

I dont have a problem with music that loops every hour- thats preeetty tolerable, especially when the music is good (like it is here) and it is difficult to tell where one track ends and the next begins (like it is here). While the general quality of AI war tuneage is high, I still think the neinzul menu music is somthing of a scrappy-doo

[Lancefighter]

Is it possible to procedurally generate some sort of background music? >_>

(yeah, I dont actually know how music works, so this is just kinda a completely wild shot in the dark)

[keith.lamothe]

Is it possible to procedurally generate some sort of background music? >_>

(yeah, I dont actually know how music works, so this is just kinda a completely wild shot in the dark)

Your homework assignment is to go make a procedural music creator that won't cause earbleed

Yes, it is possible, but the result is very, very different than any of the composition in our game.

[BobTheJanitor]

Your homework assignment is to go make a procedural music creator that won't cause earbleed

And the pre-work for this will be finding a way to quantify what sounds 'good' and what does not, so you can feed those parameters into your music generator. I don't think anyone has managed to clearly define music in the history of humanity. (I mean sure, you could come up with a fancy philosophical definition, but there's no cheats with computers, you have to be able to tell it the exact parameters) Good luck!

[keith.lamothe]

Your homework assignment is to go make a procedural music creator that won't cause earbleed

And the pre-work for this will be finding a way to quantify what sounds 'good' and what does not, so you can feed those parameters into your music generator. I don't think anyone has managed to clearly define music in the history of humanity. (I mean sure, you could come up with a fancy philosophical definition, but there's no cheats with computers, you have to be able to tell it the exact parameters) Good luck!

I didn't say "good", I just said "won't cause earbleed"   Granted, not even that has been defined in anything like an objective way, but the idea is music that doesn't cause physical discomfort to a person in normal health   Achieving even that (aside from always creating silence) would be sufficient to learn the intended lesson

[Lancefighter]

well yes, sadly, that was what I thought would happen. ...

However, if I'm not mistaken, spore uses some sort of procedural music generation?

[Coppermantis]

well yes, sadly, that was what I thought would happen. ...

However, if I'm not mistaken, spore uses some sort of procedural music generation?

Yes it does, at least in the editors. It changes the music based on what parts you've put in, at least that's what I've heard on the forums. However, the editor music doesn't really work with AI War, but at least we know it's possible. I like the idea of having dynamic use of premade tracks, so it will blend between music based on your current situation. Like, it will play more dramatic music if there's a large battle going on and if nothing's really happening it will use the calmer tracks.

[BobTheJanitor]

Yes it does, at least in the editors. It changes the music based on what parts you've put in, at least that's what I've heard on the forums. However, the editor music doesn't really work with AI War, but at least we know it's possible. I like the idea of having dynamic use of premade tracks, so it will blend between music based on your current situation. Like, it will play more dramatic music if there's a large battle going on and if nothing's really happening it will use the calmer tracks.

That sounds like what Left 4 Dead does. It uses a so called 'music director' that selects from among various tracks depending on whether you're in a calm, relatively safe location, or being mobbed by swarms of zombies. The effect can be subtle, but it works pretty well. (I'm guessing spore does something similar? I haven't looked into that game at all) However, this is using pre-made music tracks created by an intelligent person, the game is only picking from among those existing options -- more what could be termed procedural music selection, and not procedural music generation. That would mean something more like giving a program access to a whole bunch of sounds, and having it create listenable music itself, without a human hand putting those notes in order ahead of time. That (I don't think) anyone has ever done before. I would be happy to be proven wrong though.

Edit: It would be neat if AI War could do something like this, but I think it would be flat out impossible, since your attention doesn't stay focused on one thing at a time. The music would have to keep swapping back and forth as you went from a planet with a pitched battle going on to another planet in your backyard with a couple docks peacefully churning out ships. Maybe AVWW could look into it though...