Question for our former developers

bobo · October 2010

I've been thinking about this for a while: one of the features that I was most looking forward to in the B5 sim was the music and its relation to mood. As I recall, there was an algorithm that would determine the current mood of the action (suspense, victory, challenge, etc.) and adjust the sound track accordingly.

My question is: hove you seen anything approaching this in any current or pastgames? I think the use of music to set the mood is highly under utilized.

Lord Refa · October 2010

I'm no developer.. but!

They used it in the original disk version of Tie Fighter.. And I have played that! :D

Umm.. I am not sure about any other ones..

I felt like they had something like that in Freespace games, but prolly not. They were just awesome.

WORF · October 2010

Freespace did indeed have it. It wasn't just TIE Fighter either. X-Wing and X-Wing Alliance both used dynamic music.

Lucasarts developed and used the iMuse system in alot of their early games for that purpose.

Worf

Biggles · October 2010

A lot of games use a less complicated version of what was planned for B5ITF. The music transitions a lot less cleanly than B5ITF's music would have.

Random Chaos · October 2010

As I recall, B5:ITF was to use a remixing system to seemlessly mix in different themes of music based on mood of the battle. All the games I do fade one music out and fade the new one in, rather than remixing. The idea is similar, but the implementation is far weaker.

JackN · October 2010

[!$@$%] ...Yes...[/!$@$%] :vorlon:

DarthCaligula · October 2010

Soul Reaver and Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3 kind of have something that reminds me of that a little. Instead, in those games it appears that the game has both tracks playing at once or something, and when you're in danger, the more exciting version of the song comes in seamlessly, then goes away once the danger is over. Though I realize that's not really like what was planned for Into the Fire.