How did it work? I'm a band geek so I know a lot about music, and I was just wondering how it would work. I was thinking about it listening to the ItF combat music.
Probably the same way it does in Descent3 and Freespace 1 and 2. [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/smile.gif[/img]
------------------
[b]Wesley[/b]: Worf, tell me what you know about attracting women.
[b]Worf[/b]: *roars loudly*
[b]Wesley[/b]: So you are saying i should roar?
[b]Worf[/b]: No. The women roar..... and hurl heavy objects.
You got a CD of music with the game which you put into the CDRom drive when requested. You then taped this card thing onto the bottom of your monitor which said stuff like:
1. Moody music
2. Exciting music
3. Sad music.
etc.
etc.
Then you pressed the corresponding button on the numeric keypad to change to the desired mood. Sometimes you would no doubt have been prompted to change to "6. Scary" by some text that would come up on the screen - because something was about to happed that you didn't know about.
No really, that's how it worked.
------------------
possibly futile, but very human.
Franke's music was made up of thematic blocks. It was found that these thematic blocks could be re-arranged, if done carefully, without losing a beat. In places where it didn't work to juxtapose thematic blocks it was found that the frequent SFX used in his compositions would work as transitions.
Loaded with this information our musician and sound guy built a database of thematic blocks. This database was arranged in terms of "dramatic tension" and "speed".
Our music programmer figured out a way to test what was going on at any specific moment in the sim. The answer to this question determined from which part of the database to pull thematic blocks, and when to transition to different thematic blocks. The resulting algorithm also determined whether or not “no music” would be best. In this case only the SFX channels were left operational.
The end result sounded like a soundtrack made specifically for whatever was going on at the moment.
[This message has been edited by Randy (edited 08-09-2001).]
I still think my cardboard thing stuck onto the monitor is best, but hey, no one appreciates the lo-tech nowadays.
------------------
possibly futile, but very human.
Biggles<font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
Woohoo! I was right!
I was bored a while ago, so I decided to try and figure out how the dynamic music worked. And then I wrote a program to test my theory. [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/smile.gif[/img]
The dynamic music in Freespace isn't really dynamic. It just plays a different tune when you do things like complete an objective. They didn't really blend together at all if you were listening to it, but when you are in the middle of a battle you don't notice as much. B5ITF would blend together even if you were listening to it and not doing anything else.
------------------
[b]Required reading: [url="http://www.minbari.co.uk/log12.2263/"]http://www.minbari.co.uk/log12.2263/[/url][/b]
Never eat anything bigger than your own head.
The Balance provides. The Balance protects.
"Nonono...Is not [i]Great[/i] Machine. Is...[i]Not[/i]-so-Great Machine. It make good snow cone though." - Zathras
Just think of it like this: With the technology we have today, if the gang started up on the game again...lets just say it would make the one they were working on before pale in comparison.
------------------
[b]Wesley[/b]: Worf, tell me what you know about attracting women.
[b]Worf[/b]: *roars loudly*
[b]Wesley[/b]: So you are saying i should roar?
[b]Worf[/b]: No. The women roar..... and hurl heavy objects.
[quote]Originally posted by Vertigo1:
[b]Just think of it like this: With the technology we have today, if the gang started up on the game again...lets just say it would make the one they were working on before pale in comparison.
[/b][/quote]
Realism: Sierra would make them push it out the day before it was finished.
I think the best way to recreate the dynamic musical atmosphere of ITF is to insert any Chris Franke B5 Soundtrack CD into your Hi Fi of PC, press play, and then run around the room with your model Starfury, dodging weaving and pulling off all those real physics maneouvers, and pretend that members of your family, or house mates represent the Vorlons or the Shadows.....
Falcon1: if you build a pencil or long, thin dowel into your Star Fury model it gives you something to hold onto and this makes it easier to do some of the maneuvers whilst running around the living room. My dowel comes from the body and goes in-between the wings on one side so that I can do the vertical spin maneuvers. [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/biggrin.gif[/img]
[quote]Originally posted by Randy:
[b]Falcon1: if you build a pencil or long, thin dowel into your Star Fury model it gives you something to hold onto and this makes it easier to do some of the maneuvers whilst running around the living room. My dowel comes from the body and goes in-between the wings on one side so that I can do the vertical spin maneuvers. [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/biggrin.gif[/img][/b][/quote]
Infact, come to think of it - we don't need a game at all [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/smile.gif[/img]
------------------
possibly futile, but very human.
If you go to [url="http://www.musicofb5.com"]http://www.musicofb5.com[/url] and listen to the game tracks carefully, you can actually hear some of the "transition" zones that Franke composed into the scoring elements unique to the game.
Additionally, we had free license to all scoring elements of the series, so Victor was able to extract elements and add in a few elements of his own work to use an amazingly broad amount of music in the SMS Subsystem.
It was fantastic.
I hope that his job stays safe at Blizzard. Thank god they aren't under Sierra's publishing umbrella; not even Vivendi could be so stupid as to castrate the Blizzard Cash Cow.
------------------
[i]"...In the end it would hold because what is built endures. And what is loved endures.
And Babylon 5...Babylon 5 endures."[/i] -- Delenn in the Babylon 5 episode [i]Rising Star[/i]
[quote]Originally posted by John Walker:
[b]As a historical note, Victor Crews was the sound w1z@r4rd with Benito and Jeff doing the sound/music code creation.
(Snake Pliskin jokes will not be tollerated. [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/shad.gif[/img] )[/b][/quote]
I don't get it - the Snake Pliskin thing. [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/confused.gif[/img]
------------------
"Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and he eats for a life time. But teach a man to BE a fish, and he can eat himself."
--Dennis Miller, Dennis Miller Live
[quote]Originally posted by Randy:
[b]In general it worked like this:
Franke's music was made up of thematic blocks. It was found that these thematic blocks could be re-arranged, if done carefully, without losing a beat. In places where it didn't work to juxtapose thematic blocks it was found that the frequent SFX used in his compositions would work as transitions.[/b][/quote]
Pretty much true for most electronica. Much harder to do with orchestral scores like Star Wars or Freespace.
[quote][b]
Our music programmer figured out a way to test what was going on at any specific moment in the sim. The answer to this question determined from which part of the database to pull thematic blocks, and when to transition to different thematic blocks. The resulting algorithm also determined whether or not “no music” would be best. In this case only the SFX channels were left operational.[/b][/quote]
"Well, that's the real trick, isn't it? And it's going to cost you something extra. Ten thousand, all in advance."
Seriously, would you care to drop a clue to a poor game programmer puzzled about this part. What kinds of data would the dynamic composer consider when in choosing a mood?
Some obvious ideas: what race's ships are in the scene, how fast they are going, is a battle occurring or about to occur or just finished up, what part of the dynamic campaign arc is this...
milod: you've got it. Tracked were datum such as: which of five acts/ levels the player was in (single player story game), if the player(s) were in-between combat sessions, entering combat, or exiting combat, how many ships, which side is winning as determined by comparative losses, and some other triggers for specific events. Don't know the specifics since I didn't program it.
Biggles<font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
My little system (sort of) works by having a database of tracks (stored in an INI format file and read in on startup), and then it starts playing a designated start track. It then chooses the next track from the data base at random, but only ones which conform to a current set of required variables. Probably nowhere near as complex as the B5ITF one, but the same basic idea.
------------------
[b]Required reading: [url="http://www.minbari.co.uk/log12.2263/"]http://www.minbari.co.uk/log12.2263/[/url][/b]
Never eat anything bigger than your own head.
The Balance provides. The Balance protects.
"Nonono...Is not [i]Great[/i] Machine. Is...[i]Not[/i]-so-Great Machine. It make good snow cone though." - Zathras
Biggles<font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
Agreed! Very much so! Although I'm not sure we would have time for lessons with you touring the 48 volcanoes where I live. [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/biggrin.gif[/img]
------------------
[b]Required reading: [url="http://www.minbari.co.uk/log12.2263/"]http://www.minbari.co.uk/log12.2263/[/url][/b]
Never eat anything bigger than your own head.
The Balance provides. The Balance protects.
"Nonono...Is not [i]Great[/i] Machine. Is...[i]Not[/i]-so-Great Machine. It make good snow cone though." - Zathras
[quote]Originally posted by milod:
[b] "Well, that's the real trick, isn't it? And it's going to cost you something extra. Ten thousand, all in advance."
Seriously, would you care to drop a clue to a poor game programmer puzzled about this part. What kinds of data would the dynamic composer consider when in choosing a mood?
Some obvious ideas: what race's ships are in the scene, how fast they are going, is a battle occurring or about to occur or just finished up, what part of the dynamic campaign arc is this...
[/b][/quote]
You could actually call our audio format something like "MP3 Plus."
While it was truley MP3 encoded, there was also a sequence of code attached to each track to identifiy it's "suitability" to a particular segment of gameplay. Victor and Jeff worked that one out, if memory serves (and if it doesn't, I'll hear about it via e-mail shortly [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/wink.gif[/img]
The SMS actually monitored particular variables (health, battle intensity, destruction of an enemy, destruction/critical damage to an ally, and other things that escape my mind right now), then matched up track content based on that. As it was queuing up the next segment, one of a series of "transition segmnents" were were played to buffer the load time.
Yeah, it was cool. Way cooler than LEC iMuse and it's imitators, because it actually mixed a unique score on the fly.
Downside is, I believe it prevented the music from being played in WinAMP or the like.
-Rick
------------------
[i]"...In the end it would hold because what is built endures. And what is loved endures.
And Babylon 5...Babylon 5 endures."[/i] -- Delenn in the Babylon 5 episode [i]Rising Star[/i]
[This message has been edited by Rick (edited 08-15-2001).]
Realy nifty stuff, eh? [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/smile.gif[/img] I wonder if any upcoming games would ever try something like this? It would really create an interesting atmosphere!
Biggles<font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
At one point we were trying to convince the devs to put a "player" into the game, so you could go listen to the music without actually playing the game.
------------------
[b]Required reading: [url="http://www.minbari.co.uk/log12.2263/"]http://www.minbari.co.uk/log12.2263/[/url][/b]
Never eat anything bigger than your own head.
The Balance provides. The Balance protects.
"Nonono...Is not [i]Great[/i] Machine. Is...[i]Not[/i]-so-Great Machine. It make good snow cone though." - Zathras
Hey guys do you think my idea would put publishers of space sims out of business??
It would be much more fun to run around your house, esp if you do multiplayer sessions, where you invite your friends around, with their Furies and other B5 models. God you could recreate every famous battle in the B5 universe. And you'd be able to have a beer and some nachos too! And don't forget you if you have a decent sound system you could have Chris Franke booming out. We could even hire old run down mansions with like 200 rooms, which could act like hyperspace, will the main corridors anyway, and each door to the rooms would be like the jumpgates!
God I'm a genius. I'm going to be so rich from this!
Comments
*giggle*
[img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/biggrin.gif[/img]
------------------
[b]Wesley[/b]: Worf, tell me what you know about attracting women.
[b]Worf[/b]: *roars loudly*
[b]Wesley[/b]: So you are saying i should roar?
[b]Worf[/b]: No. The women roar..... and hurl heavy objects.
[i]- Star Trek: The Next Generation[/i]
1. Moody music
2. Exciting music
3. Sad music.
etc.
etc.
Then you pressed the corresponding button on the numeric keypad to change to the desired mood. Sometimes you would no doubt have been prompted to change to "6. Scary" by some text that would come up on the screen - because something was about to happed that you didn't know about.
No really, that's how it worked.
------------------
possibly futile, but very human.
not like those...
Franke's music was made up of thematic blocks. It was found that these thematic blocks could be re-arranged, if done carefully, without losing a beat. In places where it didn't work to juxtapose thematic blocks it was found that the frequent SFX used in his compositions would work as transitions.
Loaded with this information our musician and sound guy built a database of thematic blocks. This database was arranged in terms of "dramatic tension" and "speed".
Our music programmer figured out a way to test what was going on at any specific moment in the sim. The answer to this question determined from which part of the database to pull thematic blocks, and when to transition to different thematic blocks. The resulting algorithm also determined whether or not “no music” would be best. In this case only the SFX channels were left operational.
The end result sounded like a soundtrack made specifically for whatever was going on at the moment.
[This message has been edited by Randy (edited 08-09-2001).]
I sooo wanted this game!!!!!!!!!!!!! [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/frown.gif[/img]
------------------
possibly futile, but very human.
I was bored a while ago, so I decided to try and figure out how the dynamic music worked. And then I wrote a program to test my theory. [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/smile.gif[/img]
The dynamic music in Freespace isn't really dynamic. It just plays a different tune when you do things like complete an objective. They didn't really blend together at all if you were listening to it, but when you are in the middle of a battle you don't notice as much. B5ITF would blend together even if you were listening to it and not doing anything else.
------------------
[b]Required reading: [url="http://www.minbari.co.uk/log12.2263/"]http://www.minbari.co.uk/log12.2263/[/url][/b]
Never eat anything bigger than your own head.
The Balance provides. The Balance protects.
"Nonono...Is not [i]Great[/i] Machine. Is...[i]Not[/i]-so-Great Machine. It make good snow cone though." - Zathras
------------------
[b]Wesley[/b]: Worf, tell me what you know about attracting women.
[b]Worf[/b]: *roars loudly*
[b]Wesley[/b]: So you are saying i should roar?
[b]Worf[/b]: No. The women roar..... and hurl heavy objects.
[i]- Star Trek: The Next Generation[/i]
[b]Just think of it like this: With the technology we have today, if the gang started up on the game again...lets just say it would make the one they were working on before pale in comparison.
[/b][/quote]
Realism: Sierra would make them push it out the day before it was finished.
(Snake Pliskin jokes will not be tollerated. [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/shad.gif[/img] )
[img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/smile.gif[/img]
------------------
'The future is all around us' G'kar
'I have no surviving enemies! None what so ever!' Galen
Visit my B5 site at: [url="http://www.nialb5.com"]B5 site[/url].
------------------
possibly futile, but very human.
------------------
'The future is all around us' G'kar
'I have no surviving enemies! None what so ever!' Galen
Visit my B5 site at: [url="http://www.nialb5.com"]B5 site[/url].
[b]Falcon1: if you build a pencil or long, thin dowel into your Star Fury model it gives you something to hold onto and this makes it easier to do some of the maneuvers whilst running around the living room. My dowel comes from the body and goes in-between the wings on one side so that I can do the vertical spin maneuvers. [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/biggrin.gif[/img][/b][/quote]
Infact, come to think of it - we don't need a game at all [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/smile.gif[/img]
------------------
possibly futile, but very human.
Additionally, we had free license to all scoring elements of the series, so Victor was able to extract elements and add in a few elements of his own work to use an amazingly broad amount of music in the SMS Subsystem.
It was fantastic.
I hope that his job stays safe at Blizzard. Thank god they aren't under Sierra's publishing umbrella; not even Vivendi could be so stupid as to castrate the Blizzard Cash Cow.
------------------
[i]"...In the end it would hold because what is built endures. And what is loved endures.
And Babylon 5...Babylon 5 endures."[/i] -- Delenn in the Babylon 5 episode [i]Rising Star[/i]
[b]As a historical note, Victor Crews was the sound w1z@r4rd with Benito and Jeff doing the sound/music code creation.
(Snake Pliskin jokes will not be tollerated. [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/shad.gif[/img] )[/b][/quote]
I don't get it - the Snake Pliskin thing. [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/confused.gif[/img]
------------------
"Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and he eats for a life time. But teach a man to BE a fish, and he can eat himself."
--Dennis Miller, Dennis Miller Live
[b]In general it worked like this:
Franke's music was made up of thematic blocks. It was found that these thematic blocks could be re-arranged, if done carefully, without losing a beat. In places where it didn't work to juxtapose thematic blocks it was found that the frequent SFX used in his compositions would work as transitions.[/b][/quote]
Pretty much true for most electronica. Much harder to do with orchestral scores like Star Wars or Freespace.
[quote][b]
Our music programmer figured out a way to test what was going on at any specific moment in the sim. The answer to this question determined from which part of the database to pull thematic blocks, and when to transition to different thematic blocks. The resulting algorithm also determined whether or not “no music” would be best. In this case only the SFX channels were left operational.[/b][/quote]
"Well, that's the real trick, isn't it? And it's going to cost you something extra. Ten thousand, all in advance."
Seriously, would you care to drop a clue to a poor game programmer puzzled about this part. What kinds of data would the dynamic composer consider when in choosing a mood?
Some obvious ideas: what race's ships are in the scene, how fast they are going, is a battle occurring or about to occur or just finished up, what part of the dynamic campaign arc is this...
------------------
--milo
[url="http://www.starshatter.com"]http://www.starshatter.com[/url]
------------------
[b]Required reading: [url="http://www.minbari.co.uk/log12.2263/"]http://www.minbari.co.uk/log12.2263/[/url][/b]
Never eat anything bigger than your own head.
The Balance provides. The Balance protects.
"Nonono...Is not [i]Great[/i] Machine. Is...[i]Not[/i]-so-Great Machine. It make good snow cone though." - Zathras
I have an idea...
If I come to New Zealand, you teach me programming, and I'll teach you all I know about Lightwave...
Sound fair?
It'll give me an excuse to visit some volcanoes in your area as well...
[img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/biggrin.gif[/img]
------------------
[b]Required reading: [url="http://www.minbari.co.uk/log12.2263/"]http://www.minbari.co.uk/log12.2263/[/url][/b]
Never eat anything bigger than your own head.
The Balance provides. The Balance protects.
"Nonono...Is not [i]Great[/i] Machine. Is...[i]Not[/i]-so-Great Machine. It make good snow cone though." - Zathras
[b] "Well, that's the real trick, isn't it? And it's going to cost you something extra. Ten thousand, all in advance."
Seriously, would you care to drop a clue to a poor game programmer puzzled about this part. What kinds of data would the dynamic composer consider when in choosing a mood?
Some obvious ideas: what race's ships are in the scene, how fast they are going, is a battle occurring or about to occur or just finished up, what part of the dynamic campaign arc is this...
[/b][/quote]
You could actually call our audio format something like "MP3 Plus."
While it was truley MP3 encoded, there was also a sequence of code attached to each track to identifiy it's "suitability" to a particular segment of gameplay. Victor and Jeff worked that one out, if memory serves (and if it doesn't, I'll hear about it via e-mail shortly [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/wink.gif[/img]
The SMS actually monitored particular variables (health, battle intensity, destruction of an enemy, destruction/critical damage to an ally, and other things that escape my mind right now), then matched up track content based on that. As it was queuing up the next segment, one of a series of "transition segmnents" were were played to buffer the load time.
Yeah, it was cool. Way cooler than LEC iMuse and it's imitators, because it actually mixed a unique score on the fly.
Downside is, I believe it prevented the music from being played in WinAMP or the like.
-Rick
------------------
[i]"...In the end it would hold because what is built endures. And what is loved endures.
And Babylon 5...Babylon 5 endures."[/i] -- Delenn in the Babylon 5 episode [i]Rising Star[/i]
[This message has been edited by Rick (edited 08-15-2001).]
------------------
[b]Required reading: [url="http://www.minbari.co.uk/log12.2263/"]http://www.minbari.co.uk/log12.2263/[/url][/b]
Never eat anything bigger than your own head.
The Balance provides. The Balance protects.
"Nonono...Is not [i]Great[/i] Machine. Is...[i]Not[/i]-so-Great Machine. It make good snow cone though." - Zathras
It would be much more fun to run around your house, esp if you do multiplayer sessions, where you invite your friends around, with their Furies and other B5 models. God you could recreate every famous battle in the B5 universe. And you'd be able to have a beer and some nachos too! And don't forget you if you have a decent sound system you could have Chris Franke booming out. We could even hire old run down mansions with like 200 rooms, which could act like hyperspace, will the main corridors anyway, and each door to the rooms would be like the jumpgates!
God I'm a genius. I'm going to be so rich from this!
[img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/biggrin.gif[/img] [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/tongue.gif[/img]
------------------
'The future is all around us' G'kar
'I have no surviving enemies! None what so ever!' Galen
Visit my B5 site at: [url="http://www.nialb5.com"]B5 site[/url].
[This message has been edited by Falcon1 (edited 08-16-2001).]