'Mourning' and 'Victory' music?

[Dave]

I was wondering about the possibility of us having some short tracks that would be appropriate for 'mourning' and 'victory' music.

The 'mourning' music could be played if one of the player's high level units die, or perhaps sometimes when certain scenario conditions occur, and the 'victory' music could be played when the player levels-up a unit in certain situations, or achieves some goal.

Perhaps also there could be some other event-driven music, such as 'tense' music played if a key unit is 'almost' dead.

I've heard this kind of thing in a few other games, and imho if done right it can sound very good.

Any thoughts on this?

David

[MadMax]

I would say having victory and mourning, but play them only when a player wins or loses.

[Quensul]

From a neophyte's point of view, it seems like the toughest part about this is making the transitions between the current background music and the mourning/victory music be smooth, especially with varying background music.

How about framing this as a sound effect, instead of music? For example, a trumpet flourish for level-ups, or perhaps a bit of 'taps' for mourning. Perhaps fade the background music somewhat if the effect isn't prominent enough, but this definitely feels more like a musical sound effect than a separate music track. However, I may just not be getting what you mean - I don't suppose you have a recording of an example?

[Xeirxes]

Ever played/watched Call of Duty? During the game, when a task was completed, or a mission, as it faded to black then some nice orchestral music played.

The music should only be played, however, at the END of the mission. During the mission, it would definitely interfere with other songs playing.

[Xeirxes]

Check out these as examples.

[XJaPaN]

Cooool!!! Implent them XD One suggestion: I would fade out the success theme with a little jingle, not that big bang...

[Elvish_Pillager]

It would be a cool feature to have music specially designed with some notes that sound different in different situations; that is, it is subtly modified to suit the situation without actually using different music. Am I making sense?

[Quensul]

It would be a cool feature to have music specially designed with some notes that sound different in different situations; that is, it is subtly modified to suit the situation without actually using different music. Am I making sense?

On a related note, I had been thinking about how the music as a whole could reflect the current situation. One way would be to write a number of shortish themes, each for a different situation (say, "no enemies in sight", "no enemies that can be reached in one turn", "enemies in range", and "battle"), each of which transitions smoothly into the others (or write the 12 transition sections necessary to bridge between each pair). Ideally, you could write multiple themes for each situation and choose among them randomly, to allow relatively quick responses to changes in the game while avoiding obvious repetition.

This would be a lot of work for the composer, and would be best with some code support to avoid a bunch of repeated WML, but could sound really cool.

@Xeirxes: I've never played Call of Duty, but I get what you mean. I think success/failure music at the end of the scenario is a good idea, although I also like something along the lines of Dave's suggestion.

Of course, this is all moot if we don't have the resources to create the music. I'm going to see if I can talk my wife into contributing, but that may not fly.

[Xeirxes]

I could make some segments of music. Here's my thought.

Let's say A is "happy" music. There are no immediate enemies nearby.
B is "scary" music. You're losing the battle.
C is "suspenseful" music. Your forces and the attacking forces are about equal.
D is "triumphant" music. Your forces are winning.
E is "ending" music. One or more of the enemy leaders are being attacked.

Each segment is about 20 seconds long, so in the beginning it's just basically
A > A > A > A > A

All of a sudden, enemy 1 pops up... it goes to C... both of your forces are about equal percentage of health at the beginning.

Your forces lose more HP than the enemy. It goes to segment B.

Now, you reinforce the battle and it goes to segment D. All enemies are gone, and it goes to A again.

What would happen is that it would repeat the same segment, the 20 second segment, until the circumstances changed; then, it would wait for the end of the 20 second segment, and switch.

Composers would accomodate the music so that each segment fit perfectly with the other.

[Dave]

Xeirxes, yeah that was pretty much my thought.

Perhaps to take it one step further, you could have a longer track of music, say 2 minutes. But you could go through the music and identify 'lulls' at which time a transition would be appropriate, and then break your tune into segments based on where the lulls happen.

So, the normal way to play the 'happy' track might be to play A1 > A2 > A3 > A4 > A1 > A2 and so on. But, suppose in the middle of playing A2, something sad happened, the game would signal that the mood is now 'sad'. As soon as A2 is finished, instead of progressing to A3, we move to B1.

This said, I know very little about music, so please let me know if what I'm saying is nonsense.

David

[scott]

Hey these are great. The success music reminded me of Starcraft (after the big drum riff). The failure music I guess was short and sweet. The 3 notes reminded me of wah-wah-wah (like when you lose at the Price is Right), but not too much.

[Quensul]

Sounds good to me, Xeirxes. The danger with anything like this is that you either always need to return to the same chord/key, or write the n choose 2 transitions necessary. The issue with always returning to the same chord or key is akin to the tiling problems you see with terrain tiles - it makes it much harder for the composer to develop any sort of longer theme or arc.

That being said, I'm just a lowly low brass player, so I could be completely and horribly off about how hard it is. I'm sure someone will prove me wrong.

Oh, and just a suggestion: perhaps a better approach than playing A1 > A2 > A3 > A1 would be to randomly pick an A_n at the end of every segment. If you're able to do this without transitions, all the A's, B's, etc. must start and end in mutually compatible ways; might as well mix things up a bit to make the overall repetitive pattern harder to recognize.

[Sea Elf]

sounds good exept for the last few seconds of success

[Elvish_Pillager]

As soon as A2 is finished, instead of progressing to A3, we move to B1.

According to me, it should go to B3...