FreeGameDev

I suggest to continue here with our technical chinese .

Dratz-_C {l Wrote}:What digital-audio-workstation/sequencer are you using?

I use ableton live for the music and audacity to finalize and for last polishing.

Would it be possible to add use a compressor and limiter?

Yes the use of a compressor would be possible, but this has the small disadvantage that you lose a bit of the dynamics of the different sounds or instruments.

If you are unable to resolve the volume variance issue with it, I would be willing to try this in Cakewalk Sonar. While I am not having any luck trying to get the files of the archive, you could send me 1 of the more problematic songs in flac format on a file sharing service. If you are alright with this arrangement, I recommend using http://www.box.com . If you are feeling more adventurous, you could host all of the songs there in a folder.
Cheers

I took a look back into my archives and had to realize that I was wrong. I have not all of the tracks in wave files anymore *dang*, there are only some of them. I had also a complete reinstall of my system, what means I have to reinstall my ableton live with all settings and instruments I used, to reconstruct the old tracks. This isn't easy because I used many different kinds of plugins and vst instruments and I have to find all stored presets again. I have the tracks as alc.files , an intern format in ableton. The problem is that I have not the time for such things at the moment, maybe later I can come back to the music things.
If it should be suitable for you I can give you the wav. files, I have. To save memory I could export them into .ogg. Audacity seems not to support .flac.
I can export .flacs from ableton, but this would need all the steps I try to explain... . I also wonder, why you couldn't get the mp3's ? This should work for normal. Could you hear something via stream ?

"Audacity" supports the "flac."
Check your "audacity" build - build-whether it is compatible with "flac".

raiden,
Yes, I was concerned about being off topic. This thread is a good place hash it out. I seem to remember your being able to set the threshold for the limiter to preserve the dynamic precision of everything below the threshold while reducing the gain on everything above it. From your description, I think this effect is what you want applied to your music. For Audacity, use the export menu to convert the wav files to lossless flac. You will want to set the flac compression quality apart from fast all the way to high. In this way the file I get will be as small as possible while not being reduced in quality by lossy codecs like mp3 or ogg. It will be identical to the wav file. If you are concerned about preserving the dynamic range of the audio, you should also be concerned with whether a codec is lossless or lossy. No, I couldn't get or stream any of your mp3s off of archive.org. Perhaps my internet content filter screens them out but this would produce a warning and it does not. Moreover, if this were the case the main page shouldn't load, but does. Can you get to them yourself? I have extensive experience with box.com working through my filter. It's free and Its on-access e-mail notification system is valuable as well. Finally, box.com also previews for end users several types of audio files, including mp3. No, I don't work for box.com.
Cheers

Humor is always good .
Thank you for your offer to help, but this is too much effort to me at the moment Dratz. I mean the volume problem is secondary for me, I only wanted to point out which kind of problem could come.

I wanted mainly to know, if there is a track which could fit a map or the trailer maybe (I'm unsure about that myself). So I gave the link, to earn feedback about it and when someone says yes this could work, I would allocate the music then and we can attend to this problem. We don't have to compile the whole album, but this special track then.
I'm not such a sound purist as it sounds, the mp3's have a "resolution" of 320Kbps, which should be good enough to work with. The volume could be influenced maybe by an entry in the maps cfg-file instead of inside the track itself. In this case the problem would be solved. Only the edit inside the tracks is tricky. However, RE works with .ogg's and they should be generated if somebody wants.

I give the link again, together with my old myspace account, where are also examples to listen. I fear that the flashplayer could be also problematic ?

http://www.bumpfoot.net/foot129.html
http://www.myspace.com/_sonar

The bumpfoot label site is a serious one which I know since long times. Their links work usually perfect. I can use them without any problem. The boss is an artist himself and gives other artists a possibility to publish their works and to get recognized by the netlabel scene.

Hi,
I cannot open myspace. Again, I recommend box.com or dropbox.com.
Cheers

Dratz-_C {l Wrote}:Hi,
I cannot open myspace. Again, I recommend box.com or dropbox.com.
Cheers

How about changing the restrictions of your filtersystem? My internet connection is limited.

Hi raiden,
Although this is an unusual procedure that I would like to avoid repeating, from work I am downloading all the files in the 100MB zip from archive.org. The file preview does also function for me from my work's internet connection. I'll take them from work on my flash drive and try to listen to the files in the album when I get home. Would you be willing to tell me which songs you have mixdown/bounce wav files for? I appreciate it and thanks. About the most recent post, I cannot change my filter system which, if you are curious is SafeEyes ( safeeyes.com ). Someone else I don't live with has the administration privilege by my own design to keep me honest. SafeEyes is a very popular internet content filter for which I pay a subscription fee. Because many people use it, I was thinking that others might benefit from access to the songs from a strictly safe hosting service such as box.com or dropbox.com , by the way mediafire.com works for me too but it is a little inconvenient for people to use with all the advertisements. I have broadband both at home and at work. If it is okay, I am willing to upload the album to one of those hosts for you. Also, if you have wav files, I can create a collaboration folder for them on box.com if you like. However, it would involve your uploading them one by one in your spare time, which, from your description would be slow and thus possibly impractical.
Cheers

I see, ok.
What I've found in wave format: 03_proxima, 04_core, 05_ positron error, 08_texture, I could also give "and 7" released on a sampler by bumpfoot and "beltane" unreleased.
All the other tracks are in .alc format, where I don't know whether I can reconstruct all needed plugins for. I have to reinstall ableton first and have to search through all the numerous Vst-Folders, I collected over the years. I have also to find all self made presets for these instruments and effect devices. If this will succeed eventually, I can render all the wave-files and probably more.

:::edit:::

S.E.S. {l Wrote}:"Audacity" supports the "flac."
Check your "audacity" build - build-whether it is compatible with "flac".

Maybe my version is outdated (1.2.6), but there is neither a .flac import, nor a an export option. Ah, I see there is a 2.0.2 version...

raiden,
I have Audacity 1.3 beta with the general plugin set option and flac export works on that.
I didn't know there was a 2.0.2 yet so I will go take a look at that release when I have time.

Import and Export

Import sound files, edit them, and combine them with other files or new recordings. Export your recordings in many different file formats, including multiple files at once.

Import and export WAV, AIFF, AU, FLAC and Ogg Vorbis files....

I will listen to the mp3s soon.
Cheers

Moved to this thread:

Greaserpirate {l Wrote}:On the subject of music:
I recently got in touch with a musician named Kyoga, who mostly does ambient music but is also a really good guitarist. He's given us permission to use his music as long as we give him credit for it. He's an awesome musician, but he's virtually unknown outside of the community he's in, so I think it would be great to spread the word about him too.

In particular, there's one song that I think would be amazing music for the game:

youtu.be/E-0W3olD2Oc
(From Lands Beyond the Everfree and These Frozen Lands would also be good.)

Beyond the Gates is much more intense than most of the tracks we have now, so it might be best to use it for a fast-paced map like Ghost, or under certain certain circumstances, like overtime, if you're leading the score, etc.

Dratz-_C {l Wrote}:Greaserpirate,
You've made not only a suggestion but one with permissions. That is wonderful. I like the songs as music but I have a few comments about the 3 of them that you mention. I haven't listened to any of the other tracks yet. "Beyond the gates" and "The Frozen Lands" have percussion that might interfere with hearing the weapons fire. "The Lands Beyond Everfree" might be too mellow in the beginning but picks up at the 2 minute mark, later becoming mellow, and after that briefly picking up again. What do you think of these few well-intentioned observations?
Cheers

True; I hadn't thought of the weapon sounds interfering with the percussion. Also, a lot of Kyoga's tracks are pretty mellow; Beyond The Gates and The Frozen Lands are really the exception. The other tracks are good music on their own, but mellow soundsapes or super-emotional guitar solos might not be the ideal game music, especially for a game involving deadly cyborg ninjas with lasers.

Suddenly, a better idea: Beyond the Gates could be time-trial music. Not only are there no weapons to interfere with the beat, it would totally fit in with the intense atmosphere of a time-trial match. The music we currently have works great for normal games, but time-trial is different. You have only one objective: to complete the obstacle course in the fastest time that is humanly possible. So some adrenaline-saturated music would go great with this mode.

greaserpirate {l Wrote}:True; I hadn't thought of the weapon sounds interfering with the percussion. Also, a lot of Kyoga's tracks are pretty mellow; Beyond The Gates and The Frozen Lands are really the exception. The other tracks are good music on their own, but mellow soundsapes or super-emotional guitar solos might not be the ideal game music, especially for a game involving deadly cyborg ninjas with lasers.

Indeed, I know that jojo has tweaked the music and weapon sounds quite a bit to fit without too much interference, so that's definitely something to consider.

Context specific music would be amazing, in my opinion... but how would it work? Perhaps by having several different more intense and less intense versions of each track and then switch tracks up/down in intensity as the situation changes? Or split the tracks apart into layers and add and/remove layers with certain triggers and events (e.g. 30 seconds left in match, flag capture, domination, etc.)? Perhaps also change tracks altogether when something big is happening (e.g. last man standing in survival, one capture left to win a CTF, etc.)?

I'm already imagining a scenario where a person picks up the flag, adding heavier bass or something to his music, then getting to carnage level while carrying the flag, adding a quiet electronic riff (some googling tells me that the technical term would be ostinato) constantly playing, then suddenly getting headshot from across the map, with all the music going silent except for some background percussion, then everything going back to "normal" upon respawn.

Both options would require that lots of new tracks are made, and the second one also requires that someone already has the music in an easily editable format (or manually deconstruct each track), and both would require a bunch of coding, so neither would probably happen, unless I did a lot of the required work myself, which I can't do, since I know nothing of coding and I have only a few day's worth of experience with Audacity.

I've never thought about it before, but different music for time trial would be interesting... and do-able.
Just as a little test to see how well it would fit, I did a couple YouTube doubles[mute the video on the left the moment the page is done loading, then watch]:
Frozen lands double
Beyond the Gates double

[quote="wowie"]Context specific music would be amazing, in my opinion... but how would it work? Perhaps by having several different more intense and less intense versions of each track and then switch tracks up/down in intensity as the situation changes? Or split the tracks apart into layers and add and/remove layers with certain triggers and events (e.g. 30 seconds left in match, flag capture, domination, etc.)? Perhaps also change tracks altogether when something big is happening (e.g. last man standing in survival, one capture left to win a CTF, etc.)? [quote]

Oh yeah, there was a discussion about Adaptive Audio a while ago.

Whatever happened to that thread? I love the concept of AA in RE, and Damien's tracks were great too. [gets defibrillators]

greaserpirate {l Wrote}:Oh yeah, there was a discussion about Adaptive Audio a while ago.

Whatever happened to that thread? I love the concept of AA in RE, and Damien's tracks were great too. [gets defibrillators]

Yes, that thread is forgotten. Maybe this discussion could be moved there? By the way.. My tracks sounded bad, because I generated it just in one program which has "real" sounds, but it's rather better midi. Someone recommended, I think JoJo could rework it in a program from midi to much better sounds, but it never happened. Also I didn't provide license file. Has anyone of you experience with Adaptive Audio? I still don't understand this technology.

Huh. after reading through that thread, different music for different weapons might also be interesting. Now I'm imagining a scenario where the music intensity goes up as a plasmaball is charged, or switching to a more subtle, focused version of the soundtrack when scoped in with the rifle. The bomberball could have a cool beat with the intensity directly linked to how much time there is left before it explodes, which would be amazing, and also de-emphasize the importance of looking at the big annoying timer in the middle of the screen. Being near something, or having something pointed at you, could change the tone of the sounds. It would definitely be interesting if having a rocket pointed at you caused the music's theme to change to emphasize the fact that you're being hunted, then shift again after a successful dodge (read: rocket detonates within X distance of the player without killing the player). That last idea would probably have to be tweaked to work with the ballistic mutator... Anything could happen if this idea gets picked back up. It's fun to imagine, but, again, the question is how. I don't know much about programming but I know a bit about the ideas behind it, and doing something like this would probably require that many lines of code are added and rewritten in order to get everything to interact with the "director" of the music, in addition to the creation of the music director itself. Then theres also all the work that would need to go into the new/modified music, since composing adaptive music requires a completely different approach.

How to integrate the dynamic music idea with timetrial... Wait, this has already been done, in a way. The old map "escape" by Goku had it, with the inclusion of a sound effects in certain areas specifically for the purpose of adding adaptive audio based on the location of the player. It proves it's possible, but never really was expanded upon, or used in other time trial maps. The idea is good, and could be expanded upon if there was some way to add or remove music layers based on what the player is doing, rather than where the player is. Like, for example, if the player repeatedly died on the same segment, the music could change, if the player hit X number of checkpoints in a row without dying, if the player stopped moving to think about how to tackle a obstacle, if the player moved from one checkpoint to the next in a really short amount of time, etc. Here's an old video:

youtu.be/lvg8mHe2AFE

I did a google search on "adaptive music in games" and copy-pasted the first 2 links here after reading them:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1 ... _music.php
http://www.gamecareerguide.com/features ... c_for_.php

On a somewhat off-topic note, I think Portal 2 had some of the best adaptive audio ever. All of the pieces of the puzzles all had their own bits of music associated with them, separate areas all had bits of music associated with them, doing anything had some effect on the way the game sounded, and, correspondingly, had an effect on the way the game felt. I can't describe it well with words. Don't watch this video if you plan on playing portal 2, it has lots of spoilers for the singleplayer mode.

youtu.be/ursIj59J6RU

I feel that adaptive music changes it from "a soundtrack" to something that makes it feel more like "your soundtrack."
Red Eclipse is already one of the most musical shooters I've played, and adaptive audio could only make it even better.

This porobably should go in a separate thread if the conversation continues for much longer....
Then again, it could stay here because it is indeed about "music tracks, technical things" and related matters.

This is really pushing it, but maybe on certain chat commands the music changes slightly, maybe "go go go!" changes the music into something a little bit faster and more aggressive, while sorry and thank you maybe just continue the "say it out loud" system. Overall, this sounds like a great way to improve gameplay in RE.

I don't think integrating it with voice commands would work because then it would get annoying whenever someone spammed a command a lot (happens both with legit players and trolls) and caused an unnatural change in the tempo or rhythm that didn't fit the mood. (We took the point GOGOGO we killed a guy GOGOGO we're casually running across the map GOGOGO.)

I think the reverse should happen where the voice command changes depending on the music.
(e.g. during a calm moment it would be "Nice shot." and during a long killstreak would be more like "WOOOO YEAH YOU'RE MURDERING 'EM!!")

Edit: I thought about adjusting voices based on music, and, that would be hard to do, since the mood for different players might be completely different. Maybe this might be solvable by allowing your command to be "directed" at a certain player, but I don't know how this would be possible without adding a bunch of clutter to an otherwise simple interface. Probably better to just scrap that particular idea and leave the voices untouched.

Nice ideas are evolving here. If this is the place to dream, I pick up the chance now: The music tracks could be composed of differnt kinds of "sound modules" which harmonise with each other, like the loop bricks in several musicprogramms. The actions in the game would cause the start of a new additional module. In the time trial mode e.g., each pass of a checkpoint gives an acoustic signal (which is possible already) and a new sound brick starts. So the bass guitar may come in. Or when you get the bomberball a hihat starts up to make the beat more intense. These bricks could consist of futuristic sounds or noises also and the start of one module could also stop another one if neccessary. Some modules could also be time limited, for specials like "2x","3x" and so on and so forth.

My examples for games with "intelligent" music interaction:
_rez an older consolero shooting game, where the moment in which you act, directly influences the music ingame.
_nitronic rush a freeware survival racing game (and the upcoming new part, which seems to have an interesting fund sytem, concerning another thread we have)

Good suggestion wowie .

Spectators. How would they work? The simplest system would be to use the same music as the nearest player, but that has issues all its own,
due to how fast players can move, and the fact that spectators can move anywhere they like, including outside the normal map boundaries.

wowie {l Wrote}:Spectators. How would they work? The simplest system would be to use the same music as the nearest player, but that has issues all its own,
due to how fast players can move, and the fact that spectators can move anywhere they like, including outside the normal map boundaries.

Yes the basic should be the same for all players, but the additional modules come into play when something happens to every specific player. For example someone get's many hits and is near the death. Then he only hears a change in the music or sounds also. If someone hits permanently also, he gets his special music+. When he has a fast runthrough with the bomberball in the baggage, his music gets faster or becomes additional instruments and /or sounds. This would require deparded music tracks into their elemantal instruments and much "if/then - programming" probably. I'm not an expert for this and much efford would surely be needed (one or more persons had to prepare the tracks and maybe complete rearrange them in pieces of oggs e.g. and the programmer had much to do also), that's why I said dreaming .

Mixing music tracks can't be done with SDL_mixer 1.2.x - that being said we will probably be running tests on SDL 2.x.x in the near future.

Thanks for clarifying, nice.

What program need use for create like of this music?


youtu.be/P5rOeNigdeY

There are several programms on the market, free ones are also available, but I don't know if they are handy enough. The most free ones I have seen where not flexible and userfriendly enough for me. For this kind of music you need a voice and a good record of it. Much better would be a real band with studio .

Exist are programs for "text to voice".