Design Update 20.04.11

I figured it might be good if I brake updates into smaller ones instead delay everything for bigger ones, eh. You'll read more of these smaller tidbits here in the future.
_____

After replaying Icewind Dale (yes, I got spare time to play other games, how lazy! ) I was impressed by the sounddesign in there and wanted similar stuff for my mod. So I completely removed all the music and sfx, and added "hotspots" to the maps, depending if player walks over hex xy, an fx from the maps pool is played, to make the enviroment appear more natural and dynamic. I've broken all music tracks down to dynamically playable patterns , so now you have drones played where it's appropriate, synthesizer/ambient pads and such. The game also watches if it's night or day and plays different fx/music depending on other variables too (is town destroyed/not destroyed, etc). No more static sound on the maps! This allows me to do much more "dramatic" (when it's needed) pacing and enhance the atmosphere, as the game reacts to your actions and the surrounding even in an audible way. An example of how one of the locations might sound for the player can be found here. It is one of the many variations of how one of the locations sounds to the players. Depending what you did during the game, the other guys game might sound totally different in there!

Info about the obscure name of the .ogg file and some first lore about locations will be featured in the next update, which hopefully comes tomorrow if odds are good.

Regards,
Frank

nice ideea Frank
this will make the game more dynamic
reminds me of some games where when in combat or in certan areas the track changes(like Prince of Persia or Theif series) and i know it has a huge impact on gameplay
also reminds me of my UDK times, with the Unreal Engine 3 you can make voluems in space that can change the normal(ex: change lighting, change music, change view, trigger certan animations)
so again cool ideea Frank!

Nice, I'd never have guessed it would be possible to do this. It will certainly be a great feature to add to the atmosphere of the game. Keep it up!

One must not be a sound freak like Frank to guess how good this can turn out if done well (but it helps a lot i think ;D)...so great idea.

Now if i even think a bit further...wouldnt it even be possible to do something like a jukebox-effect? I mean...touch it (game chooses a song for ya) and it plays a sfx sound (or a whole track in this case.)

Balthasar wrote:
Now if i even think a bit further...wouldnt it even be possible to do something like a jukebox-effect? I mean...touch it (game chooses a song for ya) and it plays a sfx sound (or a whole track in this case.)

This is already in the game, not as a jukebox per-se, but similar.

Congratulations for such an original idea and for being able to develop it technically. This will add a lot to immersion.

there will be some FoT soundtraks there?

No. The soundtracks are newly composed and recorded tracks of me.

Frank wrote:No. The soundtracks are newly composed and recorded tracks of me.

More Surf music? Can't wait. Any chance you are posting the soundtracks on NMA or 2238 forums?

More Surf music? Can't wait. Any chance you are posting the soundtracks on NMA or 2238 forums?

Hm, I'm not quite sure yet - as described in the news item here, they are broken into smaller pieces, ambient-synth strokes, piano patterns, etc - Not sure if you'd enjoy hundreds of 14 seconds long audio pieces. For some example, I've linked a file in the first post in the thread here. I have a few licensed tracks from actual bands/artists and am not sure if I can provide them just like that on NMA and so on though.

Decided I drop that here.
Just another example of background ambience - where later in game the music patterns get added depending on which hex the player walks.

http://www.speedyshare.com/files/28353704/church.ogg