Custom music?

[michaelb]

Hello!

I've noticed some people have expressed their desire for the game to come with music. I've enjoyed the game a lot, and am quite willing to contribute some of my existing music, or write some original music. I don't have time at the moment to help with anything more substantial such as coding, but I always have time for music.

I have never played the original Warzone 2100, so I do not know what sort of music was shipped with it. However, I figure maybe some moody ambient music would probably be most appropriate: not too distracting, but fills up the blank spots. Or possibly something harsher, perhaps some techy-industrial a la C&C.
_____

Anyway, here's some of the music I've written.

A few styles to consider:
Techno/Acid: http://michaelb.org/music/music/misc/to ... giston.ogg
Hard DnB: http://michaelb.org/music/music/dnb/ton ... _decay.mp3
Atmospheric DnB: http://michaelb.org/music/music/dnb/ton ... dy_day.mp3
Symphonic/Orchestral: http://michaelb.org/music/music/symphon ... quence.ogg
Symphonic/Score: http://michaelb.org/music/music/symphon ... ughter.ogg
Ambient: http://michaelb.org/music/music/misc/to ... abmd40.ogg
I also produce IDM and Breakcore, but I don't think those would be very appropriate.

And you can hear more of my music at:
http://michealb.org/music/

Currently, all the music is licensed under a Creative Commons license, but if, for compatibility, you really want it under the GPL (which, in my ever-so-humble opinion, is only good for code), I can oblige.
_____

If you do decide on having official WZ music, personally I think it would be best if you also continued to release a non-music version, so as to cut down on the download size.

Tell me your thoughts.

Oh, and regarding the videos, maybe a voice-over and a slide-show (showing snazzy maps and blue-prints and what not) would do? If I remember correctly, that's what C&C: Generals did. Although I definitely prefer FMV sequences, it would be very much easier than something live action. Just an unrelated thought. ;)

-- michaelb

BTW: Please pardon if I'm posting in the wrong place--I wasn't sure if this belongs in the development forum.

[DevUrandom]

IMO CC is ok. Maybe someone else has objections, but I don't thinks so.
(We then just need to explicitly state which files are under which license, but we need to do that anyway for the old and any new data.)

For videos we have the idea to use scripted ingame cutscenes like in WC3 or Generals, with some backdrop system, like in Wesnoth, till that is implemented. Kim allready tried to cut ingame scenes into videos and I must say that it didn't look that bad. If we could make that easily scripted, offer some blending and sound selection etc. then it should be really cool.

PS: I am just listening to the music.

[JockeTF]

I think that we really need some nice music as default in warzone and i must say, michaelb, that i like your music.

[Terminator]

I'm not so in music & cant tell you are your tracks good or bad. :-X

I like very much original track of warzone. If you will creat a something like a mix of it (originals). I think its will be very interesting to hear what you wil done ::)

originals you can find on my site here :
http://krossfire.net.ru/index.php?do=do ... gory&id=15

Basicly my site is on russian but warzone section is on english

[Watermelon]

Think battle_sequence and fire_and_slaughter are more appropriate for RTS game,though they are more suitable for ancient time game imo.I am not into music at all,so my judgement might be completely wrong. 

I have an idea for music,to play them in a specific order:
| music 'type' | game time | player actions |

| 'tranquil'     | first 1-5min| building up base |
| 'desperate'  | 5-10min     | stop early rush   |
| 'epic'          | 10-30?min  | large scale skirmish |

[michaelb]

Hi there!

I just now finished an original track that you can use if you want in Warzone:
http://michaelb.org/misc/tonaldiscrepan ... dstone.ogg
(it's released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License)

It's grungy techno with some orchestral-style strings and an organ. I haven't tried it out yet in-game. Please tell me what you think!

I like very much original track of warzone. If you will creat a something like a mix of it (originals). I think its will be very interesting to hear what you wil done ::)

Well, I can't make anything that uses any of the actual original music. However, I can make it sound similar.

originals you can find on my site here :
http://krossfire.net.ru/index.php?do=do ... gory&id=15

Thank you very much! That was very helpful as a reference.

Think battle_sequence and fire_and_slaughter are more appropriate for RTS game,though they are more suitable for ancient time game imo.I am not into music at all,so my judgement might be completely wrong.

Yeah, I think maybe that it might be only good for medieval games. Almost all high-tech or modern themed games have some sort of electronic music.

I have an idea for music,to play them in a specific order:
| music 'type' | game time | player actions |
| 'tranquil'    | first 1-5min| building up base |
| 'desperate'  | 5-10min    | stop early rush  |
| 'epic'          | 10-30?min  | large scale skirmish |

Cool idea, but not up to me.

[Troman]

This is just some 10 year old evil-sounding Dune II midi music ripped from a console, but I still like it. I wish we could have something like this for Warzone.

http://www.troman.de/temp/dune2/Dune_II ... ulence.mp3
http://www.troman.de/temp/dune2/Dune_II ... d_Post.mp3
http://www.troman.de/temp/dune2/Dune_II ... e_Trip.mp3

I'm not a big fan of the original music, although it wasn't quite as bad as it could be. 

[DevUrandom]

Hey, cool! I like that last track, Grindstone, very much and would like to include it into the next release if there are no objections...

I also have some ideas what might sound good. First of all: http://dennisschridde.online.de/~dschridde/Nexus2.mp3 (version 2 of the Nexus track, I think by Chojun (former member of rts.net)).

Also I think the EVE-online soundtrack has some good tracks. They can't be "copied" as is, because they are for a space game and thus have very much of that "lonely" feeling. But some of them fit better. I'll narrow the list a bit after the weekend or next weekend...

http://www.eve-online.com/download/music/
My favourites are Hidden Mementos, Last Power Cell, Akat Mountains, Lost Wormhole, Green Nebula, Opinions of the Misinformed, Modern Thinking, but that doesn't necessarily mean they fit best to WZ...

What I think fits best are tracks which have a greater "mass". Like a tank has more mass than a moped. Also they could be a bit aggressive at times (not all of them of course, there shurely need to be some chillout tracks). They need depth. If it makes you nod your head while listening it's not bad. They definitely shouldn't have this lonely feeling of the EVE pieces throughout the whole track. If they have it at the beginning, then they could be played at the start of a game, similar to the idea Watermelon offered. And then go into the main part with a big smash. Problem would occur when the player is currently fighting a battle of life and death and the game switches to a lonely / light track, thus those only at the beginning. If they are classic, this is not a problem itself, if one can make it fit...

Just some ideas...

PS: I especially like that EVE theme.
dümdüm-dü! düdü--dümdüdüm-dü! dümdüm-dü! düdü--dümdüdüm-dü! or ztzt-dü! düm-zt-dü! ztzt-dü! düm-zt-dü! (or similar..., ...reading this sounds not very similar, but listen to the examples below, perhaps you recognize what I meant...) which seems to occur in one or the other variant in more than one track (eg Green Nebula, Opinions Of The Misinformed, Last Power Cell). (Maybe it is not a musicians definition of a theme, but at least it sounds similar and it makes my head nod. )
Perhaps there could be something implemented like this for WZ, so the track can be instantly recognized as "being Warzone"... Would be awesome!

PPS: Michael, I don't want to push you into doing things; Your work is great and after reviewing it a dozen times I'd like to include on or the other track. I just do some brainstorming about what I think could fit WZ or would be cool otherwise.

[Terminator]

This is just some 10 year old evil-sounding Dune II midi music ripped from a console, but I still like it. I wish we could have something like this for Warzone.

Yea, I like Dune Soundtracks too (I think its one of the Best tracks for game(after wz  ). But dune 2 is too old , & dune2000 tracks sounds better  then dune2 tracks & the theme is the same . If you dont have its > http://krossfire-rus.kknd2.com/Monstr/Dune.rar - 11 tracks from Dune2k

[Troman]

Yea, I like Dune Soundtracks too (I think its one of the Best tracks for game(after wz  ). But dune 2 is too old , & dune2000 tracks sounds better  then dune2 tracks & the theme is the same . If you dont have its > http://krossfire-rus.kknd2.com/Monstr/Dune.rar - 11 tracks from Dune2k

While Dune 2000 soundtracks are not bad, older Dune soundtracks sound better to my ears, but that's nothing unusual, music discussions rarely end up in consensus. 

PPS: Michael, I don't want to push you into doing things; Your work is great and after reviewing it a dozen times I'd like to include on or the other track. I just do some brainstorming about what I think could fit WZ or would be cool otherwise.

Actualy he shouldn't listen to us at all, because after listening to all the music preferances everyone has and combining them in a single music piece something really scary could crawl out.  ;D

[karmazilla]

Hello Michael,

I'm listening to Grindstone right now; very cool track. I think that kind of music would fit quite well with the atmosphere in Warzone.

The original music, was, well, hardly music. Rather, the original sound track was playing to the story in Warzone. We're on a seared Earth; post nuclear war. There aren't many survivors, so beside our military machine and the oil pumps, not much makes any sound at all.
The original sound track was very ambient; wind blowing through the empty hours, some are bare concrete skeletons, some are ruins, and the rest is baren wasteland where the dust and the elements reign.
Though we're seamingly alone, the remnants of a great civilization that once were still stands, ghost-like and frozen in time.

Of the tracks you've posted links to, I like Grindstone the most. It has some tempo and rythm without being too much techno, and without loosing too much of the ambience, that exists in the setting of the game.
I  the game, the player is a General or Commander, charged with the task of building a new world out of the ashes and the rubble. We mourn the loss of our ancestors, but we're also a determened, militant movement that won't give way to pitty feelings. If you in your music can push the right buttons, and support whatever this Commander would feel in this position, then I think you could lift the setting and the scenery of the game, and improve the playing experience.

Hopes this can help and inspire you to create more music for this game

Cheers.

[Tammo_Korsai]

Fantastic post karmazilla, thats just the kind of music we need for the game. I've listend to a couple of tracks on the Eve Online site, the 'Object almost acomplished' track, to me at least, made me imagine a hellishly hot desert with heavy veihicles trundling under the mid-day sun, kicking up great dust trails and clouds. I'll have to listen to those tracks that were in .ogg format as my bro's computer doesn't have Winamp, so I'll save them to my memory stick and play them on my own computer later.

[michaelb]

Hello! Thanks for all the feedback.

I've finished another track. This one is entirely ambient, but I used some of the same themes present in Grindstone, so as to make the two tracks feel similar (the main melody found in Grindstone also appears here, only at a slower tempo and in a different key). It's called "Buffer Zone".
http://michaelb.org/misc/tonaldiscrepan ... erzone.ogg

Oh, and on a side note, if you want to include my music in a Warzone, could you please change the exit screen to say
"Music by Tonal Discrepancy
http://michaelb.org/music/"
just as it now attributes the author of the original music? If you really want, I could do it myself and then just email you the jpeg.
Thanks.

In the game, the player is a General or Commander, charged with the task of building a new world out of the ashes and the rubble. We mourn the loss of our ancestors, but we're also a determened, militant movement that won't give way to pitty feelings.

I had to surpress the urge to begin this post with an 'out of character' warning . Anyway, nice description. That's sort of the mood I was shooting for with Grindstone, and with Buffer Zone (although I hadn't read you post untill after I had already finished Buffer Zone).
__

Oh, and what format are you guys looking for? I figured you wanted ogg, so that's what I encoded them as, but if you want MP3 or a perhaps a lower bitrate to cut down on download size, I could do that. I could even just send you a flac, and then you could encode in whatever way you wanted.

Also, how much music are you looking for? Maybe another two tracks like these would be enough? Or are these two tracks already enough?

Later!
--MichaelB

[Chojun]

Hey all,

I noticed that someone posted a link of one of my songs that I did a long time ago.  Since that song, I've completed an updated version, for those who are interested.

I hope to make more music, but I've just been too dang busy, hence my disappearance over the last year.  Anyway, I always have this community on the back of my mind; I haven't forgotten!

Here is a copy of the updated song, plus some others relating to the development of Total Warzone several years ago.  These are various songs that I made, toying around with different music styles that could possibly be incorporated into the game.  Download what you can; my school's CS department has cut funding and my website will go down in a little less than a month.  Include any/all/none in Warzone if you would like.

http://www.cs.utah.edu/~gilmore/modules ... 3.mp3       Updated NEXUS track, with a little experimental music on the end
http://www.cs.utah.edu/~gilmore/modules ... n.mp3       A "theme song" for one of the game's factions, an egyptian-like faction, this is IMO my best track.
http://www.cs.utah.edu/~gilmore/modules ... ZSong1.mp3
http://www.cs.utah.edu/~gilmore/modules ... ong1-2.mp3
http://www.cs.utah.edu/~gilmore/modules ... 3.mp3   These three are all different, pre-release versions of the Shaovin track.  They have a nice "groove" to them, IMO
http://www.cs.utah.edu/~gilmore/modules ... o.mp3     A proposed intro music track for TWZ
http://www.cs.utah.edu/~gilmore/modules ... 1.mp3  A different version of the same track... slightly different "feel"
http://www.cs.utah.edu/~gilmore/modules ... x.mp3     Just some random track, I dunno.
http://www.cs.utah.edu/~gilmore/modules ... s.mp3   Possibly to be used as TWZ main menu music.  This release I did a special voice-over to comemmorate the Diablo II 1.10 patch release.  If you want a version without the voice-over, let me know.  The other version I have is built as a loop that would be suitable for the main menu, as was intended for TWZ.


Regards,

Chojun   ;)

[Kamaze]

Can you may release it as ogg vorbis files? (-q5)
MP3 -> OGG converting isnt that good :/

Btw, that sounds great! Expecially Shaovin and TWZIntro21.
I didn't hear it to 100% yet, because i have to go to work now...