The Mana World Forums

At the moment the change in music when moving between areas is very sudden. Would it be possible to add a simple transition like a fade out when moving between areas (not a fade in though, it spoils the beginning of a track)? This would make it sound much nicer imho.

A nicer way of doing this would be to dynamically compose the music on the fly from different arrangements. This would be a huge leap both technically and artistically and hence I don't see it as a realistic alternative for many years to come.

Rotonen wrote:A nicer way of doing this would be to dynamically compose the music on the fly from different arrangements. This would be a huge leap both technically and artistically and hence I don't see it as a realistic alternative for many years to come.

You've mentioned this idea a couple of times now but you never specified what exactly this "dynamic composition system" is supposed to be able to do. Can you maybe elaborate on this a bit?

Composers define into their compositions where the interchangeable points are. At these points we can fluently switch to other pieces, which include: different mood themes for the piece in question (peaceful, normal aggressive/combat) or neighbouring themes. This would also require different elements like at least rhythm and theme to be split into different tracks and sections. I do not see this viable for years to come, so I might just as well stop mentioning my dreams of such a system for a while.

As for this topic perhaps location based sounds would help: the music center would be in the center of the map and hence it would naturally fade towards the edges.

That sounds really interesting and I would actually quite like to be involved in development of such an idea. I think that deserves its own discussion thread, but it's much more of a long term thing. I was suggesting something much simpler which I think would just make the game feel a little nicer and more professional. Seriously though, start a thread and elaborate on that idea, I'd love to give that a try.

Far Cry uses a music system that plays a musical "mood", then adds "danger music" and "other stuff" (can you tell I'm not a musician?) as the player moves through the map. http://www.crytek.com/technology/cryeng ... ons/#c1117

I believe LucasArts also has some kind of "interactive music system", but I haven't experienced it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMUSE.

also google for "cryengine interactive dynamic music system" and filter a lot of junk

aro