Time of Day Specific Music?

[Dave]

I think it'd be cool if on some scenarios, there was music that was specific to the time of day.

For instance, at the Valley of Death, the music could grow extra sinister during the night, and at dawn there could be 'rallying' music.

Thoughts?

David

[quartex]

You'd have to time the changes with the changes of the day, but it might be really cool. Wait a minute, how long a day lasts depends on how long a player takes, This isn't a real time strategy game where the day/night cycle has a specific length. That means that instead of just looping one music file, you would really need a tune for each time of the day, and have the program transition from one tune to the next at the end of each 2 turns, when the time transitions from night to dawn, to morning and so on.

You'd probably have 4 tunes, for dawn, day, dusk, and night. Each one would loop until the next phase of the day came. I think programming it might be a bit of a pain, but for certain levels, where the time is really important (like where you are trying to survive for X days), it could be cool, especially to hear transitions from dusk to night and night to dawn.

[Dave]

This isn't a real time strategy game where the day/night cycle has a specific length. That means that instead of just looping one music file, you would really need a tune for each time of the day, and have the program transition from one tune to the next at the end of each 2 turns, when the time transitions from night to dawn, to morning and so on.

Yes, correct; that's how it'd have to work.

David

[Stosswelle]

ummmm... its been a long day
ill get back on this tomorrow morning

[Aleksi]

Hum, i think this is a very good idea! I had a similare idea that i posted months ago; about changing music whenever there is a battle or some sort of dialogue. Maybe too complicated but i really like the Day/Night music.

Aleksi.

[Roel]

most new games have different pieces of music mixed together depending on what's happening in the game. It would be really cool to have to music change depending on the time of day or on how many ennemies are in view etc but that would also mean more work and we need really good guidelines about how you are planning to mix them.

I wouldn't mind but if this gets implented does all music has to be done over?

[Stosswelle]

i can think of several reasons why this is not going to be a good idea but this is the one that will convince you all the most because you are the developers

say a music file for the campaign is 2 megs
now, we need 4 of them because there is dawn, day, dusk, night
so that is 8 megs for one campaign
3 campaigns, 24 megs

you want to use 24 megs for 3 campaign themes?
currently, once you take out the music that is going to be trashed, the game itself is almost as low as 24 megs

[Shundread]

Well... it seems to me that the campaigns tend to reuse current music files...

Anyway, if it gets too big, you can always make available a lighter version of Wesnoth.

-Shundread

[quartex]

You have a point, but I wouldn't forget thisd idea just becuase of size restrictions. The ogg files we ue are pretty sma;;, a 3 minute track is 1.6 MB. I'm not saying you would do this for every campaign, but we could make 4 tracks for heir to the throne that would only take up, say 5-6 MB.

Alternatively you could have 2 tracks of music, one for day and one for night, and they would only take up 2-4 MB. Yes, music takes up a lot of space and we want to keep Wesnoth from getting too bloated for people with slower modems, but I'd love to see a variety of tracks. We shouldn't be limiting how much music we make just becuase of the size issue.

What are the other bad reasons for trying this?

[Stosswelle]

so because 4 themes per campaign are wanted, we force people who might have wanted to hear music but have slower connections to play without any music at all because the package becomes, as you said, "bloated"

i mean shoot, there are "4" campaigns now in 0.79 arent there?

sorry if that sounds harsh, but i cant think of another way to put it across

another reason is i have already done 80% about of the undead theme
it is quite sinister
i am supposed to make it less sinister for the daytime? the undead are lighter and happier in the daytime? and what it would it be at night? just a pipe organ going BOOM BOOM BOOM
i mean seriously

again, sorry if it sounds harsh

i have some other reasons it could be a bad idea but i have to eat and then leave for work in 10 minutes

[Aleksi]

i can think of several reasons why this is not going to be a good idea but this is the one that will convince you all the most because you are the developers

say a music file for the campaign is 2 megs
now, we need 4 of them because there is dawn, day, dusk, night
so that is 8 megs for one campaign
3 campaigns, 24 megs

you want to use 24 megs for 3 campaign themes?
currently, once you take out the music that is going to be trashed, the game itself is almost as low as 24 megs

Yes but we have already discussed about this few months ago. Wesnoth will probably have limited songs in the game itself and the player will be able to download "bonus music". So we should not be so limited...

Aleksi.

[quartex]

You have your basic 7 tracks, but definitly we could have extra bonus music that people could download and use instead if they have fast enough modem.

You listed:
Main Theme
Human Campaign
Undead Campaign
Orc Campaign
Win Theme
Loss Theme
Cut-Scene

So definitly getting these 7 done is important, I'm gld you're making progress with the undead. Although I think perhaps the human music should be split up into loyalists and rebels.

[Stosswelle]

Yes but we have already discussed about this few months ago. Wesnoth will probably have limited songs in the game itself and the player will be able to download "bonus music"

when i randomly asked you about that the other day you didnt reply so i thought that wasnt going to happen

i need to go change that list too to add the new campaign

[Shade]

Actually, I think that this is a good idea. With the growth of BfW you're actually seeing a reasonable amount of specialisation. This is one of those rare free software projects that has attracted a good cross-section of skills (maybe because of the native platform support). There are a lot of people with a lot of crossover skills, but it's cool to see people emerging who are primarily coders, primarily artists, primarily musicians, and yes primarily scenario designers.

On to the subject at hand. Most of these people couldn't be considered 'great' in all four of the above areas. I don't think that size glut because of different per campaign music should be a big concern. Most of the campaigns are maintained by one to a few people. The cross-section of those people that seem to be 'skilled' composers AND Campaign Designers, at the moment, seems pretty close to nil. The one common theme from all of the non-HttT scenarios is that they borrow heavily from HttT. This is good sensable behaviour. (As it equals more productive scenario designers, and less size glut)

If HttT gets time of day music, other scenario designers, for the most part, will probably use that music in their campaigns. Of course, I could be wrong. . .