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About the soundtrack of Xenonauts 2


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What will be the tone of the soundtrack?, what I mean is that while the combat music in Xenonauts was pretty good for when you were searching for aliens, not so much for when you were actually fighting them, the music did not fit with what was going on my screen.

Things would be blowing up, chaos and mayhem would rage and through all that the music just kinda sucked the life out of the fight for me, like it was just draining the energy when it should be pumping me up for the fight.

I'm hoping you will change that and give Xenonauts 2 a set of music for searching alien and a more lively one for when you are actually fighting them, if I may X-COM Apocalypse nailed that aspect.

The music for when you were searching for the aliens was dark and invoked a sense of impending danger, but when the fighting started, it would pump you up to kill or be killed, the music in Xenonauts 2 does not have to be so pumped up, but when the fires are burning and things are blowing up the music could use an increase in tempo.

The new alien designs are looking pretty lively by the way!, looking very good.

Edited by DemAvalon
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So the music is currently planned to be more of the same, unfortunately. What you're talking about is contextual music which changes dynamically based on what's happening on the battlefield, which requires some work from the coders as well as most likely some additional work from the composer. I'm not actually sure how much work it'd be so maybe it's something we can look at later in development as a "nice to have" feature... but right now I'm definitely prioritizing coder hours onto things that are more key parts of the gameplay!

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  • 4 weeks later...

I work in audio for AAA games. This wouldn't be hard at all if you're using good audio middleware like FMOD or Wwise and your composer / audio designer is familiar with those tools. It would have to be integrated into Unity (I think that's your engine), of course. That might require some coder time, but the actual design, logic and implementation of the soundtrack should really all be handled by the audio team.

There might be an additional licensing cost with the middleware but they're surprisingly low cost for indie devs like GH.

 

Personally speaking, I don't mind having non-dynamic music. Just saying it might not be as taxing on your resources as you think. :)

 

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The logic of a good dynamic soundtrack requires integration between the person designing the soundtrack, the person programming the logic, and the people designing the gameplay. Figuring out which music to play when a mission is complete should depend on much more than whether the primary mission objective counts as "complete"; one soldier limping back saying "I'm all that's left on either side" deserves bittersweet, unless only one soldier set out... and that's just the mission end, not figuring out when the action started.

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Dynamic music is important - I've recently been playing Zelda, that has different tunes depending on your location and the enemies you're facing. Whilst xenonauts is not aiming for the same niche as nintendo's flagship, that game does benefit from immersion and the urge to be played for longer sessions, in part, because of its reactive music.

Changing the music depending on the biome would, I assume, be fairly easy in that the variable for the biome doesn't change much. It'd add a subtle bit of variety - ground combat can get stale and in that it is the main bit of the game, it needs what spice it can get. The creepy music for exploring is perfect, but I'd be hard pressed to argue what is appropriate music for the more strategic thinking bits of the game - combat is not exactly fast paced in xenonauts.

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  • 1 month later...
On 10/19/2018 at 8:21 PM, Ninothree said:

Dynamic music is important - I've recently been playing Zelda, that has different tunes depending on your location and the enemies you're facing. Whilst xenonauts is not aiming for the same niche as nintendo's flagship, that game does benefit from immersion and the urge to be played for longer sessions, in part, because of its reactive music.

Changing the music depending on the biome would, I assume, be fairly easy in that the variable for the biome doesn't change much. It'd add a subtle bit of variety - ground combat can get stale and in that it is the main bit of the game, it needs what spice it can get. The creepy music for exploring is perfect, but I'd be hard pressed to argue what is appropriate music for the more strategic thinking bits of the game - combat is not exactly fast paced in xenonauts.

Dynamic music is an interesting feature but it may also sometimes be annoying. I'm not sure it would exactly fit for Xenonauts, seeing the slow pace it can have. It also requires much more work... or at least needs to be decided right at the start of the project.

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