Music

[system]

So I was sitting playing cata with my headphones on and my girlfriend sits beside me and puts my headphones on and says: why do you have your headphones in if you aren’t listening to anything.

Then I felt stupid.

So why not have some music in cata? I’m not talking mp3’s or anything but something like a .midi or .wav file that plays when you have the mp3 item active? Maybe also playable with an instrument?

I could supply a 3 string song on my electric guitar, I have it set so it sounds rather depressing when played. However since I lack any sort of formal recording equipment I can’t capture just sound, it will have to be video sent to you. Then you would have to rip the audio out into mp3 then turn it into a .midi or .wav file.

Of course you could do that with someone else’s work but then you have copyright issues.

Another thing, if you don’t like the default audio (in a music folder) then you could put your own in. It would have to be renamed to the replaced file I think.

However this doesn’t add much gameplay value, I just thought it would be cool to have music.

Also if you think it can be handled by the game then throw in an mp3, I’d love to hear some Neil Armstrong while blasting zombies and building cars.

Tl;Dr plz add music.

[Vorpal]

I’ve always liked the idea of having Mp3 players have genres, and have one genre be a “perfect fit” ala clothing. Perhaps one genre that actually damages morale too.

[system]

I’m looking for ambiance while playing.

[Vorpal]

Run DF in the background for it’s music perhaps?

[system]

Then I’d be tempted to play DF, then cata, then DF.
Endless cycle right there.

[The_Darkling_Wolf]

[quote=“Vorpal, post:2, topic:119”]I’ve always liked the idea of having Mp3 players have genres, and have one genre be a “perfect fit” ala clothing. Perhaps one genre that actually damages morale too.[/quote]I’ve been planning this for a long while actually

[quote=“gtaguy, post:1, topic:119”]So I was sitting playing cata with my headphones on and my girlfriend sits beside me and puts my headphones on and says: why do you have your headphones in if you aren’t listening to anything.

Then I felt stupid.

So why not have some music in cata? I’m not talking mp3’s or anything but something like a .midi or .wav file that plays when you have the mp3 item active? Maybe also playable with an instrument?

I could supply a 3 string song on my electric guitar, I have it set so it sounds rather depressing when played. However since I lack any sort of formal recording equipment I can’t capture just sound, it will have to be video sent to you. Then you would have to rip the audio out into mp3 then turn it into a .midi or .wav file.

Of course you could do that with someone else’s work but then you have copyright issues.

Another thing, if you don’t like the default audio (in a music folder) then you could put your own in. It would have to be renamed to the replaced file I think.

However this doesn’t add much gameplay value, I just thought it would be cool to have music.

Also if you think it can be handled by the game then throw in an mp3, I’d love to hear some Neil Armstrong while blasting zombies and building cars.

Tl;Dr plz add music.[/quote]
I’m not against the idea, but I ain’t gonna be the one writing the system to handle playing music.

[system]

Just have it activate windows media player to play the song for you.

[kevin.granade]

That’s a bit difficult as the primary development environment is linux

Something we could easily do to enable this kind of thing is have cata write a description of the current game state* to a file, and then have another program watching that file that would change tracks in response. Alternately having cataclysm fork or exec another program to make the track change happen is fairly simple. I don’t see any real benefit to baking music playing into cataclysm itself.

Also I think shipping music with cata is a bit more trouble than it’s worth, I can’t speak for the others, but one of the reasons I’m working on a rougelike is to avoid multimedia issues so I can focus on gameplay

*Something like “exploring”, “enemies”, “fight”, “sleeping”, “driving”, etc…

[GlyphGryph]

Meanwhile, I would love to have music (and working tiles) in Cata, and would certainly push for that - but I don’t have the chops to implement it, and if neither Kevin or DW want to do it, your only real chance of getting it in is finding someone willing to put it there.

What I could do is talk to one of my composer friends though and see if they might have/be willing to come up with anything appropriate for the title screen and actual gameplay.

I think a simple “opening track” and “playing track” should be enough for now. Maybe split that into a “peacetime” and “danger” track.

[The_Darkling_Wolf]

The main reason I’m against it is that the majority of players, myself included, would just mute it and play their own music, so it’s a lot of wasted effort. That and the fact that shipping music with the game would bloat the download size massively.

[GlyphGryph]

Most players mute DF and play their own music as well, but I still feel it adds a LOT to the game.

Even if people don’t listen to it a lot, giving a game a distinctive audio signature is great for promotional purposes and building community investment among those who DO care, and it can be quite evocative.

[Binky]

I’d love to compose some music for it (and have composed ambient music for art shows/exhibitions/plays and stuff in real life!). Here is a an ambient loop that I did for an indie game which sadly never got released: https://soundcloud.com/undercult/level3/s-t26lr

[The_Darkling_Wolf]

[quote=“GlyphGryph, post:11, topic:119”]Most players mute DF and play their own music as well, but I still feel it adds a LOT to the game.

Even if people don’t listen to it a lot, giving a game a distinctive audio signature is great for promotional purposes and building community investment among those who DO care, and it can be quite evocative.[/quote]‘against’ was the wrong word, I’m not really against the game having music included; I’d be perfectly happy to add it if someone put in the framework for it, it’s just that I personally won’t be giving it a high priority.

[kevin.granade]

DW’s opinion pretty much sums it up for me too, I wouldn’t try to prevent anyone from doing it as long as it doesn’t break anything, it’s just that I’m not interested enough to implement it myself, and I think it’d be a bit difficult.

[Binky]

Although I offered to help, I have to agree that it’s not very high on the list of things I would like to see (or even on the list really) as I tend to play RL’s for a break from constant audiovisual bombardment and if I do listen to music, I can easily have winamp on in the background (especially as it isn’t fullscreen)

[GlyphGryph]

Even for a big supporter like myself it’s pretty far down on the list. So no worries.

Also, Blinky, I like it. I think something like that could work with Cataclysm.

[Binky]

Thanks! Let me know if you ever do want to implement music as I’d be more than happy to write some. I’ve always been interested in doing ‘procedural’ music generation (I don’t know the correct term, I know there is one) in that the music is always changing (and it could maybe even be tied to different things happening in the game!?), I’ve had a few ideas of how to do it with a few softsynth’s I’ve programmed in the past, so maybe that could be an interesting approach.

As I say though, I don’t feel it’s that important compared to the whole myriad of other things that could be done.

[kevin.granade]

If it changes parameters of the music based on input from the program, “procedural” is the correct word.