Let me know what you think
1-10 ratings won't be vey useful as a feedback I think?
Tthat repetitive percussion/bell/something sound in the background is highly distracting imho (steals all my attention from the rest of the track or any possible action on the screen that one should pay attention to; it just drills into your head, like when a game freezes and you keep hearing the last half of a second of the music looping). The latter part is less distracting but also sounds too repetitive, make looping parts longer/more varied maybe?
Other than that it sounds fitting for some futuristic factory, or maybe (cyberpunk) espionage/infiltration mission with the clock ticking in the background, or some actiony sequence in a techy location, or some cutscene in these...
No link to ZIN in the sig.
That aside, what's your favorite bgm? What makes a good bgm?
Game Music thread, right near the top of this subforum (technically also for discussion but pretty much used for posting links to or vids of favourite bgms/osts/soundtracks)
What makes it good... (personal subjective opinion)
Immersing the listener into the gameworld/setting more (makes you feel like it's actually a part of the setting, or otherwise matches the atmoshpere) and fitting to the situation (calm music when there's nothing going on, adrenaline-raising stuff used for sequences that require it and not elsewhere so as not to tire the player and to make it clear when the situation changes - and you should give players a bit of rest even if you intend to keep them on their toes all the time). You should be extra careful with including stuff that has lyrics for something that isn't a cutscene, opening or ending credits, as while bgm stuff can loop nicely and if is unintrusive enough one might never notice any characteristic fragment repeating, lyrics are quite easy to catch on and it'd turn into hearing the same song a dozen of times (and even if it turns out to be your most favourite song ever, mixing some other stuff into the playlist as you listen to it will keep you from getting bored with listening to it). I think western devs tend to solve the problem partially by making lyrics/singing incomprehensible (bonus points for singing in some made up or not very known language). Having at least one track that's catchy enough to get stuck in players' heads is good for making game events more memorable (you also have to make sure they're worth being remembered of course). Going the orchestral/epic music route is dangerous because of how overused it's been in games (was it morrowind that made it popular?). I'd also avoid sounding too much like incompetech's royalty free music, imho it being used in various indie games tends to clash with the player when they hear something they know from another game (though I might be a bit too biased about it as at some point I replaced HoM&M3 music with these tracks and apparently the ones I picked turned out to be popular among indie devs).
You could possibly dig through this thread, codex tends to have lots of (very... emotional) game design discussions and there seem to be some comments here on what makes the poster think it's good. Couldn't find any dedicated thread to composing game music there via quick googling. You could probably register and ask there for opinions if you don't mind possibly/likely your stuff getting torn to pieces. Some indie devs that pay attention to sound quality have blog entries on it too.
Fake edit: Another codex thread. And another. One More.
Actual edit: TIGSource Forums would also be a place worth checking out. I hardly ever visit it myself though so not sure what you can find there.
Generally, I think it'd be best to start going through games with both your favourite music and the music you hated or found yourself muting it for them, and then thinking on why it is so.
Sound in games is something you tend not to notice as much when it's good as when it's bad (and in the latter case you tend to turn it off if it annoys you without wondering "if only they changed this and that I'd gladly turn the music back on").
Bluebyte's Albion had some very nice music mixed with loads of ambient sounds for Iskai areas (think cat people like in the Avatar movie) that made the already alien world feel deeper and more alive. Morrowind had very atmoshperic bgms for when you peacefully explore the island (Oblivion overdid on orchestral stuff iirc, no idea about Skyrim as I refuse to touch it). King of Dragon Pass had all parts of the game, music included, form one really immersive entity. Age of Wonders 1 had a very good soundtrack that matched the setting and genre (AoW2 was very generic; AoW3 was nice but not as good as the first one imho). System Shock 2 was amazing with its use of sounds and music.
From some stuff I posted in that music thread:
Music in Hexplore was all kinda inducing the sense of fear/uneasiness on the player and making the world seem completely hostile. The game itself was kinda hard, with lots of dangerous environmental puzzles, fog of war + rotating camera + obstacles and walls making enemies (and lethal traps) sometimes hard to spot and ambushes happening often. Dying was rather easy too (though there was this ghost mechanic where you had to bring dead characters to the - likely far away - resurrecting well).
Prophesy of Pendor's (Mount & Blade mod/total conversion) tracks can get tiresome after prolonged play, and they vary enough from each other to make some of them kinda annoying depending on player's taste, but it's certainly a nice experiment to use lots of lyrics and epic stuff.
I tend to borrow S.T.A.L.K.E.R. OST to use in other games in which I want to get that postapocalyptic survival feel, but I haven't played the game itself that much tbh so not sure how well it fits there. (as a side note, original Fallouts' music is reportedly also great at building the atmosphere, though when I played these I was sadly too young to care about such stuff)
Tyrian's arcade-ish, mostly upbeat stuff matches nicely with action-heavy shmup gameplay. I wouldn't say the choice of tracks for locations/stages is always optimal, but they do a good job at setting the mood them.
Jagged Alliance 2 has very pleasant stuff for combat sequences. Not sure why but I never feel rushed while listening to it. Maybe because the tbs nature of the game makes playing each turn slow enough for the music to compensate for nothing too actiony happening on the screen?
Just my spontaneous thinking, I have little experience in analysing game music, or music in general.
---
's all as I'm starting to get lost in my thoughts.
Edited by OMGWTFBBQPONIES, 30 November 2016 - 01:14 PM.
Sign In
Create Account
Back to top
