Fractal Softworks Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

News:

Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

Pages: 1 [2] 3 4 ... 6

Author Topic: Faction Music  (Read 46128 times)

ErKeL

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 36
    • View Profile
Re: Faction Music
« Reply #15 on: August 25, 2015, 11:42:45 PM »

Love the music. Fits the Hegemony perfectly.

Pretty excited to hear more!
Logged

celestis

  • Captain
  • ****
  • Posts: 285
    • View Profile
Re: Faction Music
« Reply #16 on: August 26, 2015, 12:02:59 AM »

Nice, looking forward to hearing the rest of the factions! 0.7 is becoming more and more exciting!
Logged

PCCL

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 2016
  • still gunnyfreak
    • View Profile
Re: Faction Music
« Reply #17 on: August 26, 2015, 01:37:05 AM »

great post! :D

good to hear more from the team as always

something I've noticed though, the last two blog posts haven't been on the "news" headline of the forum, like the rest were. Any chance we could put them up there?

it's this thing, shows up under your profile picture

Logged
mmm.... tartiflette

Gothars

  • Global Moderator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 4403
  • Eschewing obfuscatory verbosity.
    • View Profile
Re: Faction Music
« Reply #18 on: August 26, 2015, 01:59:55 AM »

Stian, you tease! I really wanted to hear the music change with relation.


I would redo the bass if given the chance - it's pretty "cheap" sounding atm.

I quite like it, especially the rhythm part.  To me it sounds like heavy industrial machines doing their work. Which fits with the Hegemony building order - out of steel. If you hear it you really don't want to stand in the way of that building process, lest you get crushed.
Logged
The game was completed 8 years ago and we get a free expansion every year.

Arranging holidays in an embrace with the Starsector is priceless.

StianStark

  • Global Moderator
  • Lieutenant
  • *****
  • Posts: 64
  • Music & Sound
    • View Profile
    • Stian Stark - Game Audio Forge
Re: Faction Music
« Reply #19 on: August 26, 2015, 02:07:26 AM »

Thanks for the feedback, guys, appreciated!

The Hegemony track in the video is actually slightly re-mixed from the original one in the game as I wanted extra clarity to make all the elements really stand out for viewers of the video. The ingame variant is "wetter" and perhaps more atmospheric.

It's very interesting to me that many people hear a lot of retro gaming vibe in the bassline, which I don't consider to be retro in that way at all :) The sound itself is comprised of 3 different wavetable synth patches with a lot of modulation and effects that I would consider quite modern, even. I suspect its actually the simplicity and certain kind of stubborness of the bassline melody that reminds people of old games. I'm repeatedly fascinated by how differently people perceive music in general, it's a very interesting topic!
Logged
www.stianstark.com /// Twitter @stianstark

nomadic_leader

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 725
    • View Profile
Re: Faction Music
« Reply #20 on: August 26, 2015, 02:42:49 AM »

Hmm, interesting. Maybe people's opinions of the factions and even there choice about which one to join will be influenced by the respective faction music. This music makes the hegemony sound a bit more 'bad-guy' than I'd previously imagined. Wonder what the diktat music will sound like, since they are even more evil.

Also if there's ever a voice-over intro or something like that for SS, I'd suggest Stian could be a narrator-- the vocal harmonics and that mostly neutral English with carefully suppressed central European twinge is pretty interesting. Sounds like a sentient AI's voice or something.

That voice saying "ship lost" or something like that during combat might be pretty cool.
Logged

Sproginator

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 3592
  • Forum Ancient
    • View Profile
Re: Faction Music
« Reply #21 on: August 26, 2015, 04:05:22 AM »

Saw this on the YouTube channel first, gotta love that deep bass!
Logged
A person who's never made a mistake, never tried anything new
- Albert Einstein

As long as we don't quit, we haven't failed
- Jamie Fristrom (Programmer for Spiderman2 & Lead Developer for Energy Hook)

Histidine

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 4661
    • View Profile
    • GitHub profile
Re: Faction Music
« Reply #22 on: August 26, 2015, 04:19:48 AM »

I'll admit, I was paying more attention to the new portraits at first.

It was pretty interesting how the played sub-parts of the main track each still work pretty well on their own.
Logged

Tartiflette

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 3529
  • MagicLab discord: https://discord.gg/EVQZaD3naU
    • View Profile
Re: Faction Music
« Reply #23 on: August 26, 2015, 04:37:38 AM »

While I love the idea of faction music in general, I never found a game that implemented it in a way that I found satisfying. What I mean in the case of Starsector is that your interactions with a "faction" screen is most of the time extremely short. For example:

You could fly near a station with the ambiance music, get pinged,
have the com dialog warning you about the inspection with the Hegemony theme,
get back to space waiting for the fleet to catch up with the ambiance music back,
then have the Hegemony neutral music again for a second while accepting the inspection,
get back to the ambiance music for 5 seconds during the inspection progress,
get the second inspection screen with the Hegemony music for 5 seconds,
get back to space/ambiance,
dock to the station/Hegemony theme, sell your food and
get back to space 5 seconds later with the ambiance... (and optionally get pinged again ><)

That's eight switches between the beginning two musics intro in probably less than 30 seconds. (I also really dislike how in the current implementation the musics start from the beginning for each market interaction)

All in all once you start to play a bit faster the music would be all over the place, and this is one of the most common succession of screens you'll get in the game. What could help against that is having a "faction" ambiance music fading in when approaching a market while still in space. Then the dialog screen only add emphasis on an already present theme, and since most of your interactions near a market are with that market factions the changes would be less jarring. Of course that's just my opinion...
« Last Edit: August 26, 2015, 04:45:40 AM by Tartiflette »
Logged
 

Gothars

  • Global Moderator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 4403
  • Eschewing obfuscatory verbosity.
    • View Profile
Re: Faction Music
« Reply #24 on: August 26, 2015, 04:53:07 AM »

You could fly near a station with the ambiance music, get pinged,

IIRC the customs inspection process will be much faster and simpler in the next version. Can't find the source right now, though.
 In stations you should often spend enough time for the music to unfold.

What would be a better alternative, already play the music when flying near a faction market/dominated area? The transitions would be hard to get right.
Logged
The game was completed 8 years ago and we get a free expansion every year.

Arranging holidays in an embrace with the Starsector is priceless.

Tartiflette

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 3529
  • MagicLab discord: https://discord.gg/EVQZaD3naU
    • View Profile
Re: Faction Music
« Reply #25 on: August 26, 2015, 05:04:00 AM »

IIRC the customs inspection process will be much faster and simpler in the next version. Can't find the source right now, though.
When I suggested that (granted a while ago) Alex clearly stated it wasn't his intention. Now I don't know if he changed his mind about it, and in any case it's a point in case: that mean the switch between musics will be even shorter and less pertinent.

Quote
In stations you should often spend enough time for the music to unfold.
Why? The only time I spend time in a station is to refit a new ship. The immense majority of the time I'm only there to sell food (10 seconds) or loot (12 seconds because I also have to click on repair fleet) Even if the missions add a new screen to check, it won't be that longer.

Quote
What would be a better alternative, already play the music when flying near a faction market/dominated area? The transitions would be hard to get right.
Not necessarily, since (if?) all the variants of the music have the same loop length they could just be synchronized. But I don't know the details, it's just a suggestion that could help a lot in avoiding hearing the same two musics intro repeatedly in a short span of time.

[EDIT] BTW my issue with the faction music has nothing to do with the music itself because those tracks are awesome. I just fear I'll have to listen to them in a playlist behind the game, not as an ambiance device within the game.
« Last Edit: August 26, 2015, 07:34:25 AM by Tartiflette »
Logged
 

Clockwork Owl

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 790
    • View Profile
    • Starsector South Korean Community
Re: Faction Music
« Reply #26 on: August 26, 2015, 07:41:33 AM »

We'll see when it comes out... I guess Alex found or will try to find a neat solution for that, since he puts much consideration into the gameplay immersion.
Logged

Thaago

  • Global Moderator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 7173
  • Harpoon Affectionado
    • View Profile
Re: Faction Music
« Reply #27 on: August 26, 2015, 10:56:57 AM »

I like it! My first impression was also that the bass sounded too "synthy", but I'm listening on crappy earbuds so I really don't know how accurate an impression it is. I like the melody quite a bit.


I agree with Tartiflette - I love the music in many games, but rarely do they have good transitions. The Hegemony theme builds nicely, but takes a few seconds to kick in - it would be nice if we get to hear the whole thing in game rather than just snippets of the beginning.
Logged

Alex

  • Administrator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 23986
    • View Profile
Re: Faction Music
« Reply #28 on: August 26, 2015, 11:16:24 AM »

All in all once you start to play a bit faster the music would be all over the place, and this is one of the most common succession of screens you'll get in the game.

Hmm. One thing there is that there are more things to do at a market now - browsing the mission postings and the comm directory, with more things to come later - so there's a good chance you'll be spending more time there.

Another point is that, if you're playing that quickly - which, yeah, happens as you get more proficient at the game and play more - I'd say you're likely not in a state of mind that's very receptive to immersion in the first place, but are more focused on mechanics.

Finally, I think if the music gets even a couple of seconds to play, it still "works" for immersion/faction flavor. The various faction tracks all come in strong and have a very distinct feel, even if not all the elements get a chance to play in that time. At least, this is my impression from playtesting.


IIRC the customs inspection process will be much faster and simpler in the next version. Can't find the source right now, though.
 In stations you should often spend enough time for the music to unfold.

Haven't gotten around to doing that yet, but I'd like to. It was kind of more of a test case for the progress bar mechanics, and in this case they mainly just add complications.
Logged

Alex

  • Administrator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 23986
    • View Profile
Re: Faction Music
« Reply #29 on: August 26, 2015, 11:38:28 AM »

something I've noticed though, the last two blog posts haven't been on the "news" headline of the forum, like the rest were. Any chance we could put them up there?

it's this thing, shows up under your profile picture



Oh yeah, I've been forgetting to do that when it's not a post I wrote. Thanks for bringing it up!
Logged
Pages: 1 [2] 3 4 ... 6