Music Request Thread - Forest Update

#1

Pretty much directed straight at RyanReilly. Bear in mind that this is NOT pressing; I know you’re in school, and we’re not in a rush to get these. This is a list of songs that’d help to have for the next update.

1] New dungeon theme for milgram’s castle: We’re not upgrading milgram’s castle in the pending release, but it’d be nice to have a secondary dungeon theme to complement our current one. The current one seems to borrow frogatto’s leitmotif, and it’d be nice to have a “general” dungeon theme that actually uses milgram’s theme instead.

2] Moldy Marsh: The mushrooms that have invaded the forest are in a section of steaming, rotting marshland. There are going to be several levels on your way into the worst of it, so this is sort of a general theme. This probably shouldn’t be upbeat, and should instead be kinda oppressive and unpleasant.

3] Mushroom Boss Fight: The player will fight an enormous mushroom. This will be an ornery boss, because you can only “sort of” directly beat it. If you’ve beaten it, if you ever come back, you’ll have to face a lesser version of it that has started to respawn from its roots. It can only permanently be killed by visiting the forest witch, and getting a poison potion that kills the roots.

4] Mushroom Boss Intro: Like with milgram, there will be some expository cutscene stuff around the boss fight. This song is kinda optional, but could help set the mood.

5] Forest Graveyard/Holy Ground: The witch lives way in the back of this. There may be ghosts along the way, but it’s not so much an “evil” graveyard, as just a place where the forest creatures are put to rest. It’ll still be hazardous, and a bit creepy.

#2

Cool! What’s the general time frame we are working with for completion of these areas?

#3

I envisioned this for the swamp.

http://www.allacrost.org/staff/user/rain/DangerSwamp.ogg

Too upbeat? There are moments that are a bit creepy, moments of spasticity, hopeful moments as well… moments where the music just runs and guns. It’s pretty consistent… in an inconsistent way, but I think the piece, mood-wise is probably okay for depicting a swamp. I was thinking of adding swamp sounds like frog chorus and owl hoots to the audio… but I don’t know how I would integrate this tastefully so I will hold off on this until I hear a bit of feedback on the general direction of the piece.

Anyways.

I am working on making the graveyard theme an elegy for piano.

#4

A couple months, maybe. We’re doing a different update first, that doesn’t target the forest area. We’re making a bunch of arcade levels for that alternate game mode - from the titlescreen, there’s a new “arcade” door which lets you select a non-story-mode game where you just try and survive as long as you can.

We’re holding off on that because it’s just going to take me a long time, in the meantime, to build up all the new art (and levels) we need for the forest. :’(

Too upbeat?
Because the upbeat sections are nicely contrasted with the dark sections; it's great. I think you just nailed this piece! :D I'm adding it right now.
I was thinking of adding swamp sounds like frog chorus and owl hoots to the audio... but I don't know how I would integrate this tastefully so I will hold off on this until I hear a bit of feedback on the general direction of the piece.
Don't build these into pieces. Provide these as a separate sound loop. They're very, very much desired, but let's NOT burn them into songs.
#5

really? You need some helpers!

http://www.allacrost.org/staff/user/rain/DangerSwampMaster.ogg

Final.

And yea, I probably have the themes for each area already done tbh. I’ve created a lot of material in the past few days. But lots of arranging needs to be done so that each piece of music works in the respective environment.

For this piece, i wanted it to be dark and mysterious, but I also wanted to pump up the gamer by going from areas of low intensity to high… at a reasonable rate. Hope it works. ( I am really getting sick of these reason samples… )

And okay on the sfx

#6

Okay, b/c all my presets are no longer existent for the pieces that I was working on for the update, it’s going to take a bit longer to get mastered music for these areas. All the better, I am sure as I now am working with Logic 9, which really sounds a lot better than reason 3.

Here is a goofy random piece.

http://www.allacrost.org/staff/user/rain/Bouncy.ogg

Is there an IMMEDIATE IMMEDIATE need for these tracks??? I am somewhat busy irl and will make time if the need is somewhat urgent

#7

Yeah, take your time. I’m really looking forward to stuff with the new samples, since … really, the biggest complaint I’ve ever had has been mostly about your string samples. So this should really kick ass.

[quote=“RyanReilly, post:6, topic:134”]Here is a goofy random piece.

http://www.allacrost.org/staff/user/rain/Bouncy.ogg[/quote]

Sounds good. :slight_smile:

No. As you could infer from my … inexcusable and just shameful 15-day delay in answering this, it’s gonna be several weeks, still, if not a couple months, before I’m waiting on you, versus the opposite. I’m busy myself, IRL, but I’m also just kinda depressed because the upcoming frogatto release is just dragging along.

I’m putting a lot of work into it, but the pisser is just that this is “black triangle” work. It’s important stuff, but it’s shit like refactoring code and all. After doing it, I have nothing that I can point to and say “I just did that”. (A lot of it has been doing a massive rework of the forest canopy, which should be visible in a recent build. I think it looks a lot better, but it’s embarassing because it’s not like some massive new section of the game has come together nicely, yet.

I know I’m putting in a lot of time, but I don’t know if I need to attack things more systematically, and stay focused on individual tasks (such as creating new monsters) for much longer stretches of time. Or maybe that would demotivate me, and I’d end up getting less done (I tend to switch to attacking something else when my interest wanes, so I don’t end up not working at all - at least this way I’m always working on something).

Anyways, my current task is doing a “real” set of forest houses, versus the placeholder crap we’ve got in game right now. Hopefully I can stay hammering on it until it’s -completely- finished.

#8

http://www.allacrost.org/staff/user/rain/FrogattoSwampTrim1.ogg

Been trying to mold this piece. It’s not bouncing to disc properly. The recording in logic doesn’t sound nearly as harsh but when I bounce to disc, it sounds quite a bit unleveled. WTF. It seems like some instruments are being doubled when I’m bouncing to disc? This pisses me off b/c I have no idea why it would do that.

LOL. Anyone have any ideas?

Need to figure out what’s going down

#9

:frowning: Yeah, I see what you’re talking about.

One more reason for me to get around to installing Logic, and doing anything on the music front.

#10

I don’t know, I’ve never had problems like that with bouncing. I remember there’s a normalizer checkbox; did you try switching that? Maybe the best thing to do would be go on Apple’s support forum, describe the problem, and if possible, get the best recording you can of the affected parts of the song playing within Logic, and a clip of the same part bounced. Otherwise I think it’ll be hard for people to fix.

#11

Normalizing audio can be a double edged sword and seems to destroy some of the dynamics of an un-normalized bounce, so I tend to avoid it if necessary. Still if I don’t start seeing some improvements I’ll definitely be giving it a whirl.

#12

Increased buffer size and that seems to be fixing the problem atm.

Anyhoo, here’s what I got. I have the main stage theme for the swamp plus the cemetary area, which may not sound creepy enough for a graveyard. Then again, we can’t scare the kiddies too much now can we? :smiley:

lol

so here we are

Let me know what you guys think!

thanks

R

#13

Sounds awesome! ;D
Glad it’s sunday, so I just tested the Swamp one in game, namely in this (experimental?) Murky Mire level, which I imagine to be rather close to the swamp levels that are going to be implemented (just guessing).

While most of it sounds very fitting, including the more upbeat parts as you’re fighting enemies, I imagine something more monotonely creepy would be “nice” for passages where you move carefully, avoid toxic pools in a misty environment (as in the lower part of the level) - there, much of the theme seems a bit out of place.

You called it the main theme and as such it is truly enjoyable!
However, an alternate theme for purely creepy, rather slow levels could be a nice addition - and perhaps rather easy to be done: taking mostly the first part of the full theme, with the e-guitar-like part removed and the high pitched sounds starting much softer (but increasly bugging and creating tension).

Concerning the Cemetary part: this one is quite refreshing / different, really not creepy at all (the way I understood Jetrel’s description it shouldn’t be, anyway), but rather of an austere beauty with a touch of sadness - just fitting for the place where souls can rest. So I don’t know whether it is fitting for the place where you have to avoid ghosts and such, but rather for the place “way in the back of this”, where you meet the witch. For any level that involves some action (enemies), this might be a tad too comforting.

Anyway: I am impressed by both, the coherence of your compositions and the mood these themes create.

#14

Wow, nice! lol

I appreciate that you plugged these suckas in to see how they would work along with the feedback provided. That’s really encouraging, so thank you :smiley:

I really like that you’ve pointed out that the music for the main level may be a bit too varied. It’s probably both a blessing and a curse as far as music design goes and the way it’s intended to compliment gameplay. From a compositional standpoint, I really want to make music that doesn’t get too old too quickly for people playing the game. I wanted to vary the development to keep things moving while staying generally true to the main idea. At the same time, the fast moments of the piece amidst the slower creepier sections might not have the desired affect.

Don’t even want to think about that last part!

Primarily b/c I’ve spent so much time on the formation of this piece that I couldn’t possibly justify messing with it anymore! LOL :3

What I COULD do…
It wouldn’t be too hard to make additional themes to compliment what we have going now… especially if the area is large enough. And if I know Jetryl, which I do, there will be a large enough area to work with that we can really have fun with this. We’ll see how that process comes along. It might be nice to write a few pieces to be more concentrated in one emotional musical quality and stay there to build upon what we have going on with these pieces. And it probably wouldn’t take too much time as the templates I am building for the swamp are pretty complete so I can just focus on composition alone, which shouldn’t take INCREDIBLY long.

This last piece was a bit of an exception to that. HAHA

/tips hat

cheers

#15

Man your samples are sounding better.

I really want to second what EEluminatus was saying about the graveyard piece; I really like that you’re doing something original, and not going for the “generic creepy graveyard” spiel. I think it’s brilliant.

#16

Yea, thanks man!

Definitely trying different things and seeing the general response… it’s pretty interesting so far

I am really appreciative that I have the key to the creative controls for the music and the audio. Structuring the themes within the context of the lairs that we have going on … boss battles, area themes, etc…being allowed to put a form to it all is a challenge I hope to keep having fun with, improving thematically, musically as frogatto continues taking shape.

For this stuff… I’ll keep the graveyard theme short and sweet and probably include a ‘scary droning thematic deal’ for other areas if the need is there. Nothing too developed. Just a mood booster to help sell the context of the environment, whatever.

The boss battle … lol. Doing experiments right now!

#17

Second. 8)

#18

http://www.allacrost.org/staff/user/rain/MushroomBossIntro.ogg

#19

I hate* this one - for I can’t get it out of my head. Very catchy theme…
Now I feel like fighting a big bad monster mushroom while working on a french article.

  • I hope the irony was obvious… didn’t think long before I posted. ::slight_smile:
    Anyway, still got it in my head!
#20

[quote=“RyanReilly, post:18, topic:134”][quote author=Jetrel link=topic=115.msg726#msg726 date=1289877479]

4] Mushroom Boss Intro: Like with milgram, there will be some expository cutscene stuff around the boss fight. This song is kinda optional, but could help set the mood.
[/quote]

http://www.allacrost.org/staff/user/rain/MushroomBossIntro.ogg[/quote]

I think you nailed this one – also, for an intro piece like this, this is about the right length. I love this - can’t wait for the proper boss theme that follows it.

Side note:
It’s important that, as you’ve done correctly here, the piece won’t interrupt nastily upon looping, since throughout frogatto, we try and not advance dialogue before the player is done reading it (a prime annoyance of many people in many games). The player advances the dialogue whenever they damn well please, we just size the music for a typical reading time.

I think this is something we’ve aced in frogatto, because this is so unfair in other games that have fixed-duration dialogue; either you’re a hypercharged speed reader who finishes each dialogue in 0.5 seconds and impatiently wishes the game would hurry up and get to the next one already… or you’re some poor 6 year old (or non-english speaker!) who’s struggling with sounding out the letters, and takes a whole 2 minutes to read one sentence. Our system means everyone wins; people can take as long or as little as they want to read stuff. So thank you for doing music that works perfectly with this idea, because I really think it helps the game a lot. ;D