Re: Soundtrack rough draft

[Dave Fancella <david.fancella@comcast.net>]

Hm, forgot to answer this.  ;)

> I was going to add some code to support multiple tracks when I realized
> that we now have two somewhat contradicting ideas on the table:
>
> a) provide one (or more) default tracks and allow scenarios to override
> them with their own, or
>
> b) the adaptive approach you outlined above which requires specially
> tailored code and makes custom tracks for individual maps rather difficult.
>
> It's apparent that we have a long way to go either way, but the steps
> we take now can have lots of impact on what we can or cannot do later on.
> So the question is, which road do we take?

Hmmm, I suppose the way to answer that is "whatever road is easiest".

a)  This is simple because it's just a matter of making a new track for each 
scenario and letting the game just find it, falling back to a default if it's 
there.

b)  More complicated, but not necessarily mutually exclusive.  This would 
require a certain amount of metadata for each track.  So, for example, I'd 
have three files, called "boring.ogg", "movingalong.ogg", and "faster.ogg".  
Then I'd have a text file that defined them like this:  (I love xml)

<intro src="boring.ogg" />
<exciting range="1-4" file="boring.ogg" />
<exciting range="5-8" file="movingalong.ogg" />
<exciting range="9-10" file="faster.ogg" />
<outro src="boring.ogg" />

So the game would determine that the game is currently as exciting as 5 Vegas 
showgirls, so it would scan through its list of tracks for '5' and find that 
'movingalong.ogg' is the only one it has, so it plays it.  When it's done 
playing that one, it rechecks and determines the game is now as exciting as 9 
Vegas showgirls.  Again, it only has one file to play for this, so it plays 
'faster.ogg'.

That's the basic idea, anyway.  I'm a little too sleepy to go into all the 
gory details.  Suffice it to say, if there were two or more tracks that it 
could play for a given level it would have to choose from them, somehow.  
Perhaps randomly, maybe it would chose based on which one at that level it 
played last, and pick a different one, for variety.  Musically it would 
require they all correspond somehow, same key, same tempo, and so forth, or 
that they can interchange extremely well.  And that they all start and end on 
zero crossings.  Since heavy metal works this way already, generally, I don't 
think I'd have a big problem with that.  :)

Dave

> > > Is this kind of feedback helpful? It feels a bit awkward...
> >
> > Yes.  Also keep in mind that I'm new around here and trying to adapt my
> > own workflow to what you guys need/want.
>
> Who isn't?
>
> Jens

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