A Truly UserFriendly Game Audio Engine?

dallen writes "Do you wonder what Illiad of UserFriendly does when he's not coming up with comics? This article at GlobeAndMail.com reveals that his company, Condition30, is working on multiple videogame-related engines which create unpredictable but recognizable content. The company is working 'to polish its game-engine technology', but its public demo, a music creation engine, makes 'random' music that sounds much like music, not noise, potentially for games and other interactive products. Says their website: 'Our principal product, ZenStrings, is a music-generation engine that composes music and audio in real-time without taxing memory or processing power'."

Comments

dynamic music

[Dreadlord]

I've listened to some of tracks generated by ZenStrings, and I can say that it's quite impressive, it may be the first step on the process of creating a game with truely dynamic music.

Anyway, you can find some samples generated by the engine here.

Some Musicians are not evil

[Andy_R]

Rather than reinventing the wheel, why not just get a an actual musician to create real music for your game?

Contrary to popular /. opion, there are plenty of RIAA-hating open-source-friendly musicans out there who would love to create soundtracks and/or sound effects for games.

Try signing up for a mailing list where musicians hang out online (such as the music-bar list at ampfea.org) and ask around.

Re:Some Musicians are not evil

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

Because that music gets repetetive and takes up a lot of space. Take a game like a modern Final Fantasy. Most people have 72hr or so games of that (not in a row of course, but still.) ~2hrs of music starts to get very repetitive. If the music was constantly changing ever so slightly, it would keep the game feeling fresh. Especially if you do what max payne (among others) did by having music get more intense during intense parts of the game (think about to enter a room with 5 people in it)

Re:Some Musicians are not evil

[superultra]

I listened to the samples of ZenStrings, and it sounds as repetetive as anything in Final Fantasy. Why? Because without the set patterns of composed music, one measure of randomized music basically sounds the same as the next because there were no patterns with which to "landmark" the music with. After 10 minutes of random music, it'll all start to sound the same as well, and while you may not have heard the same thing, without landmark patterns you'll swear you had. Where's the use in that?

There's an easier way to "de-repeatize" music, and that's to create great music. I don't remember the music in Halo being particularly repetitive and I've certainly played that for well over 72 hours. Same for KOTOR.

I don't think taking up space is an issue. The virtual radio stations of GTA:VC and Project Gotham Racing 2 just throw so much music at you (and good music too!) that I've really yet to feel like I've heard the same song too much, and since the music is pretty great, I actually turn it up when I hear a favorite.

I think the third solution was first exhibited by LucasArts in X-Wing and its ilk; the idea of set themes but changing dynamically.

I think there are far more effective solutions than ZenStrings. That's not to say that ZenStrings isn't an anchievement, but throw that stuff in a game and it'll hurt the general atmosphere of most games because the music is not "intentful."

Seems familiar

[presearch]

The very odd cult game tranquility has used this concept for a long time, and also does the "auto generation" trick with it's game geometry as well.

ZenStrings almost seems...inspired.. by tranquility's soundtracks. Especially the example/sample "Tranquilitatus".

Sounds familiar

[Black Hitler]

Oh wait, this is basically Sid Meier's CPU Bach, circa 1993. And I seem to recall the crappy editing software that came with my Dazzler DV capture card had something like this as well. At least he's still pushing the envelope of unfunny comics.