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

I smell an idea

[kurosawdust]

Combine this with the software that can tell if a song is going to be a hit or not and you'll make billions selling to ClearChannel alone!

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

[Andy_R]

This is exacly why you should be talking to a real musician! Creating variations on a theme to induce emotions, keeping a long piece of music sounding fresh with different arrangments, and so on are all things that musicians already know how to do.

If your spec if for a 72 hour responsive soundtrack that doesn't take up a lot of space, working with a musician and a tracker style sample/note playback system with some mildly clever arpeggiators is going to be a very good way to do it.

Re:Some Musicians are not evil

[Bagels]

Yes, but the better ones won't work for free; if the game goes commercial or shareware or whatever, they'll want a cut. This program, on the other hand, is quite willing to work for a bit of electricity and some spare processor cycles. Whether it can produce music equivalent to that of a good musician\composer is another matter entirely, but this does show that it can be done.

Re:Some Musicians are not evil

[m_chan]

I agree that the slight changes may keep things fresh, but space for music is really not that big of a deal anymore. You can store dozens of hours of reasonable quality audio on a 700MB CD-ROM and none of it may be worth a damn, regardless of whether it is fresh.

The parent to your post said, "hire a musician". I don't think the RIAA comment helped the argument, but the poster was onto something; there is an aspect in music composition that arpeggiating algorithms can appease and extend to some extent, but there is always something lacking that results from the rigidity of purely mathematical constructions. After listening to many of the sample tracks , I think they are on to something of a middle ground that may work out rather well. Here's why:

I listened to all the available sample tracks. Some were quirky, some were rather interesting, but none of the demos developed a hook. When it comes right down to it, they all were ambient and lacking melodic recurrence to draw me into the piece (no offense intended to the composer). That hook will bring you back (thanks JP).

But these were merely the demos. They are creating this software with the idea that it will end up in the hands of a (hopefully) talented melodic composer that will provide exactly what you may be looking for, (i.e. I think): reduction of time/space/money/whathaveyou in the composition process, while creating an original theme that is still humanistic in its structure and delivery, resulting in a memorable and likeable melody that holds your attention over the long haul.

Or the are just using sax and violins to sell games?

Re:Some Musicians are not evil

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

"When it comes right down to it, they all were ambient and lacking melodic recurrence to draw me into the piece"

Thats generally what most video games are going for. Of course we all know the super mario bros theme by heart, but for a shooter game the ambience is there to fill the silence (except when needed for suspence), without being so distracting you can't get in the game. Imagine trying to shoot a nazi while some annoying teen is singing. Now kill that same nazi while you have a faint ambient song going in the background. Of course there are exceptions (see any grand theft auto-like game or a game like tony hawk). Really depends on the game I suppose.

Re:Some Musicians are not evil

[Andy_R]

That's where you are wrong. There are LOADS of really amazing hobby musicians out there who would really like the opportunity to get their music into a game for no fee at all.

The problem is that none of the have a high enough profile for you to hear about them, so you need to go and look for them - which is the point I was trying to make in my original post. Raising their profile to ther point where they get noticed is the hardest part for a musician who wants to give away their music, so being associated witha good game would be a wonderful opportunity for them.

BTW, algoryhtmic composition is not a new concept, you can trace the idea right back to Mozart's musical dice game from 1787, this is just the first one that I have heard about that has been marketed to the games industry. I guess the fact that so many people are assuming this is a new thing reinforces my point that there is not enough crossover between the two fields?

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".

Elite

[wackybrit]

The space-sim 'Elite' did this in the mid 80's.

They didn't just do it for the novelty, however.. they had to have the computer generate stuff randomly, as they had no memory to store stuff permanently!

There's a cute article about how they developed it, and how the random engine created some pretty funny outcomes, including planet 'Arse'.

Algorithmic music

[Omniscient Ferret]

The public demo is samples, not a runnable demo. According to the article, they're seeking patents. I think I'd rather try to get Boodler running, or Looching, which preceded that. (Or Tranquility, which someone else mentioned.)

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.

They say it's music...

[Guspaz]

But it sounds pretty random to me. Yes, it's more coherant than pure random notes, but it has a long way to go.

Headspace

[girth]

Isn't this what the original Beatnik engine Thomas Dolby designed was supposed to do? I remember Dolby giving a lecture at a Music and Multimedia event in SF (around 1996). This was back in the CD-ROM days. Headspace would later dissolve and Beatnik looks to be more focused on phone ringtones.

Opensource will beat them to it.

[speaker4thedead]

What a coincidence! I just started on my own open source project to do this.

Here's the source:

#!/bin/bash
cat /dev/random > /dev/sound/dsp

Any improvements and bugfixes welcome.