Video link: https://youtu.be/_p0qhCDJyao
Our composer Tim Buzza has been working hard on new music themes for WolfQuest 3, so today we’ll look at how we take his original tracks and set them up in the game with our new adaptive music system. “Adaptive music” means that the music changes dynamically based on what’s happening in the game. More in this blog post from early 2017: Tune Up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7j0PT4EerQA
We’re using a plugin called Master Audio to handle music layering and playback, so our developer Andrei has created the logic that watches what’s happening in the game and triggers musical themes and layers based on the gameplay from moment to moment.
I’ll let Andrei describe how he does this:
With our music system, we want the music to follow the game action. The game has different musical moments and each moment has its own sets of tracks (recorded by Tim) and sets of rules defining which tracks should be played (defined by Dave). This particular moment is called Elk Showdown, when the Elk decides to fight back the Wolf (and it has its reasons to do that.
Dave set specific rules to begin and end each moment. In this case, the game enters the Elk Showdown moment when the Elk intention to fight back is detected from its AI system.
While the game is inside this musical moment, I am constantly checking the variables that matter for this set of rules, which represent different actions inside the game. When one of these rules is met, I switch the tracks to match the game action.
For example: when the Wolf is moving or idle, the music will match that. When it approaches the Elk, the music matches that too.
The game variables I check come from different game systems, mostly already created by Tommi. For the Showdown music, we are basically checking distances (Wolf to Elk and mate, if present, to Elk), activity level (idle or moving), damage (done and taken) and the Elk AI.
This new music system is another part of the game update built from the gathering of different people’s efforts.
