I would love for Toady to implement a backsystem that dynamically plays background ambience and music.
Basically, hooking in the music and ambiance system into currently scripted events for ease-of-development. It seems like most of the framework to put this ingame is already in the engine. Granted, currently there would be no 'official' tracks to put into this system but the community can definitely sort that out. I've got a large volume of royalty free sounds meant for atmospheric game development that I would love to put to work on this kind of system. I would also highly enjoy making a suitable 'music pack' for all the events in the game.
It might be a challenge later on to add this stuff in officially (I have a lot of experience with setting up looping atmospheric soundtracks that don't grate the ears over extended periods of time due to a long history of GMing and Game Development so I'd definitely hop on the 'let's make a mod to make the feature awesome' train) but I think it would add new immersion. Or you could be all awesome and make the ambiance dynamic itself (have bird sounds play if there are birds, insect sounds play occasionally if there are insects buzzing around, have goats call out ever so often if there are goats, etc.).
I know that's just one more thing for the system to be constantly tracking, but I was thinking it could rely on the current triggers that are ingame. For instance, when a siege is triggered it could tell the game's dynamic music module to load the siege track (having it 'scale' to the number of enemies currently on the map would be fantastic). Or when the season changes the game changes what ambiance (wind, trees, birds, waves) is playing in the background according to biome. (Grasslands_spring.ogg, Grasslands_summer.ogg, Grasslands_fall.ogg, Grasslands_winter.ogg, Mountainous_spring.ogg, et cetera). It could add also dim the current BGS whenever the weather changes and put another OGG on top of it at louder volume (rain_aboveground.ogg or rain_belowground.ogg, for instance). You get the idea. Having music stabs for such things as someone dying might be a bit too much but tying it to more sublime/constant events a little here and there wouldn't be bad (when your community grows to the next size or when you're attacked by skulking filth, for instance).
What does everyone else think?
EDIT: Wait, crap. Argh. Core21 in the Presentation Arc is pretty much this. Though less explored in the short description it seems Toady already had this in mind. Blast you, Toady, and your thinking aheadness and game designerness. :shakefist: One day, I will come up with some you didn't anticipate that you'll have no choice but to go 'Oh that
is a good idea! Why didn't I think of that?" One day!
I really do hope that for some reason he decides to just throw that into the game right now as a sort of 'beta' akin to the DF graphical upgrades. Giving the player an environment in which they want to continue playing as long as possible is a win/win for both dev. and player. Given that it's Toady and he holds himself to higher standards though, I won't hold my breath.
(If you're reading this Toady, I am more than willing to make a $10 donation and a batch of home-made sweets in exchange for the awesomeness of having dyna music/ambiance, even if you don't have the sound assets in place to make use of it on your end just yet! (Yes, I know that isn't enough to make it worth having to bugtest it and all but I would adore it).
Author
Topic: [BLOAT] Dynamic Music/Ambience (Read 608 times)