Motifs for Major Game Events


There were important game events in Worms Blast for which simple motifs were not sufficient to represent. These events included losing a life, triggering a very big and powerful weapon, or entering some special game mode. There were 18 of these major game events that were important enough, not only to play a motif on top of the background music, but to actually come in and replace the background music completely for a little while.

The way I solved this was to write 18 different patterns with very distinct music, using dramatic effects and instruments that stood out, such as gongs, sweeps, electro effects, etc. I had earlier reserved groove levels 81 through 100, so I assigned these 18 patterns to individual groove levels from 81 up to 98. For example, the two-bar pattern for "Double Damage Mode" contained a Chinese gong — a little Chinese style koto melody, and it was assigned groove level 87. When "Double Damage" occurred in the game, the game would input a groove level value of 87. This resulted in my two-bar "Double Damage" tune being played from the next bar line, replacing the background music instead of just playing over the top of it. Obviously, the tempo remained unchanged, something which helped make this two-bar break fit into the soundtrack as a whole and sound like it was meant to be there.

At the end of each two-bar "special event" pattern, I put a drum fill-in/build-up to create a natural-sounding transition back to the regular background music.




DirectX 9 Audio Exposed(c) Interactive Audio Development
DirectX 9 Audio Exposed: Interactive Audio Development
ISBN: 1556222882
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 170

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