Conclusion

The score for No One Lives Forever was a challenge to produce but was also very rewarding. The first challenge was convincing the producers at Fox Interactive that an adaptive score could have high standards of production quality. The Monolith team helped make the case by presenting demos of previous scores, such as Sanity. Also, my prototype themes helped convince them of my abilities as a composer. Putting together convincing DLS banks within tight memory constraints also posed a big challenge. The optimization process was time consuming and tedious but key to the sound of the game. Final mixing and editing called for great attention to detail by going though all the patterns (all their variations), motifs, and Segments, making sure volume levels, panning, and instrumentation meshed well together. NOLF's game state/music state integration gave me the greatest reward. It was fantastic to simply drop music into the game and hear the interactivity immediately. It was also gratifying to collaborate with a strong team of arrangers/composers. Having the help of three other musicians produced more content for the game, and sharing compositional ideas and techniques made us all better musicians. Finally, spy music was just plain fun to compose. The game's sense of humor made it a delight to create its music.

Overall, the adaptive design functioned as planned or better. The transitions reacted quickly and smoothly to the game calls, and the mood of each music state matched the on-screen action very well. The instrument variation, music state variation, and use of silence alleviated the repetitiveness common to many games, and the motifs made direct hits more satisfying to the player. At its best, the adaptive score draws the player deeper into the game experience. My biggest criticism is that sometimes the game states change faster than the music was intended to react. This makes the music seesaw between music states unnaturally. Many of these instances are only noticeable to me, but some are more obvious. I will be thinking of solutions to this type of dilemma for my next adaptive score. Also, the sonic quality of the music is limited due to the 22 kHz DLS banks. A combination of Wave Tracks and DLS banks would have allowed for longer samples, phrases, and premixed sections, which can increase the overall fidelity of a score while maintaining adaptability.

Each adaptive game score that I produce gives me ideas and concepts for the next. The biggest lesson learned from NOLF is that global music integration is hugely important to a successful score. Good integration creates the logical lines of communication between the music system and the game engine. If these lines are weak or nonexistent, the music will not respond well to gameplay, no matter how well the music functions out of context. Context is everything.