Comments on: Mario Galaxy dissection

By: Ninwa

Ninwa — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 00:37:40 +0000

Not too long ago Turbine (makers of successful MMO Asheron’s Call) was experimenting with developing a very interesting music engine to be built into their then latest game-in-the-works Asheron’s Call II (which I should note [no pun,] flopped terribly, RIP.) It allowed players to come together and play various instruments which would sort of intelligently blend together to form actual listen-able music. I don’t remember all of the details, but this is when I personally really started looking for dynamic audio in games, and although to an extent it’s become a lot more frequent (even DAOC changes music when you enter battle,) I agree, nobody has done it quite right yet.

By: Stiltskin

Stiltskin — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 22:29:45 +0000

It would be interesting to see a non-linear looping soundtrack, definitely. It would work especially well with open-world games. Imagine that: you wander through from a city to a cave area, and slowly, gradually, replacing instruments one by one, the music changes from an upbeat, urban song to a dark, menacing theme which tells you that it will be very dangerous here.
That would be so awesome.

By: Zorba

Zorba — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 05:14:07 +0000

I suspect that in cases like Rock Band they actually record the entire song together, with appropriate pickups on the instruments, then split it apart in postproduction – from the little I know of the music recording industry, most songs end up in dozens of separate tracks anyway. I imagine the same thing would be possible in an orchestra.

The thing you lose with these approaches, and regain with MOD format, is the ability to recut and resample music in interesting ways. Yes, you can remove and add tracks – but you can’t change the tempo or tone easily, and it’s harder to do looping music, especially nonlinearly looping music.

I’ve been looking for a game with a nonlinear soundtrack. Still haven’t found one. I’ll make one someday if nobody else does.

By: Stiltskin

Stiltskin — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 03:44:08 +0000

Hmm, I haven’t heard of MOD music before. Looking it up, if I’ve got it straight, it’s music that is made up of prerecorded samples which are then played back in a pattern by the software? It could work. Or, similarly, what they could do is take an entire instrument track in a song, record it separately, and have the software decide when to play it. For example, in Zelda: Twilight Princess, the melody for the Hyrule Field song changes if you’re on your horse or on foot, with brass and string instruments playing while you’re on your horse and softer wind instruments handling it while you’re on foot. The rest is kept the same. What they could do is record the brass and string melody, the wind instruments, and the rest of the song all separately, and layer them together in-game according to what the player is doing. The only problem there would be the people playing the instruments, which would have to deal with having only half the orchestra play. They would have to make sure the music fit together correctly and smoothly when layered.
In fact, that’s what they do in Rock Band, isn’t it? They have the recordings of the bass, vocals, drums, guitar, and the rest of the music all separate, and they layer it together, apply effects to the tracks, (like the guitar’s whammy bar and overdrive effects) and have the tracks stop playing if you mess up. So it’s already been done, even, though doing it for an orchestra would admittedly be more difficult.

By: Zorba

Zorba — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 03:54:39 +0000

That does make sense – sometimes it’s easier to see the downsides to a design decision than the upsides. I can see how merging multiple levels into one would be difficult and somewhat restrictive. Win some lose some, I suppose. The levels certainly were quite varied and well-built.

I’m sort of curious if MOD music is going to make a comeback. With modern systems, MOD-style music should be able to produce nearly the same quality as orchestra music, while being much, much easier to manipulate programatically. Unfortunately almost no companies are doing interesting things with music right now (Nintendo is the only one I know of that’s really pushing any sort of boundaries), which is sad because music is *really important*.

I haven’t noticed that in the Zelda games, but I’ll listen for it next time – it’s been a while since I’ve played a Zelda game :)

By: Stiltskin

Stiltskin — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 03:49:39 +0000

Of course, what it loses in exploration it makes up for in imagination.
I was reading an interview somewhere, (I think it may have been one of the “Iwata Asks” interviews on Nintendo’s website, but I’m not sure) and they described how Galaxy was different from Super Mario 64 in terms of level design. Basically, in Mario 64 they had to work all of the objectives into one level, which they described as a “garden”, and had to make each of the objectives fit with the rest of the level. This presented some challenges and limited the amount of freedom the developers had with the game. It was difficult to include an idea that was really “out there” without making it a secret level, and there were never very many of those. In Galaxy, including a new idea is as simple as pointing a launch star in a different direction.
This trade-off of exploration for creativity is also shown in the amount of stars in each level. In Galaxy, there are more levels but fewer stars in each, which again allows for more creativity, more variety in the level design.
Oh and the music, I love the music. Nintendo does love to include interactivity with their music, so much so that it was a major roadblock in their acceptance of orchestrated tracks, (Once again, I read it in an interview, with Koji Kondo this time. He was talking about Twilight Princess.) as it’s a lot easier to do interactivity with MIDIs. But it’s always a great effect. Wind Waker’s Great Sea music changes when you have your sail out, Twilight Princess’s Hyrule Field music changes when you’re on your horse, Chibi-Robo’s music speeds up when you’re carrying your plug, all these work very well in emphasizing something in the game, such as the character’s motions or the epic scale of the landscape.
Also, (going off on a mild tangent here) have you noticed that in any of the 3d Zelda games (assuming you’ve played them), the music that starts up when you encounter an enemy starts off as mildly foreboding, but as the music goes on it becomes more and more agitated, until eventually it’s a full-out battle theme? It means that easy enemies, which get dispatched quickly, get music that gives a sense of mild caution but nothing else, and tougher enemies get music that escalates to a sense of tension that matches the tension you’re feeling while trying to defeat this enemy. But it’s more than that: it means the more skillful you get with the combat, the less you’ll be worried about enemies, and the music will reflect that. i.e. A less skilled player will be very worried about fighting a wolf, and the music will reflect that by escalating to mirror their tension, as they will surely take longer to beat it. Meanwhile, a veteran will quickly end the battle, causing the music to be only a mild warning and nothing else.
*looks up*
Wow, I wrote too much.
And I wish they’d come out with the Mac version of Aquaria already.

By: David Frost

David Frost — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 13:41:09 +0000

It’s a good game, but there are a few problems with it. Some of the characters seem like ethnic stereotypes. Moreover, they take the collecting game to absurd lengths, with about 20 different things you need to collect (pictures of fairies, coins, bananas, etc.) But it is a lot of fun.

By: Zorba

Zorba — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 13:27:35 +0000

I don’t think I ever played that one. I should give it a try.

By: David Frost

David Frost — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 12:30:19 +0000

One other game had the same idea to it as Mario 64…Donkey Kong 64 (taken to a crazy level). Of course, it was another N64 game, so….