Idea for how procedurally generated music could work in Mechaenetia

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I was reading through the ideas document and thought of how procedurally generated music could be a thing that exists, I remembered watching a video on how the music in that one Nintendo tanks game works, where the enemies present have a clip of music and some logic to integrate it with the other clips playing, maybe you could figure out a similar system, or have the ambient music be predetermined, but the npc civilizations have anthems that change based off of their stats and the instruments they have, or maybe when you start getting attacked the game will use a sort of threat level computed by your current gear, the damage and abilities of the enemy, and your past encounters with enemies of similar capabilities, and play a predetermined sound for that threat level, with new clips for a regular interval of threat level changes (ex:different music every 0.5 levels up, or 1 level up, or whatever you choose), where every larger interval (maybe 5 or 10 times the normal one), the clip trumps whatever else is playing, and changes them to another form of them, this would allow for boss music to exist, but not be as intense if you’re coming back with super-ultra-omega-hyper-doge-meme-very-high magical technology hoogly doogly gear, so that way you (somewhat sadly, as it would be very funny) don’t end up having ultra intense music playing for an enemy you can just eviscerate at the slightest touch

sorry for the wall of text

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you mean something like the latest factoriofridayfacts but a bit more advanced? Yeah that is basically what I plan because doing it as a MIDI mixer is way easier than actually composing stuff to be in sync.

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I actually stopped reading the fff’s because I’ve been playing modded mc recently and hence haven’t opened steam, I can’t look right now because school computer, but maybe in 30 minutes during lunch

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there should be an option that makes it not in sync so that you can ‘serenade’ your ears with the “wonderful” sound of every single file playing at once due to a bug

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Just so you’re prepared, I have a 15 question post draft that is only that long because of the limit on post amounts during the first day of account existence

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I think “Columns 1” for the SEGA Genesis actually had something like that where it plays the same track twice but one of them is slightly behind and slightly more silent. It is like an echo, lol.

But yeah, I love Leitmotifs and combining them depending on situations!

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I recently watched a movie called The Grand Budapest Hotel, and there was a series of scenes where the main characters search for a guy (it’s somewhere in the latter half of it), and the sound effects like church choir sync with the ost. This felt inspirational for me, maybe i can share it with you lot. In a game, take factorio for example, i’d hear it as different machines producing sounds in sync with some kind of tempo, like a sound tick rate, so they don’t overlap in a chaotic cacophony but instead sound like an industrial beat. And if the game has music, it will also be in sync with the tempo, so the factory would add to the soundtrack instead of shouting over it.

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Yeah it definitely needs to be silent enough and in sync with everything, wouldn’t want an RNG Noteblock Machine like result.

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I think it was Ape Escape where I first saw the use of contextual audio, while crouching certain instruments would mute leaving just the back and timbre playing to give the element of sneaking. You could incorperate this style of context sensitive audio where only certain instrument voices would play depending on what was happening. They would all be designed to work harmonously together if you heard them at the same time, or even provide dissonance if something wrong was happening?

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Also could make surrounding sound effects slightly louder while you are sneaking, so you can better hear people that may follow you.

The Music is going to be less Action oriented and mostly calm Ambience that should fit the Area.

Certain things like Songbirds in the Area could chirp to the BGM too, for example. Or Leaves bristling in a way that is in tune with the music but not too obviously, since this isn’t a Cartoon.

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that sounds very interesting to me, and cool! I am not so much into music but it sounds cool to me. I am not sure how easy it would be to implement it in such a way that the end result would be good but in my imagination it sounds nice :smiley:

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