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Music and Sound

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Dave "Shroom" Collins edited this page Oct 10, 2018 · 5 revisions

Vision

Music for Genus should conform to the theme of relaxing, fun and addicting. Ideally, the music will fit the game so well that the players may become addicted to the music.

Like all videos games, sound effects will provide audible feedback to the end user to express events, such as a menu selection change, blocks cleared, etc..

Song requirements

Each song shall require the following attributes.

Design:

  • Rhythmic and support the game theme of fun and relaxing
  • Some percussion is OK
  • Great mixture of high and mid tones to compensate for the small device speaker
  • May use effects like stereo panning, however, all songs will play in Mono on device
  • 4/4 time signature shall be used

Technical:

  • Extended Module (XM) format shall be used to play music
  • No more than 100 - 128KB of total file size
  • Samples shall be in 22khz, 16bit audio format
  • All samples shall leverage tracker Instruments to assist with the Attack, Delay, Sustain, Release (ADSR) and panning envelopes.
  • Where possible instruments should be used to loop samples as a measure to reserve space, instead of having long playing samples.

The following playlist shall be used as a guidepost for the types of songs that will fit will within Genus. They fit the bill of calm, rhythmic, enjoyable and addicting. These examples do not loop, within the SoundCloud website to preserve bandwidth. https://soundcloud.com/djliquidice/sets/genus-example-songs

Music production workflows and software

EXtended Module (XM), a derivative of the Amiga MOD music format, will be used for Genus' music. XM files include their song's PCM samples in addition to the pattern (note) data within a single file. Unlike modern formats, XM does not compress (MP3) the sample PCM data, hence the desire to be conservative with space.

Trackers are the software to compose music using the XM format, with their name being derived from the visual track layout. Below is an image of ProTracker, originally developed for the Commodore Amiga in the 90s.

Trackers do not generate sounds on their own via synthesis and at its core replay included XM file PCM sample data at various pitch frequencies to create notes. These applications and their related players have grown to be quite efficient at creating music and require relatively little overhead to generate music on the fly.

Notes are stored in vertical columns, known as channels (or tracks, if you will). While the initial presentation of a tracker is intimidating, the software is designed to be as efficient as possible for composition, editing, and playback.

The number one recommendation is to use Open ModuPlug Tracker (OpenMPT). Pros for using OpenMPT are as follows:

  • Actively being developed
  • Stable
  • High fidelity
  • Has MIDI input support
  • The modern standard for tracking
  • Well Documented
  • Best compatibility with the XM format.

We've created a runnable package using WINE and WINE Bottler to run on the mac: OpenMPT_32Bit.dmg

MilkyTracker is the second best choice and runs natively on any host system. MilkyTracker is great for this reason and is performant, however, it does have some compatibility issues and may not accurately represent the XM format.

Sound effects. Sound effects will follow the technical rules for music.

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