Looking for Interactive Music Designer

[echan00]

I'm looking for a sound designer that would be interested in working with me to create an interactive music system for my game: Harmotion.

Harmotion is a player vs. player top down 2D shooter. I want to implement an interactive sound system similar to games like Lumines, Rez, and Electroplankton.... I want the 2 players to feel like they are both contributing/collaborating to the overall track.

I'm thinking different versions of a simple beat will be played in the background (depending on the intensity of the game at the time).
There will be 4 ships to choose from; each with their own sound scheme/style. The two players will each choose a ship, and each time either player moves, shoots, uses an item, etc..., a sound effect will be triggered to add to the composition of the track.

Currently, I'm thinking the 4 different sound schemes are reggae, turntablism, dance pop, industrial.

Would anybody be interested in this project? Or at least give me some pointers?
I'm not sure I have much of a budget for cash compensation (this is the indie gamer forum afterall!!), but given you are interested, something could be worked out...

Thanks for your time. You may contact me at erik.chan@doublejumping.com

- Erik Chan -
~ http://blog.doublejumping.com ~

[joe]

you can use mod/xm/it files and then you can either use different pattern position to play the song from or you can use various tracks and mute those that don't belong to the current style.

it think that would be the most easiest way, because you don't have to code an own system.

you can also have a look at directMusic - it can be great to create very interactive music, but it's also harder to create the tracks i think.

[nikolas]

Echan00 I've e-mailed you back. :)

[mustardseed]

You're doing a music based 2d shooter too? That's cool. I look forward to seeing how yours turns out. Now that I've got known competition, I need to be sure I work really hard on mine. I'm shooting for mine to be ready to be sold by the end of the year. :D

You might want to check out this game for the Famicom Disk System called "Otocky". It was actually made by the same guy as Electroplankton, and it's a 2d shooter. It's pretty hard but the music makes it really fun. Good inspiration.

Good luck!

[PaulModz]

I’m less than no help on the creative side, but you should check out the new XACT audio API in DirectX if you haven’t settled on a technical solution. It’s easier to use than DirectMusic, but has a lot of features that seem tailor made for an interactive music system.

I posted my initial impressions of XACT here (http://forums.indiegamer.com/showthread.php?t=7270), and I’m still impressed with it. Here’s a few of the bits you might find useful:

• Good looping controls - When you decide to stop a looping sound, you can have play to the end of the current iteration.
• Notifications system - Allows you to catch the end of a sound and new one at the right time.
• Named variables – You can add named variables to the XACT project with the provided GUI tool and map them to any property of a sound (pitch, volume, reverb, etc...). You can then modify these variables at runtime through the API, allowing you to link audio rendering to any program specific variable in your app.

[AnthemAudio]

I know that if you save the metadata of a sound clip with the file and your sound engine can communicate via MIDI it will maintain tempo and you can align other tracks or SFX to start on a given beat.

I didn't do this with SFX, but I worked on a Dance Dance game a bit ago. They wanted character themed music. Every round you completed a new instrument was added to the player's motif. THe problem was the BPM was also increasing at a variable rate so we couldn't just write different stages of the music at fixed BPM's. What I did was "acidize" the file so it maintained BPM info and allowed us stretch the BPM without changing the pitch. We could then start or stop any theme on any beat we wanted in accordance to the game, basically quantizing the triggers to BPM. I wrote the themes with this in mind and they all fit snugly on a 4/4 100BPM starting point.

Hope that doesn't confuse...I got lost writing it down.

Tony

[echan00]

Thanks for the advice guys. I'll give XACT a try and see how that works out.

mustardseed, i'm interested in what you are working on. my email is erik.chan@doublejumping.com, shoot me an email and maybe we can bounce some ideas between us.