Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - Standalone => Fate of the Galaxy => Topic started by: Cypher on April 03, 2011, 06:45:44 pm
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One thing that I haven't seen discussed much is the music. I know there is some fanmade music that is pretty good, but you really need the classic stuff.
As lucasfilm would probably frown on using the actual tracks, I had the idea of finding/sequencing a midi, then recording it using whatever sound modules I have (budget yamaha keyboard, but it sounds decent).
It would then qualify as a 'parody,' and probably not get sued into the ground :P (after all, I think this entire mod is a parody, legally speaking, but then, I am not a lawyer).
I plan to use this in my EVN/naev conversion project, but I would like to offer it here (I still have to track down who sequenced the midi just to be fair).
Here is a rough sketch of the main title: sw_intro.wav - 16.01MB (http://www.zshare.net/audio/885945049fa8c45e/)
The brass needs more work, but I think the strings are pretty good (the middle section sounded almost exactly like the lego star wars complete saga menu music :P).
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I think the music has been discussed a fair bit, actually; swashmebuckle is the team's composer.
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Oops, that's what I get for not using the search function :P.
I stand by my offer though.
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Yeah, we're going with an original score using a sample-based approach that will attempt to get as close to the feel and fidelity of the originals as possible. We're really lucky that Lucasfilm/arts/etc encourages fan projects like this rather than shutting them down, and one of the few restrictions they place on us is that we not use the music from the trilogy. As I understand it there's a lot of leeway in getting around copyright via parody, but just playing the same notes back with midi instruments probably isn't going to qualify, and it seems like a bad idea to push that given that the rest of the game is full of painstakingly precise recreations of stuff that Lucas owns the intellectual property rights to. Anyway, this way a whole ream of original material gets produced, and at worst people can just turn off the music and play the OT soundtrack in the background if they want to (I recommend the 1997 versions). Here's the last thing I posted from our soundtrack, which is already quite out of date and does not reflect the superfly quality of the expected final product:
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=70521.0
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...at worst people can just turn off the music and play the OT soundtrack in the background if they want to (I recommend the 1997 versions).
I own the 4-CD trilogy soundtrack. How hard would it be to rip those myself and use selected tracks for the appropriate in-game music? Would it be possible to create a script to do that automatically to share with those of us who own a legal copy of the soundtrack, thus avoiding any copyright infringement but still having an "official" in-game soundtrack that uses the actual music?
I ask because I don't know anything about what format the game actually uses for music, or how it's implemented.
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How hard would it be to rip those myself and use selected tracks for the appropriate in-game music?
Considering the way FreeSpace music system works?
Very.
It requires at least rudimentary knowledge of music theory, since the track mixing system actually counts measures so that it stops and starts songs at times that feel appropriate to human listener. In addition to this you need a working knowledge of editing the tracks into FS2 Open recognizeable format (OGG) in lengths that work, you'll likely need to create some looping tracks, and so on. So you need to count the measures in a track, and so help you if the track happens to have variable tempo because then an average samples/measure number will not work correctly at all...
It's not as simple as converting the tracks into OGG and dumping them into FS2Open as a list of files to play...
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At least, if we're talking about tabled soundtracks.
It is that simple if non-tabled ones are used.
None of classic themes would work for a tabled soundtrack, in fact.
IMHO, it's a good thing though, go play a LucasArts game if you want music from trilogy, you'll get sick of the same tunes playing endlessly after a while (really, XWA, Jedi Academy, Battlefront, even Lego games my little brother plays... it just gets boring).
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Even beyond the issues with meter and tempo variations not really working with FS's tabled music system, there is the problem of the OT music being written to a movie script (and then having the movie edited to the music). Because everything is so programmatic, there aren't many examples in the score of uninterrupted action music segments that could be dropped in whole, looped, or spliced together convincingly, at least not without boldly announcing every two minutes "THIS IS WHERE THE EWOK DIES" or something like that. By writing our own music, we can have dedicated tracks for patrols, skirmishes, or fleet engagements, and the tone of missions can either be maintained steadily or transition seamlessly (well, sort of) thanks to the magic of the fully diminished seventh chord. I agree with Dragon that those games that used OT music suffered for it...I much prefer the intelligently adapting soundtrack of Tie Fighter in spite of the low quality midi.
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but just playing the same notes back with midi instruments probably isn't going to qualify
Actually, somebody sequenced this midi themselves (I am assuming they didn't use the original musical score, which I doubt is even available to anyone other than LucasFilm). The midi could not possibly be an exact copy. I assume it was done by ear.
Are you saying it has to sound different ala Clone wars Title music vs OT?
Edit: Just listened to swashmebuckle's composition. Ok, maybe we don't need no stinking OT stuff, that sounds pretty good. Way better than anything I can do for sure. I think you could use some of the motifs from the Title music though (I mean more, uh, 'blatantly,' for lack of a better term)
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Not sure why would you even want to replace swash's music. Apart from it being good, it has actually been designed to work with the game in game-specific situations. If you want to listen to the Star Wars soundtrack, that's fine, but your gaming experience should be best with the music fotg ships with, since every music piece tends to be written to work with specific parts of the game.
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Actually the music for the title crawl and several other pieces from the OT are available with complete parts, ready to be performed. I've looked at them from time to time for reference while orchestrating the FotG music, but unfortunately only some of the popular pieces are available (Imperial March, Throne Room, etc.); the complete score is most likely locked up tight in the Lucas archives. Fortunately it's usually not very hard to figure out what's going on as the style is pretty transparent, at least in ANH.
I imagine the suites are probably pretty popular with highschool and other small orchestras, so it is entirely possible that whoever sequenced the version you have just copied all the parts over from the C score rather than doing it by ear, though I don't think it actually matters in terms of copyright infringement. The tunes themselves are owned by Lucasfilm, so any iteration of them (even something as stylistically foreign as the Meco disco anthem) has to pay royalties. The only ways you can get around that are as a parody (which we are clearly not) or as "fair use" quotation in an otherwise original work. An example of this would be someone referencing a well known theme as part of their solo on a jazz record.
I have actually done a fair bit of this (using the OT themes or fragments thereof in unfamiliar contexts) in the FotG score, but that's as far as I want to go with the John Williams material seeing as I've also completely ripped off his orchestrations, treatment of motives, and any other element of musical style you can think of. Actually, the only reason I've even gone that far is that JW did so much obvious ripping off of other composers himself.
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Come to think of it, Cypher, didn't you drop in here before with an offer to do some music work for us? :P
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Since it's late at night and I'm lazy, and this thread fortuitously caught my attention, rather then research I'll just ask, TIE Fighter had some extremely awesome original scores done in midi. In fact the right honourable LtC once linked me one of those pieces a friend of his had redone with a modern music package setting those sweet midi tunes to actual orchestral instrumentation. As you might expect it was all sorts of outstanding, and I was curious if you folks might attempt something similar? I'd imagine having a reworked TIE Fighter suite would avoid Lucasfilm's lock down on using the film tracks while still being able to tug on the sentimental heart strings of those of us from the Imperial Flight Corps.
Plus did I mention that the pieces of the TIE Fighter original soundtrack, they are über wunderbar?
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If you'd like to have the X-Wing and TIE Fighter MIDIs reorchestrated, I recommend to contact Benevolence, who reorchestrated the Dark Forces MIDIs for the Dark Forces Mod for Jedi Academy. We also got him on board to reorchestrate X-Wing's MIDIs but we haven't heard from him for a while.
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Our score does allude to the Tie Fighter music in several instances (it's one of my favorites too), but no, we aren't going to be doing note-for-note copies of any licensed music, sorry.
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Just listened to that tune by swashmebuckle. Wow, I'm really impressed...actually thought it would be a shame to not have the OT soundtrack, but now I've listened to that I can't say I'm bothered. You captured the atmosphere of Star Wars perfectly I think, and yeah it wouldn't be too good to have the Imperial March just looping over and over through a mission. Can't wait to see what else you guys come up with.
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FoTG music is, in general, good enough that it doesn't need to get any tracks from other sources.
It's more legal, more original and better fitting into the game. Of course, the SW feel has been captured in every track used in FoTG.
IMHO, OT soundtrack in games is not only unoriginal, but just plain annoying after playing a couple of SW games. You're basically hearing the same tunes everywhere, all the time in constant loops, in almost every Star Wars game. I've grown sick of this practice, especially that the track is ussualy thoughtlessly looped. FoTG managed to retain SW feel while making it's own, new soundtrack, which IMO makes it better in that regard than most "official" games.
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Since it's late at night and I'm lazy, and this thread fortuitously caught my attention, rather then research I'll just ask, TIE Fighter had some extremely awesome original scores done in midi. In fact the right honourable LtC once linked me one of those pieces a friend of his had redone with a modern music package setting those sweet midi tunes to actual orchestral instrumentation. As you might expect it was all sorts of outstanding, and I was curious if you folks might attempt something similar? I'd imagine having a reworked TIE Fighter suite would avoid Lucasfilm's lock down on using the film tracks while still being able to tug on the sentimental heart strings of those of us from the Imperial Flight Corps.
Plus did I mention that the pieces of the TIE Fighter original soundtrack, they are über wunderbar?
Could you give me a link, too? :)
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One of the things the original X-Wing and TIE fighter did amazingly (which sadly was not included on the Windows remakes) was the dynamic iMuse music system, which dynamically syncronized midi music to fit the mood of the current action, instead of simply looping tracks. It also transitioned between the different types of themes amazingly well. If you could recreate that kind of feel in the game, honestly I wouldn't care too much if it's not the actual John Williams scores.
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It's currently impossible to do in FS2_Open, but you woldn't care about score not being by John Williams anyway when you'll hear the music FoTG uses. :)
It is simply amazing, high quality and very SW-ish.
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One of the things the original X-Wing and TIE fighter did amazingly (which sadly was not included on the Windows remakes) was the dynamic iMuse music system, which dynamically syncronized midi music to fit the mood of the current action, instead of simply looping tracks. It also transitioned between the different types of themes amazingly well. If you could recreate that kind of feel in the game, honestly I wouldn't care too much if it's not the actual John Williams scores.
Well the FS2 music system does play combat music when in combat, ambient music otherwise, victory music when you complete objectives.
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Yeah, there's not too much more I could ask for in terms of what tracks get triggered when with the music system. FRED controls for locking out normal or battle tracks might be a good addition if it isn't already available, but the main problem I have is that the system only allows for a track to be divided into equal portions, which is pretty much useless for any music with varying tempo or meter. I also experience slight but noticeable pauses when a normal track loops or a battle tracks segue into each other.
Ideally, each file could have its "downbeats" or transition points assigned in the table in a way that would allow for this flexibility. An adaptation of the current scheme where each track would be treated as a series of subtracks (each with its own segment length) could work really well, but even just being able to assign sample numbers for where you wanted a transition to be possible would be great.
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I agree. JW's music has been overused by SW-games in the past. I think they should do it like X-Wing and TIE Fighter did: Combine elements of JW's tracks with original ones.
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Apparently, it's believed that FS1 had a better music playback system than FS2, and there's been talk of coding support for a more FS1-style music system.