FreeOrion

Hello all. New here but happy I've discovered that this exists (long time player of classic 4X like Space Empires GalCiv etc, short term player of MOO3 before I had to go Win7 on a huge telly and it was just too limiting to run as the res of the screen wouldn't go low enough. )

To be straight, I'm a good up and coming music producer. Been doing this for about 7 years now, briefly touched on sound design as synthesis is very much in my line of work but not actually done it in any pro or educational capacity. I'm really looking to try and make a library of sound effects just for FO, even if its just a subset, and as a bonus it would be great for my portfolio so you can be assured I'd try and make em best I can. The other thing was Music.

I wanted to ask two main things.

1. Whether its better to post here asking for the list of trigger events that SFX can be attached to (so I know exactly what SFX to make)

And 2. What kind of music would you as a community prefer. I usually make a subset of Dubstep in a professional capacity, and I think it really lends itself well to space, here's an example of what 'normal' calm game music would sound like if I made stuff in my signature style:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iTYnn8dYWU

And high level "Boss" music (I know theres no bosses as such but most games differentiate between hard battles and easy ones music-wise) would be a more cinematic version of

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdnG3jJGccE
From about 30 sec in

If neither are up your street then what would you personally prefer? I'm pretty versatile... but no House

Btw, I didn't post my stuff because I don't want mods to mistake this for crafty promotion.

There's no comprehensive list of events for sound yet available, as the 3D combat system is incomplete and not progressing at the moment. Most needed sounds will be combat-related though. There are some sounds already provided, of varying quality, though often with some problems in the editing. A greater variety of explosions, fizzles, crackles, launching sounds, blasters / impacts, etc, would all potentially be useful.
There's no one single style that would be the only thing acceptable, though in general game music of this sort should be in the background, and not feature prominent sharp loud or distracting sounds. Particularly for map / building music, things should be quite smooth and avoid sharp / sudden contrasts or distorted audio effects, IMO.
I somewhat like the first 12 seconds, but every instrument that comes in after that I dislike progressively more...
That was better, before the 53 second mark when the synth melody type stuff come in and dominates.
As long as you're releasing under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license, and make some reasonable effort to explain what purpose the music has in-game, linking to your own stuff is fine.

Hey, welcome to FO.

The Audio forum would be the best place to ask about that, and probably also contains some relevant threads.

What I'm shooting for in terms of music is a unique theme for each species, which would be played in the diplomacy screen for that species, and then several different types of battle music for each species, for instance "Stealth Battle" "Frantic Battle" "Epic Battle" and "Regular Battle", but since real life and stuff has been getting in the way of me and my bro finishing even one battle theme yet, I don't really have an example of a set of such pieces.

I prefer to create music that's more orchestral than electronic, because people typically have associations with real instruments that makes it easier to set a particular mood, though depending on the mood, electronic music (or electronic parts in mainly orchestral music) can also fill that role very well. I would prefer in general to avoid the more repetitive dubstep style, when possible. This thread contains a link to my compositions for FO. If you're up for it, pick a species and cook up a theme for it. I'd recommend the Chato'matou'Gormoshk - they probably match your preferred style of music most closely.

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Thanks for the quick replies people. All taken into consideration, made something in the last two hours for ya, but I'm not sure if it fits a certain race so I made it with the intention of being 'title music' and a little more epic than most of what I would want to make. I'm a bit of a picture buff, pictures make sounds in my head so I'm keeping an eye on the artwork subforum lol.

Its been made a little more orchestral at the preferences of the people that gave feedback so I thought I'd post it here to see if I'm on the marker. It's obviously a WIP but I'm keen to get some feedback so I can improve it.
http://snd.sc/M0C8Vi

Also @tyreth, that's a good idea, I'm gonna have a hunt in the artwork sub for my first race, I've had an Idea though. As the music folder is currently empty on sourceforge, would you be interested in creating (or having others make, I don't mind doing it) a small MIDI clip for each race to create their theme melody, or recurring melody line. Then everyone that contributes some music can still be tied with some continuity by giving them a basic racial melody line to modify.

EDIT: Done a little looking at everyone else's music, and decided that the above track is probably wrong for this kinda game. I'll make something else, no problem.

I wouldn't say that it doesn't fit with the style of FO per se, but I don't think it would fit as a title theme.

I found some of your rhythmic choices very odd - the intro makes it sound like the main line starts on a pick-up note, but when the backing harmony parts come it, it seems that it starts on the downbeat after all, which I can't quite get over.

I also disliked the style of percussion that enters at about 1:22; I associate it more with homie-G-units chillin' in the 'hood than with epic space strategy.

Apart from that though, I feel like it would fit the Laenfa pretty well, and I may hijack the main theme of it for them if I ever have time to write music again...


I'd be hesitant to add any content to Sourceforge until there's actually a use for it in-game... The Species page on the wiki has links to existing theme music for species though, and you're free to edit it with links to your own music, if you create some. To get an account for the wiki though, you'll need to pm Geoff with your desired username and an email address with which to register the account.

Also, the game uses ogg format for audio, so presumably that would be the format of anything that we committed to Sourceforge.

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Warning: Antarans in dimensional portal are closer than they appear.