Responsive Music System: Update!

Hello! Long time no see! (Or is it? I'm starting to get the whole 'time is an illusion thing' a bit more now.)

It turns out that the final year of a degree is somewhat hectic. The final year of a degree during a pandemic and huge amounts of social change? Adds a bit more complexity, it's got to be said. But we push forward!

Since the last update, I had a little bit more of a think about the music system and it's potential uses.

If you know me, or follow me on Twitter (which is pretty much as good as) you will be aware that I LOVE Hitman 2! The gameplay is great, Diana's voice is basically the audio equivalent of a fine wine and exploring the various levels can be super fun (especially as we can't do too much exploring ourselves at the moment). However, the trade off with having these really big levels is that is can be really difficult to find your target. I spent so much time looking at the map, trying to find staircases or routes to a particular area, or I would basically stay in instinct mode and just wander in the general direction of the floating red figure. Eventually, I'd bumble my way into their general vicinity where I would panic, punch them in the face, get shot at and then run away to the nearest exit where I'd be whisked off by some form of public transport. (Good fun, but I don't think Diana would be too pleased.)

It occurred to me that there could be a better way of guiding the player towards their target by utilising the music!

So the plan for my responsive music system adapted slightly! The general idea is to have a system where music could respond to how far away a player is from their target, therefore acting as a gentle guide in the right direction.

Taking the basic idea of the system that I had, I decided to have 3 main properties that could control the music: 1) Vertical displacement from a given target, 2) Horizontal displacement from a given target and 3) Gameplay status (I decided to go for 2 statuses, Stealth or Escape).

Then I got into the nitty gritty - how the system was going to work!

Music will first be split into states and then into high parts, low parts and percussion. Each part has its own playlist container but all of the playlist containers for one state will be triggered by the same event, to allow the mix of element to change while still being musically in time. The individual playlist container's volumes will be connected to a player's vertical and horizontal displacement, via an RTPC curve, with an 'ideal balance' of all the parts being achieved when a player is close to their given target.

It was important that the connections between the player and the music were pretty obvious and intuitive - higher music for when you're too high and lower music for when you're too low, etc. - so that players didn't have to spend too long trying to decipher what the music was trying to tell them. For this reason, I chose to have my percussion mapped to Horizontal Displacement. Originally, I had thought of corresponding melodic elements to horizontal displacement but, as I was writing music designed to loop for long periods of time, melodic elements were a bit few and far between, so the connection may not have been obvious enough to make use of.

Hitman 2 is also a big influence on the musical direction of the project - particularly the Sniper Assassin music! I really like way the acoustic instruments mix with the more sound design-y elements and I'm especially a fan of the way filters are used on the percussion to add a bit more texture and variety.

I've been playing Ratchet and Clank a bit recently too (what a range, right?) and really liked the pause menu music. The side-chained synths and short attack bass provided an almost dance-like feel which made the music really enjoyable to listen to. The arrangement would also change quite a lot while utilising elements from earlier on, so the music always felt new but familiar.

These were both things that I was keen to include in my own music, so I've focused on writing in small sections, with phrases that can be reused in different arrangements. This will also allow the music to change between states fairly quickly during gameplay.

Next up on the agenda, after a final few tweaks to the mix, is getting everything implemented into Wwise and then connecting it all to my interface in Unity!