A People's History of Dynamic Soundtracks in Games

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Populus - tempo reflected health level of your empire
Lumines - each level had a skin with different music and sounds in it. Some levels would play a different note in a progression for chain reactions (IIRC)
Spore - procedural music

― UART variations (ex machina), Wednesday, 24 January 2007 18:17 (eighteen years ago)

Civ 4 - music would upgrade w/ civ level of your empire, from Early Music thru Baroque/Romantic to Modernism. (more info)

Electroplankton - whole friggin' thing

― kingfish moose tracks (kingfish 2.0), Wednesday, 24 January 2007 18:25 (eighteen years ago)

Rez - you controlled the music, or at least could introduce beats when and where you wanted and it always sounded right!

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Wednesday, 24 January 2007 18:32 (eighteen years ago)

i was sorta thinking of getting civ4 for the mac, but i heard it sux

― phil-two (phil-two), Wednesday, 24 January 2007 19:27 (eighteen years ago)

horseshit, the game is great

― kingfish moose tracks (kingfish 2.0), Wednesday, 24 January 2007 19:34 (eighteen years ago)

is it out for mac yet?

― s1ocki (slutsky), Wednesday, 24 January 2007 19:41 (eighteen years ago)

Yes, but it don't run on PPC right?

― UART variations (ex machina), Wednesday, 24 January 2007 19:56 (eighteen years ago)

In Bully, the music changes depending on where you are, what kind of transportation you're using, what type of person is chasing you (greaser, jock, cop, etc.), and so forth. It's pretty seamless.

Obviously sports games have incredibly dynamic soundtracks, although not "musical" ones for the most part.

― polyphonic (polyphonic), Wednesday, 24 January 2007 20:50 (eighteen years ago)

Didn't True Crime do something where the songs it played matched the action?

― Ste (Fuzzy), Wednesday, 24 January 2007 21:20 (eighteen years ago)

Lucasarts did this very well with the midi stuff in their earlier games. As far as I remember, they called it I-Muse or something similar. Worked extremely well in X-Wing and its successors, it sounded pretty seamless to my young, overexcited ears.

― teh_kit (g-kit), Wednesday, 24 January 2007 22:22 (eighteen years ago)

I think you guys are not really understanding dynamic... I mean, just changing to a different song is not very richly dyanmic.

Also: http://www.streettech.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1638

― UART variations (ex machina), Wednesday, 24 January 2007 22:25 (eighteen years ago)

Yea, gkit otm

― UART variations (ex machina), Wednesday, 24 January 2007 22:25 (eighteen years ago)

horseshit, the game is great

i mean the mac version. lots of bugs and super super super super slow

― phil-two (phil-two), Wednesday, 24 January 2007 22:42 (eighteen years ago)

No idea about the mac version.

Lucasarts Imuse was great, altho folks said they had trouble later on when the later versions of Xwing/Tie Fighter used sampled music rather than the generated stuff.

― kingfish moose tracks (kingfish 2.0), Wednesday, 24 January 2007 22:53 (eighteen years ago)

Its pretty fucking sad if people can't port a turn based strategy game properly.

― UART variations (ex machina), Wednesday, 24 January 2007 23:15 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, Imuse kinda fell down when they stopped using midi. I'm mainly thinking of X-Wing vs TIE Fighter, which was a pretty tragic game altogether, given the fantastic track record of the X-Wing series.

― teh_kit (g-kit), Wednesday, 24 January 2007 23:21 (eighteen years ago)

Yes, but it don't run on PPC right?

-- UART variations (jo...), January 24th, 2007 7:56 PM. (ex machina) (later)

DONT MATTER TO ME NO MORE WOOT WOOT.

― s1ocki (slutsky), Wednesday, 24 January 2007 23:46 (eighteen years ago)

Banjo-Kazooie did this

― Curt1s St3ph3ns, Thursday, 25 January 2007 01:29 (eighteen years ago)

someone should graffiti that message everywhere... especially after violent political actions

― s1ocki (slutsky), Thursday, 25 January 2007 05:31 (eighteen years ago)

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/126/368979837_77c082986e_o.png

― TOMBO7 (TOMBOT), Thursday, 25 January 2007 15:02 (eighteen years ago)

on the old GTA for the PC, the type of car you stole would drastically affect the way the music sounded, and you could just put whatever onto a CD and use that as the "radio." I enjoyed this feature a great deal.

― TOMBO7 (TOMBOT), Thursday, 25 January 2007 15:04 (eighteen years ago)

I guess the way the DJs refer to things you've just done in GTA:SA kinda counts here.

― God Bows to Meth (noodle vague), Thursday, 25 January 2007 17:10 (eighteen years ago)

HL2 has some great guitar music kick in just before you encounter the gunship.

― Darramouss! (Darramouss), Thursday, 25 January 2007 17:14 (eighteen years ago)

Oh yeah, I forgot about the car-specific EQing in GTA

― kingfish moose tracks (kingfish 2.0), Thursday, 25 January 2007 17:45 (eighteen years ago)

Oh I hate the interactive music in HL2 - there I am tondering along all happily when suddenly this loud scary aphex-type music kicks in which a) makes me jump; ii) warns me that something terrifying is happening so I get TEH FEAR; and 3) distracts me from dealing effectively with the terrible nasty.

I could just turn it off.

― ledge (ledge), Thursday, 25 January 2007 17:58 (eighteen years ago)

The newsreader thing in GTA:SA is really really clever, and adds to the believability of the game quite a bit.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Thursday, 25 January 2007 18:00 (eighteen years ago)

For the first time the other day I heard Axl on K-DST saying something about Truth's weed farm going up in smoke, but I was getting out of the vehicle before I realised so I missed the lols. Either Axl or Sly & Robbie are my fave DJ, I think.

― God Bows to Meth (noodle vague), Thursday, 25 January 2007 18:19 (eighteen years ago)

Ha, the bit on the reggae station soundtrack where sly and robbie are arguing about weed, and they keep coughing is probably the funniest bit in the entire game.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Thursday, 25 January 2007 18:28 (eighteen years ago)

Cluckin' Bell ads always make me very happy. And that interview with the Sly Stallone/Arnie-type movie star on WRTC.

― God Bows to Meth (noodle vague), Thursday, 25 January 2007 18:34 (eighteen years ago)

I'm disappointed that no one's been able to hack into or extract any of the audio files for the PC version of the game.

― kingfish moose tracks (kingfish 2.0), Thursday, 25 January 2007 19:05 (eighteen years ago)

"To win the game of football, or life, you have to annihilate everything in your path, in a blind rage"

― ledge (ledge), Thursday, 25 January 2007 20:15 (eighteen years ago)

more fun here

some of these might work as category ideas

― kingfish moose tracks (kingfish 2.0), Thursday, 25 January 2007 20:46 (eighteen years ago)

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