Zero-K:Situational music suggestions

Introduction

Scroll down for the really important stuff, keep reading if just curious.

Over the past year, i've gathered together a fairly thick playlist of preselected tracks that mostly fit the following criteria:

• Short, preferably under 3 minutes, optimally 1 minute.

not every track fits of course, but most try.

• Available under permissive license - that is, any flavor of CC that would allow its use in ZK.

Every track in this list is a CC one. Some are CC-BY-ND, ability to include those is debatable.

• Does not clash with current ZK tracks - that is, stuff that's mostly epic/orchestral/classic.

Given that this idea seems to have spread to minds of people not shy of implementing required bits, the time has come to sort it, tying a preliminary event-to-track relation database to help shape the final system and/or soundtrack.

The playlist itself can be found here: http://www.jamendo.com/en/list/p89077612/atomized-soundtrack-concept. You can recommend additional tracks, Jamendo or otherwise, as well.

Event Types

Current ZK supports only 5 types of events, with only 2 really of any interest:

• War. Units have been killed recently enough in notable quantities.

• Peace. Units have not been killed recently.

• Briefing. Plays before the game starts, when everyone is picking start positions and such. No tracks for this are included with ZK at present.

• Victory. Player's team has won.

• Defeat. Sad but true.

These should likely be replaced by a tag state system, where the current game state would contain several tags, and most fit track would be selected (probably with some random factor involved).

The extant states would be kept, and additional ones should be added.

The suggested possible additions actually aim at introducing event types, each with some parameters.

• "spotted(X)": Unit spotted. A significant enemy unit capable of changing the tide of battle has been deployed (optionally: for the first time)

• "deployed(X)": Unit deployed. A significant allied unit has either been built, or has entered battle - that is, fired the first shot. (optionally: for the first time)

• "fac(X)" Factory: Player has started to use factory X and its units (optionally: for the first time). Mostly relevant for plopping and early game, but possibly could be fine-tuned to also allow fac shifts.

• "selected(X)": Unit selection. A certain unit type captures a significant, possibly dominant, portion of a player's attention.

• war(X,Y): Fighting erupts, parameters are Magnitude of fighting and Attrition rate. Is player not just fighting, but fighting well? Presumably the attrition rate should be only kept for the some time, so that the early-game casualties don't cloud the severity of suddenly losing all your stuff.

• estall mstall excess reclaiming(X) overdriving(X) economy states. Is player actively devouring a wreck field, or stalling,etc?

• map(X) If you want a special tune for CCR, SSM, tit D and gey. Trololo already has one, too.

Multiple tags of the same type could be active at once. A situation description outputted by the hypothetical "analyzer" would then look something like: "fac(cloaky) war(winning) estall spotted(dante)". The actual playback widget then would select the track that fits best, with some extra weight on the spotted(dante) part.

Notes: The ability of an unit to change the tide of battle would most likely be measured in its cost compared to other units on "table". Tuning and !!SCIENCING!! will have to be done. For starters, of course, any strider could be considered significant.

Track suggestions

This is the actually important part of the article. Anyone can contribute. You can even change layout to something better because i can't wiki markup.

• unit(dante) - Hades Rebellion (http://www.jamendo.com/en/track/851829/hades-rebellion)

• unit(krow) - Challenge (http://www.jamendo.com/en/track/818603/challenge)

• fac(cloaky) peace - Rectitude (http://www.jamendo.com/en/track/851562/rectitude) and probably the rest of Kokenovem's Bushido stuff. Robot samurai ftw!

• fac(cloaky) war - Loyalty(only drums) (http://www.jamendo.com/en/track/851552/loyalty-only-drums) and the other bombastic-er Bushido tracks.

• fac(shields) peace - March (http://www.jamendo.com/en/track/818610/march)

• fac(light vehicle) peace - Mean Mechanics (http://www.jamendo.com/en/track/818604/mean-mechanics)

• fac(light vehicle) war - Rain of Blood (http://www.jamendo.com/en/track/818608/rain-of-blood)

• fac(hover) war - Anti-gravity (http://www.jamendo.com/en/track/1103297/anti-gravity)

• fac(planes) - Stormfront (http://www.jamendo.com/en/track/818599/stormfront)

• fac(planes) war - The Gift of the Gods (http://www.jamendo.com/en/track/894984/the-gift-of-the-gods) though the first 40 seconds would work well for fac(air) peace

• fac(heavy tank) peace - New Dawn (http://www.jamendo.com/en/track/818611/new-dawn)

• fac(heavy tank) war - Driving the Top Down (http://www.jamendo.com/en/track/818616/driving-the-top-down)

• war(?,?) - Dragon Fight (http://www.jamendo.com/en/track/1063176/dragon-fight)

• war(highMagnitude,losing) - Hold the Line (http://www.jamendo.com/en/track/402052/hold-the-line)

• war(highMagnitude,winning) - Together We Are Strong (http://www.jamendo.com/en/track/818602/together-we-are-strong)

• war(mediumMagnitude,even) - AMAZONA (http://www.jamendo.com/en/track/732511/amazona)

• war(mediumMagnitude,winning) - Woman Warriors (no woman cries) (http://www.jamendo.com/en/track/851429/women-warriors-no-woman-cries)

• war(lowMagnitude,losing) - The Fallen (http://www.jamendo.com/en/track/818607/the-fallen)

• war(lowMagnitude, even) - The Beginning (no female vocal) (http://www.jamendo.com/en/track/851432/the-beginning-no-female-vocal)