Zero-K Original Game Soundtrack (Update May 10, 2023)

ye,
the sound i have in mind is with a little bit of twang laeft, because that is the "epic-western-aka-desertlandscape"-signifier to me. But it should be more distorted as in the examples you posted, while at the same time being more in your face.
What i posted sounds like 50s western, we need xxxxxx-sci-fi, but with kind of the same vibe.


(Just a side-question: I take from your answers that you are pretty into that guitar-jargon... Did I maybe just jump in when you wanted to record the guitars for yourself or what?) :D

got the files,
sorry i was busy for a while and totally forgot about it. will send results soon!

oh right lol, I was about to ask if this project is still on :D
Gimme 3 hours or a bit more, then I will send the reverb at least. I am a bit busy with fighting academics, my chronic sleeplesness and some widgets at the moment, so actually recording the parts will take some time...
Reverb on sketch is next on my DO-IT-NOW!!!!-list.

Sweet! Yeah and thanks for trying man. I'm excited for it.

I've been composing all day today.

I think have 2 more new song ideas, I wanna say there's like 7 or so total now. I want to clean up the ideas some more before I share them, hopefully next weekend or after.

At this point, I'm balancing the thought of if I should be recycling or creating more motifs.

Yeah good advice, I'm probably gonna start explicitly work on finishing songs before starting anymore.

I'm out visiting family this weekend but I have the Google links and will check it out first chance I get! (Hopefully tonight or tomorrow evening).

Thank you! Super stoked for it!

Thanks Anarchid! I really appreciate that! SC is definitely is one of the biggest influence (and need to be careful not to borrow to much from xD).

Sometimes it just feels like I'm putting my favorite Sci-Fi in a blender and see what tastes good.

I hope someday it will also give someone else the same vibe, but to scout for supers ffs xD

Is there a downloadable package to mod this in for testing?

GoogleFrog - Thank you so much for writing the code to pull the music in as an option. I really appreciate that. This is awesome and I'm learning a ton about writing music and definitely with integrating it into a game engine. I was slightly discouraged at first by the amount of work ahead still to make it good, but I'm ready to tackle more now. Thank you, really!

Hard observations:

1. Most peace songs are cut off after ~1:30 on average in multiplayer, and combat songs are essentially perpetually triggered after (making 3-4 minute peace tracks pointless)

2. There aren't enough combat tracks (3 only) so the existing ones are recycled too quickly

3. Track volumes are not normalized or optimized to be audible when combined with the combat sound effects.

4. There is no way to play the new menu track atm.

Potential solutions:

1. Write all new peace tracks to be ~2min. Stylize latter half of existing peace tracks to be combat tracks.

1. Up the requirement to trigger the combat playlist so glaive on glaive fight doesn't have ultra intense "Braaaahms".

Sprung or GoogleFrog, is it possible to differentiate different levels of combat? ie, skirmish vs all-out war?

If you point me down the general direction, I could possible code this and submit it as PR.

2. I will focus on writing strictly combat tunes now, even though I love writing peace tracks more as it's quite a bit more relaxing as a hobby xD

2. Write longer combat tracks as the most popular playstyle (big teams) tend to stay in that mode longer. That being said, 40minutes of deeply intensive combat tracks with war drums could be grating and stressful after a while. This creates a want for separate triggers between skirmish and war tracks.

3. I will take all the tracks and run them through a mastering pass to normalize them to each other and try to use the existing tracks as a reference to minimize the amount of work needed incorporate the new tracks.

GoogleFrog - Sounds reasonable. The main thing I'm trying to accomplish is be more justified when changing to war tracks. Right now the engine is a bit sensitive and triggering on glaives dying to llt or swift getting shot down during early scouting.

This results in 2 minutes of peace tracks and 18-38 minutes of war tracks for the average game. Given that the new music accounts for raids, I paced the ratio to be about ~4-5 minutes peace and remainder be war tracks as determined by the engine.

Would the simplest solution be raising threshold for war tracks? How would you approach this?

Lastly, what would it take to add a crossfade function to the music player? That adds a surprising amount of polish to the transition when I tried it via my music software.

quote: Goes very well with the Blusy/Western guitar sound I'm going for

Why Blusy/Western? I suppose the track names already hint at this, but I wouldn't say I'm a fan of the tones of the guitar in Unknown Frontier, Crater Lakes, and Dirtbag Outlaws specifically because they give off an old western atmosphere, which I'm not really sure fits Zero-K, or at least fits other aspects of the tracks. That's just my opinion, of course.

In contrast I do quite like the tone and overall usage of the guitar in Dreams Of Cipher for example (though the track seems unused at the moment.)