Music

St Leo · January 28, 2001, 21:12

Part of CivII's greatness was its amazing award-winning soundtrack. I am pretty sure Jeff Briggs has the left for BHG, but Firaxis will probably still pull through. Do you guys have any content suggestions with respect to use of existing compositions?

P.S. The expansions added a couple scenario tracks that were played in the main game. Some were ear-splitting (X-Com, Mars) while others fit the general motif (Jihad, Jules Verne, possibly Great War and Civil War).

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St. Leo
http://www.sidgames.com/hosted/ziggurat/
http://www.sidgames.com/forums/

January 28, 2001, 21:31

Hmmm... How about something with words? "Masters of War" by Bob Dylan, Perhaps, or "Swastika Eyes" by Primal Scream.

Sirotnikov · January 30, 2001, 14:29

Uh uh, no words.

Probably some classical and mostly international native music. Just make sure they are performed well either by a real orchestra or a really good synth.

Ralf · January 30, 2001, 17:33

Well, I leave this one up to Firaxis. However I have one tiny request though.

The very first version of Civ came out on that old Amiga platform (i think). It took about 5-7 minutes to render a new map on those 68000 7.14 Mhz machines. Obviously, some good musical entertainment was needed in order to ease-off the inpatience.

That Amiga Civ-version had a great map-rendering intro-tune. I was wondering: couldnt Firaxis try to find this tune, and then make a good updated version of it, and then place it in the main-game together with all the other optional tunes.

colossus · January 31, 2001, 21:49

When I play Civ2, I usually listen to some music(my favourite CD). I really hope that I could still do this,i.e.no CD is needed for Civ3 gameplay.

As a corollary,I believe that the best music is the one chosen by us, do you agree?
[This message has been edited by colossus (edited February 01, 2001).]

Vitmore The Great · February 1, 2001, 00:09

I agree that the music should be of an international flavour, and possibly some classical pieces. The piece of music that first came into my head was "Mars" by Gustav Holst, then it seemed to me too much of a narrative type piece. The music in Civ III should have a good rhythm that could be repeated (a la Civ II). It would seem more "appropriate".

Vitmore

Sarxis · February 1, 2001, 15:19

Would be nice if the default music was era/nation relevant. Meaning: if you are in the 'classical' period and you are playing as a European civ, you get some classical music playing in the background.

Of course, we still need to be able to pick the track playing in the background, or just put in a CD and play our favorite selection from our favorite collection.

bagdar · February 10, 2001, 14:42

I've never liked the idea of background music, but anyway, here's my idea: Let's keep the Original Civ Theme (by Jeff Briggs, I suppose), and the failure music, which happens to be the beginning theme from the second movement of Beethoven's Third Symphony. Keep away from the Drums in Civ II, and the silly stuff from CtP. By the way, Sid himself is "an occasional composer" -you know, his CPU Bach-, so why doesn't he contribute with some music?

Biddles · February 10, 2001, 22:50

Get the guy who did the soundtrack for the movie"The Rock", that had fantastic music. I love that tune at the start where they steal the chemical weapons. Inspiring, majestic music like that should be included. Classical music as well. The stuff out of CTP was corny, SMAC music was better, but not inspiring enough. Imagine declaring war during the 19th century and the 1812 overture starts playing!
[This message has been edited by Biddles (edited February 10, 2001).]

February 12, 2001, 18:31

I'd like to play my MP3s while playing the games... listening to certain Death Metal tunes while conquering the world must be a joy!!

TacticalGrace · February 13, 2001, 01:18

quote:

Originally posted by St Leo on 01-28-2001 08:12 PM
Part of CivII's greatness was its amazing award-winning soundtrack.

you have got to be joking...
some of the music that came with civ2 were quite evil. I mean really constipated pieces.

now some of the stuff in fantastic worlds was pretty good (Jules Verne was great).

I think it would be good of the music relected the age that you in:
ancient age - drums, vocal (tribal sound)
mediaeval age - pipes, lute (greensleeves or something)
renaissance - orchestral

what would be quite cool (and I know this ain't gonna happen folks) would be a radio-type background in modern age with snippets of a radio-host/DJ. imagine a polite broadcast at the invention radio. By the time you have helicopters you have "Good Morning Vietnam" style presenter.

To help you understand what I'm thinking check out the first 2 minutes of "Contact". It would be like that but in reverse.

As I say, it ain't never gonna happen. but I can dream.

Of course if the game was very customisable I could implement this kind of thing myself.
[This message has been edited by TacticalGrace (edited February 12, 2001).]

Biddles · February 13, 2001, 07:39

I agree that they should have a built in WinAmp. The ability to select your own Mp3's would be cool. Also the ability to compose a music theme group. So when you declare war - one mp3, peace is another, you get the picture. I think that coupled with a good standard music track would keep everyone happy.

TacticalGrace · February 13, 2001, 09:18

Yes my first thought was MP3 but there are certain technical problems with that.

(1) MP3 decoding (unless you have some dedicated hardware) takes up processor time which as we all know is still needed for the game. As processor power increases this will continue to ease in theory but in reality you can always use more processing to get better AI.

(2) If you just play MP3 music in the background you will sometimes run into trouble because the MP3 player isn't given processor time slots on a guarenteed basis so you can gets breaks in the music when the processor is busy. This might be solvable if it's built into the game so that time slots are ensured.

still these problems might not be as serious as I think they are especially if MP3 support is built into the game.

Grumbold · February 13, 2001, 14:28

I'd be delighted if you could play without the CD (after an initial validation check, if you insist) but will settle for any vocal-free background music, preferably classical. It always feels good to have Night on Bare Mountain, Mars or Ride of the Valkyrie playing when you launch your major offensive

February 13, 2001, 15:22

Heroes of Might and Magic III uses MP3s, and it works just fine on my system. so I don't see why we shouldn't have it in Civ3... system requirements again? argh...

EnochF · February 14, 2001, 01:44

It can be done. Age of Kings incorporates seamless MP3 taunts and sound files. (Of course, they don't have to worry about playing them continuously, but it's a place to start.)

Biddles · February 14, 2001, 06:59

If it comes to that then just decode your Mp3's into .WAV format (can be done with most Mp3 players) and stick them in instead. That way you don't need the processor to decode the music (Just a lot more RAM

- Kinda a catch 22, but RAM's a lot cheaper than a processor upgrade).

I would say that a built in winamp (which can play either) would be the way to go.

As long as they include list like I said above, that is.

monolith94 · February 15, 2001, 18:34

Winamp, huh? Well, they wouldn't include that, I don't think, especially considering that Winamp is copyrighted and stuff. . .

Just make it good, Firaxis, make it good!