[pythian] Re: PROJECT - Music (secret tracks)
- From: Darryl Long <dlong@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: pythian@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 27 May 2003 10:54:07 -0400
> I will call this as "enviroment-connected-music".
We usually call it "Environmental Soundtrack" here.
> But the player should have also the possibility to choose the
> track he prefers amongst those ones the game has got (I will
> call it "player's-choice-music").
If we do this, we are eliminating all the gameplay benefits of the
environmental soundtrack. If these are our own tracks, but no longer
connected to the gameplay, it will not be as cool. For instance, you might
have a "relaxing" song playing in the dungeon.
The benefit of letting the player selecting his own music tracks is that he
can have his favourite band playing, which he likely prefers over our music.
There would be no advantage to playing our music if it wasn't connected to
the gameplay.
> Moreover I think there should be "secret tracks", which are blocked.
> It will be like a "reward", or a "prize"...
> I think it could be a nifty feature.
> What do you think about?
I like the idea of rewards and prizes, but given our distribution model it
may not be appreciated. If people spend their time and money downloading
something, they want to have access to it. So I would suggest packaging the
extra MP3's as an optional download.
Finally, to solve the first problem (of losing our environmental soundtrack)
we should encode all our music with a header that describes the name and
usage of the song. For instance, a song might be encoded with a BATTLE and
DUNGEON tag that tells the engine to play the song in battle and in
dungeons. In this way, even bonus tracks the player downloads can be used
in environmental context.
Ok, so maybe music isn't the best thing to download since it's big and has
restricted use. What about player skins, player models, weapons and that
kind of stuff?
Darryl
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