Lix - Original Music

Ramon · December 22, 2015, 04:48:11 PM

I only recently heard Rubix was composing for Lix, and since I didn't want to derail Raymanni's thread about his new tilesets (where mention of Rubix's music emerged again), I decided to open a separate thread for it. This is the post that made me do this:

Quote from: RubiX on December 22, 2015, 04:08:41 PM
For those who never heard it, here is the first song for Lix I created a few months ago. Its all done from my digital piano. If the future of the game does include music in the D port, then i'm definitely up for creating more tunes.
This was my first full attempt at writing a game tune, so im no professional remember. It just worked out quite well I think.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maehL8t9zKI
(I put the music onto a forest level just so you can get a feel of how it would feel while playing)

This is really awesome, Rubix. Hearing it for the first time and imagining it as music in Lix itself, it fits wonderfully. The mood is great. I'm aware that it is not a final version, but I have some notions of how it could fit even better.

Since I'm a musician myself and this would be a welcome side-project, I was wondering whether we could work on a Lix soundtrack together, a collaboration. When I first read that you made some music, I wrote a little catchy song myself for Lix; not for a theme specifically though

Other than that, I thought it wouldn't hurt to have an official "Lix-Music" topic with all relevant information in here.

Proxima · December 22, 2015, 05:08:31 PM

That is beautiful. Should definitely be put into the game

namida · December 22, 2015, 05:12:45 PM

Something sounds a bit off at around the 1 minute mark, but apart from that it's a very nice track indeed. I remember hearing that the absence of music was by design, but I never understood the reason for it (after all, if an individual player doesn't like having music, there can simply be an option to turn it off).

Ryemanni · December 22, 2015, 05:40:42 PM

I always play some Lemmings music on the background while playing Lix.

ccexplore · December 22, 2015, 07:37:56 PM

Quote from: namida on December 22, 2015, 05:12:45 PMI remember hearing that the absence of music was by design

I should let Simon chime in, but I always thought it was more because of lack of good music (until quite recently anyway with the contributions from Rubix). It's possible that "by design" was claimed as a byproduct of that condition.

Copyright would probably prevent direct copying/inclusion of Lemmings music, but, given that a good subset are purposely rearrangements of classical music and folk tunes that are old enough to go into public domain, I imagine if someone did their own rearrangements, that could probably work for Lix without copyright issues. [Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer.] Then again, I don't think Simon is looking for that kind of music anyway for Lix.

Simon · December 22, 2015, 08:46:33 PM

Why no music in current Lix: This is largely historical.

In the earlier years, I found that I was playing my own music in the background anyway. This fits into a workflow where you play for 1 minute at most, then terminate and work on the code again. At this time, there were no regular users who would eventually come back to me and strongly suggest music.

Thus, including music became very low-priority. There was the Dumb plugin for A4 to play tracker music, but A4 didn't come bundled with it. I never looked deeply into it. Also, I wouldn't want to ask the composers of existing music whether they'd be fine with releasing as public domain. This was the rationale around 2008, I have put off caring about it since. It's one of the problems from wanting to release absolutely everything as public domain. (It shouldn't be a problem, rant available on demand.)

I recognize that lack of music is immediately obvious to new players. Much more obvious than whatever details I care about, provided the game runs reasonably smoothly for them.

Including ogg is fatter than including tracked music. That isn't problematic yet, because there isn't yet a ton of music to include, and there will be several solutions anyway. (Include only some pieces, include lo-fi version, ..., make hi-fi version available as extra download.)

-- Simon

Ramon · December 22, 2015, 11:46:47 PM

Quote from: namida on December 22, 2015, 05:12:45 PM
Something sounds a bit off at around the 1 minute mark, but apart from that it's a very nice track indeed. I remember hearing that the absence of music was by design, but I never understood the reason for it (after all, if an individual player doesn't like having music, there can simply be an option to turn it off).

It sounds to me as if the sax is not in sync with the beat - coming marginally late. Nothing that can't be fixed, I assume Rubix recorded his keyboard while playing the various voices.

So, Simon - you're saying you'd welcome an original/custom song mix for Lix?

mobius · December 23, 2015, 01:17:00 AM

I agree with everyone; excellent composition.

The only thing I heard slightly off was the sax during the middle part [not the whole sax] but it wasn't very bad. Overall the song was really nice, and fits the game perfectly; I look forward to hear more!!

and in this video I see; the forest set, and it looks to work perfectly. [and looks very nice btw] Was it fixed and I just missed it? Last I heard it wasn't usable for some reason.

Braden12 [Deleted] · December 23, 2015, 02:48:06 AM

Quote from: Simon on December 22, 2015, 08:46:33 PM
In the earlier years, I found that I was playing my own music in the background anyway. This fits into a workflow where you play for 1 minute at most, then terminate and work on the code again. At this time, there were no regular users who would eventually come back to me and strongly suggest music.

Heh, that's cool! I'm not sure if it would make me weird, but now when I play orig. Lemmings, I can't help but turn on rap in another window/source (other varieties too, but mostly rap) while simply enabling only the SFX in-game. I know what you mean! But would anyone else enjoy playing Lix while listening to hardcore styles of music?

Simon · December 23, 2015, 07:16:41 AM

Quote from: Ramon on December 22, 2015, 11:46:47 PM
So, Simon - you're saying you'd welcome an original/custom song mix for Lix?

Yes, with the following reservations.

The C++/A4 branch is feature-frozen, the D port will take 1-2 months until singleplayer is passable, probably again a year until the remaining things are far enough to replace.

Thus, don't rush things. I've got this feeling of negligience already when Raymanni delivers high-quality tilesets, and I don't have any new shippable code.

(I have to reply to Raymanni again with more detailed comments on the sets. Lix and Neolemmix both need this feature direly: two animations per triggered trap -- a quiet motion or blinking light while idle, and the normal effectful one while eating a lem. The gory maw is obviously dangerous, but the monkey and the acid trap could benefit from a very simple idling animation.)

Ogg works out of the box; I will ship the sound effects as oggs. Tracker formats are unsupported right now, but smaller, maybe preferred. Don't go out of your way for them; do what you know best.

QuoteSomething sounds a bit off at around the 1 minute mark

QuoteIt sounds to me as if the sax is not in sync with the beat - coming marginally late.

Rubix: Please fix the little bug in the music, that would be much appreciated as icing on this great piece. With namida, Ramon and möbius all reporting the same bug with the sax 1 minute in, maybe you'll find their reports more useful than mine.

-- Simon

RubiX · December 23, 2015, 04:11:50 PM

Thanks all.

As for that sax part, me and Simon did talk about this before too. It was actually intentional to offset the sax. Backing instruments on orchestral music you will very often hear coming in at different intervals of the measure instead of everything always happening at the downbeat. I was going for that effect
But I understand it from everyones point of view why it may seem to be a bug. I still have the composition i can load back into FL Studio where I can change things. I'll do a change to it if everyone would rather that happen. No worries.

RubiX · December 23, 2015, 04:17:02 PM

Oh and Ramon, if you can figure out how we could try do work together, im all for it. Would be great fun. Have you tried FL Studio? (also known as fruity loops) for PC. Check out youtube vids of it, after all the software ive tried, this is by far the most awsome way to create music. I'tll be the one I will continue to make music in.

Proxima · December 23, 2015, 04:26:05 PM

It sounds fine to me as it is.

Ramon · December 23, 2015, 04:38:57 PM

Quote from: RubiX on December 23, 2015, 04:17:02 PM
Oh and Ramon, if you can figure out how we could try do work together, im all for it. Would be great fun. Have you tried FL Studio? (also known as fruity loops) for PC. Check out youtube vids of it, after all the software ive tried, this is by far the most awsome way to create music. I'tll be the one I will continue to make music in.

Are you kidding, FL Studio was my program of choice in my early teens to create remixes and all kinds of stuff

I even have a webpage that still hosts those remixes...

I've used 3, 6 and 8. So, in essence, we will be able to exchange the project files and do work on each other, so to say. Currently, I simply wrote music in Guitar Pro (MIDI), which can be effortlessly transferred to FL for fitting instrumentation.

Maybe you could give me any of your IMs you have, like Skype, or we could simply regularly talk on the irc channel.

namida · December 23, 2015, 04:50:12 PM

FL Studio is awesome!

A few years back one of my friends introduced me to it, and we'd just create simple beats and have rap battles. I believe one of my compositions is still up on Youtube somewhere, I was gonna do something with it but never did. Lemme see if I can find it...

EDIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Kjp-rzgkhY