One of the N64 Lucasarts flight games used a pretty clever dynamic music system. Each class of ship, each character, and each planet or battle had a "theme" to it. If you were fighting on Tattoine, you'd be hearing the Tattoine desert theme and the mini-theme of whatever ship you were flying blended together. Not just overlayed, but actually rewritten dynamically to incorporate the two themes.

If TIE fighters showed up, then their theme would mix in, and you'd know they were around. TIE bombers had a slightly different theme. If Han Solo arrived in the Millenium Falcon, there would be a burst of hero music followed by the presence of the Falcon's theme in the soundtrack. I liked it because huge fights would have incredibly hectic music to them, but as you eliminnated threats and accomplished objectives, it would "calm down" until you were back to cruising. It was brilliant.

It used MIDI to accomplish this, and so the system was abandoned when MIDI became embarrassingly inadequate as game music. Now we get static CD-quality tracks instead. Another example of snobbery over genius. I'd take a real-time MIDI adventure music system over largely inappropriate Dolby 5.1 any day.

Thanks for the responses guys, robert4818 thats pretty much exactly what I meant. And Iron Chef Carnage I had no idea the music on those games was so complicated (I played them a little). I will have to check them out again sometime.

Stru - are you specifically interested in the musical aspect, or also the sound design as well? I think there are many good examples of games in which sound played a critical role (the Thief series immediately comes to mind, among many others).

-Razorguts

I've had an idea floating around in my head of a "silent" game, much like the silent movies of the 1920's, but without the integration of text every so often to push the story. It would be all-around music heavy, and each song would be created based on storyboards, some songs may contain vocals that somewhat relate to the "happenings" within the game. Most of the story would be assumed, so to speak, by the player, as it is represented by cinematics or other means tied together with music created for the scene. It doesn't affect the gameplay or anything, although you may begin to hear a certain enemy's tune playing and realize you're in danger, etc, but that's about as far as it goes there I'd think. Anyone hear of this being done before?

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Original post by Iron Chef Carnage One of the N64 Lucasarts flight games used a pretty clever dynamic music system. Each class of ship, each character, and each planet or battle had a "theme" to it. If you were fighting on Tattoine, you'd be hearing the Tattoine desert theme and the mini-theme of whatever ship you were flying blended together. Not just overlayed, but actually rewritten dynamically to incorporate the two themes. If TIE fighters showed up, then their theme would mix in, and you'd know they were around. TIE bombers had a slightly different theme. If Han Solo arrived in the Millenium Falcon, there would be a burst of hero music followed by the presence of the Falcon's theme in the soundtrack. I liked it because huge fights would have incredibly hectic music to them, but as you eliminnated threats and accomplished objectives, it would "calm down" until you were back to cruising. It was brilliant. It used MIDI to accomplish this, and so the system was abandoned when MIDI became embarrassingly inadequate as game music. Now we get static CD-quality tracks instead. Another example of snobbery over genius. I'd take a real-time MIDI adventure music system over largely inappropriate Dolby 5.1 any day.

That's exactly what I was referring to when mentioning Lucasarts games! Stru, check out any of Lucasarts games from the mid-nineties and there's a good chance it will have this feature.
My favourite was in original TIE Fighter, where it still had the music signatures that alert you to the present of ships, but they rescored the motifs so the 'Rebel' music had a ominous overtone, and the 'Imperial March' theme that played when a friendly Empire ship arrived sounded heroic. Very cool. Unfortunately the updated version just has the non-dynamic CD quality Star Wars soundtrack, which is why I vastly prefer the original.

It's true that Lucasarts fell into the multimedia trap of the early CD-ROM period of games, which is why the music in those games was uninpsired rip-offs from the films they represented, but a few years ago they reverted back to their cool dynamic music systems. I think Monkey Island 3 had dynamic music, and X-Wing Alliance did too. You might want to check those out, Stru.

Plus there's a few other examples I can think of. Baldur's Gate had dynamic music of a sort; the fight tunes could end at any point in the track and finish cleanly. No One Lives Forever had dynamic music to alternate between sneaking and gunplay. And there's always the simple approach of games like Populous 3: The Beginning; that just had two version of the same tune, a peaceful one for village building, and one with battle drums for the fights. The game mixed between the two depending on what was going on.