Music and ambience

Contents

• Composed music beats generative music
• Music per state
• Ambience beds per weather or state
• Intensity beds
• Checklist

Composed music beats generative music

In a player test of a chiptune RPG prototype, the first music was random-note generative: a procedural melody over a procedural bass. The players' verdict: they liked 8-bit music, "but not this". Composed melodies (a pulse lead plus a triangle bass, written as real tunes) replaced it, and the complaint went away.

• Use composed tracks, either licensed (CC0 game music from OpenGameArt) or written note by note. A random walk over a scale never sounds like a song.
• Procedural "music pads" built in a sound script also rated "weak" next to real CC0 orchestral and militaristic loops in a later pass.
• Default music volume low. About 0.18 for a chiptune lead; 0.4–0.45 for orchestral loops already normalised to −18 dBFS. Players turn loud music off and never turn it back on.
• Loop length 90–120 s is enough. Trim long tracks to their first two minutes and crossfade the wrap.

Music per state

Have a small set: music_menu, music_build (home/peaceful), music_battle. Switch with a 1–2 s crossfade on state change. Don't restart a track that is already playing when the state "changes" to itself.

Big moments are stingers, not music: a fanfare for victory, a dark sting for defeat. They duck the music for their length and live in the UI group (see sound-registry.md).

Ambience beds per weather or state

Give each world state its own looping bed on a named layer, so the beds on one layer replace each other:

• Starting a bed on a layer fades out whatever else is on that layer.
• Thunder is a one-shot in the Ambience group, triggered by the weather system, with a flash. Don't shake the camera on thunder. A storm that shakes the camera every 4–13 s while a kid is placing a building is just annoying.
• The default bed is what players hear most of the time. If its id fails moderation, home is silent for everyone. Give it a fallback id and verify it first.

Intensity beds

A battle bed at a flat volume either buries the action or vanishes. Drive it from the fight:

• Count shots per second (explosions and heavy weapons count triple) and map that to 0.35 to 1.2 times the bed volume, smoothed.
• Fade the bed to 25% when the camera is far from the battle, so a fight the player isn't watching stays in the background.
• Measured result: the bed went 0.17 → 0.42 → 0.19 as a raid built and ended, which is what you want.

Expose it as Sound.ambienceLevel(name, mult) so the battle view can push a number each frame.

Checklist

• Music is composed (licensed or hand-written), never a random-note generator.
• Default music volume is low; stingers are separate from music.
• One bed per weather/state on a named layer; beds on a layer replace each other.
• The default home bed's id is verified, with a fallback.
• Battle bed volume follows intensity and distance.
• No camera shake from ambient weather.