Re: [Octal-dev] possibly irrelevant idea

[Gary Richardson]

On Sun, 14 May 2000, Ross Litscher wrote:

> /*End Lurk*/
> 
> I was thinking the other day about how it might be nice if somehow Octal could
> be used as the sound system in games. For example (i though of this whole
> idea while playing tetris so i'll use that as the example) while
> playing a game of tetris you start to do really bad and blocks start piling 
> up.
> The closer they get to the top, the faster the tempo of the music gets. if you
> manage to do better, the tempo slows down again. That's just a simple example,
> i'm sure people would come up with much more elaborate uses. 

Actually, from what I understand there is going to be an octal lib.. the
tracker is just going to ride over top of that (actually, that was the way
I thought it would be, but I have been out of the *loop* for a bit).

> To me, it seems like one could control the music very nicely based on certain
> events that occur in a game. But this is just an idea I had, and possibly way
> off the goals of Octal. I just wanted to mention it because it's been in my
> head for about 2 weeks now.

I think the whole tempo thing is really cool. I've never thought of that
before. Music changing in real time to suit the environment is cool. It
already happens in some games, but it is more static, I think, that what
you have just sparked in me. 

Think of having elements of a theme song that have properties changed in
real time, like tempo and tone and so forth. Different events trigger
different parts of the theme. Incredible sound textures could be created,
and the music would never be the same.

I don't know how well it would actually work, but it sounds pretty fucking
cool.