Music Quality in Games Versus Music Quality in Our Own Games

Started by Matty, February 01, 2025, 20:26:51

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Matty

Greetings.....

I am thinking about adding music to my recent game and I'm stuck with this idea:

There are games from 30 years ago whose music I can still happily listen to over and over.

Every game I've made, when I've added music I almost always turn the audio off partway through development because i get totally sick of the same tunes over and over.

Finding good music is hard, and it's more important to get it right. I can live with graphics that aren't perfect, but audio that is bad, just is terrible.

Dabz

Sound and music is one of the most key aspects of any consumable media such as gaming and film. If it's not done right, the project or whatever it is may as well wee itself up a wall!

We've all been there when we've looked for a simple sound effect, and none fits, even sound effects samples of the sound effect we're looking for... Which I feel is weird, but it is true. You know instantly when you've got it right because your ears just tell you, it just slots in and your like "Yeah"! :D

When I made a dart game for iOS, I needed a sound effect for the dart hitting the board, I've got sound libraries and a sound sample of a dart hitting the board still sounded wrong... So I recorded hitting my finger on a book, cleared the sound up in Audocity, and chucked it in the game... Absolutely perfect! :)

It's the same with movies... Like, take the Superman March, the original score by John Williams, it's Superman... Then Hans Zimmer had a go, and even though it matched up with his other comic->movie etc scores, with the latter more serious over William's generally more fun big bish bash bosh affairs, it worked in the most part, and a decent piece, but, it was never the same.

Superman films NEED John Williams score in it somewhere, because without it, it's just another bloke in a cape flying about.


^ For me, this is gorgeous, and even though it is taken from the trailer, it just screams the man of steel, Zimmers effort just doesn't have the same effect.

Sound is really powerful, a science really, get it wrong, and well, it can spoil any experience, or lesser it at least.

Dabz
Intel Core i5 6400 2.7GHz, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 (8GB), 16Gig DDR4 RAM, 256GB SSD, 1TB HDD, Windows 10 64bit

playniax

Yes, music and sound effects are important. One of the best tracks I've ever found for our games is the music in our game Dumbot, which—after many detours and complications—is finally set to be released soon. I've actually written Dumbot twice—first in Monkey, and then again in Unity, because Monkey's development was coming to an end. I had this track playing frequently during development, and it never got old, which is quite rare.

Here's a preview of Dumbot, and at the end, you can see part of the Editor mode.


Btw, the music is by Petruality and can be found HERE.