Home › Forums › Film Scoring › Film Composers Forum › Writing music for videogames
- This topic has 4 replies, 2 voices, and was last updated 17 years, 2 months ago by
yerik60.
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February 20, 2008 at 2:29 pm #23793
yerik60
ParticipantHello!
I have just found this forum. Looks interesting, and I´m a little amazed that so few have responded to it. I´m a 48 year old musician from Norway. I have done a lot of things, from conducting schoolbands to play in rock and jazzbands. I have arranged a lot of music. But my main interest nowadays is to write music for the PC game Neverwinternights. This is a rolepaying game with a fantastic utility where you can make your own mods. You can write new stories, script them, add new sounds and music. I think it´s unnessecary to say that writing soundtracks for games has become a big buissness nowadays. That´s why I´m a little surprised that no one has posted anything here yet. Well maybe we can do something about that. I will shortly come back with some links to some works I have done for this game. I´m using Finale for this work. Not because I will claim that this is the best program, but because I have used it since the 90´ees!
Hope to get in touch with a lot of you soon!
February 20, 2008 at 3:27 pm #35277yerik60
ParticipantHello again!
I have used this piece for a forest scene in one NWN module. It is a sparsely orchestrated piece for strings, harp and woodwinds.
http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/2/20/1771430/mus_greenheart.mp3
I welcome comments, and maybe a dicussion?
February 21, 2008 at 9:24 am #35278fontadoni
ParticipantWelcome yerik, it’s good to have you here.
I’m a 30 year old electric guitarist and composer from Costa Rica, but currently living in Massachusetts, USA. My interests are mainly in contemporary classical music, electronic music and jazz, although I still listen to a lot of pop and rock as well.
Thanks for posting the mp3, sounds really good! What program are you using to generate sound? It would be very interesting to hear it along with the game, just to hear it in context. I am not familiar with the game (I am not very familiar with video games in general), but it sounds like it’s a very complex one. I was not aware that it was possible to mod video games, is this like an open source video game or something similar?
I used Finale for a long time, but switched to Sibelius after a music copying job I had to do, and I have to say they both have good and bad things. I think once you master one of them it’s probably a good idea to stick with it. But I do wish there was a more flexible notation application out there.
What program do you use to synchronize the audio and video. I have recently purchased Apple Logic Studio (I am really glad I did). It’s a great program (now I have to learn how to use it, ha ha).
I am glad you found the site and I hope you keep coming back, I am the owner. I have not done anything with it for a long time. I tried really hard for a while, but it has been difficutl to get people interested, so I stopped trying.
We’ll be relaunching the site with a slightly different concept and look soon, more technically oriented to computers, software, etc. One of the persons who will be working with me is really talented with music applications so I’m sure that will make a difference.
Coming back to your topic, do you have any screenshots of the scenes you are orchestrating? Post them if you do.
Talk to you soon.
February 21, 2008 at 1:13 pm #35279yerik60
ParticipantHello fontadoni!
Thank you for your reply!
Well, as you see, I have pasted a screenshot from one of my modules.
The game is delivered with an application called Aurora Engine. With this program you can use all the codes in the game, and add graphics, sound and scripts. It is not open source, you cannot alter the exe file. But this engine makes you able to make new storylines and environments. The music can be added to your scenes as you please, just by adding them to the different areas. You can script it so that the music changes when certain things happen. You use mp3 files, you just have to convert them to .bmu, the format that the game use. That is really no problem, you just change the fileextention.
I use Finale, latest version, with Garritan Personal Orchestra, these sounds are as you probabely know included in Finale now.
To edit my audiofiles I am using Sony Soundforge. A very easy to use mastering program, that lets me compress and add reverb and so on.
Hope I have answered some of your questions. I will most likely be back soon with more filelinks and stuff.
Talk to you soon!
February 21, 2008 at 1:45 pm #35280yerik60
ParticipantHello again!
Here is another one.
[audio src="http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/2/20/1771430/mus_elegia.mp3" /]
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