Time to Face the Music

We’ve been working with Stan LePard (who did the music for King of Dragon Pass) on music and sound effects for some time, but it was only this week that he delivered them all in a form that’s playable with our sound engine (Wwise).

The file was 715 MB, which dwarfs the rest of the game. But that was before doing any audio compression, and it looks like audio will take no more than about 100 MB.

I had recently made sure that every interactive scene had music, and hooked up some of the user interface sounds. But there were a lot that weren’t in, particularly related to transitions and combat. So this week has been a scramble to play the appropriate sound and find audio bugs.

According to QA,

I get so annoyed when I’m away from my phone long enough while writing a bug that the phone switches off and the music stops. I’m like, where’d the pretty music go?!

We’re still experimenting with compression levels and formats (both for sound quality and performance). I have been so busy making it work that I really haven’t had a chance to listen critically with headphones on, but I hope to do that soon.

Author: David

Creator of Six Ages and King of Dragon Pass

15 thoughts on “Time to Face the Music”

  1. I’m glad you decided to go with Stan for the music. The KODP music is so perfect and memorable. Looking forward to hearing it in the new game.

  2. Is there a reason to not go with the highest possible sound quality for the PC version?
    I can see the need to save space for mobile versions and what not, but even completely uncompressed 700MB for music isn’t overly much for a PC game.

    1. As someone who is constantly monitoring free space on his laptop, yes. ~600 MB is well worth saving.

      1. Your case seems to be rather niche, David. I think there’s more people with higher end audio systems than those seriously constrained on disk space, and these people would be really unhappy if audio had some crackling or sound artifacts like KODP did, it’s 2017 after all. For example, titanfall games have got over 50gb of audio that’s compressed in the installer, and then being decompressed during installation, and no one is complaining about it. I’m sure every potential PC customer here is just hoping to get a good experience on PC. Herocraft’s port of KODP on PC was somewhat low effort, and left a sour taste in my mouth, so i’m hoping to get an interface that’s tailored to PC, but it’s hard to keep hopes up when even things such as audio that have been already ‘paid for’ and don’t need to get cut, are being somewhat crippled for dubious reasons.

        If those 715mbs were refeering to the weight of master files, then it’s probably fine, and to a certain point lossy compression’s fine as well. It’s just that no one would like to see 128kpbs ogg’s in 2017 to get a retro feel, and i’m hoping that’s not happening.

        1. FWIW, the first hit I found for Titanfall disk size said, “For those of us installing our games on relatively small solid state drives for performance reasons, 48GB seems completely outrageous.” [https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/178301-why-the-pc-version-of-titanfall-is-48gb]

          We’re absolutely not going for a retro feel in graphics or audio. And aim to have a great experience on any platform the game plays on.

  3. Ah hah! So you *are* planning an iOS version.. I’ll clear some space on my iPad for some Gloranthan groovy tunes 🙂

    1. Wait, I thought Six Ages was going to be for the iPad from the very start! Will there be a Windows version first?

          1. Just trying to figure out what platform SA is going to be on. I’d always assumed iOS, since that was KoDP’s sweet spot. But now I’m confused.

  4. Honestly, I never liked KoDP musics, I always play with all sounds off. I often listen to music by Antti Martikainen while playing. But, well, maybe I’ll be positively surprised with Six Ages, and if not, it’s no big deal, I’ll just do the same.

  5. I just randomly started playing KoDP on my android phone a couple of weeks ago when I found it on my humble bundle list and I absolutely fell in love with it. I live in Seoul, so I have to take really long subway rides a lot and it’s just perfect for those situations.
    When I googled to find some games just like it and found this blog I was super happy to see you’re working on a successor.
    Best of luck, and I’m following you with great interest!

  6. That’s great that you got Stan involved again! Just wanted to check if there will be a lossless version of the OST available? If the new soundtrack has a similar intrumentation to KoDP, it will make a huge difference. Thanks!

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