Not logged inOpenClonk Forum
Up Topic Development / Developer's Corner / Rationale for music breaks
- - By Foaly [de] Date 2019-05-04 07:45
I've always been annoyed by music stopping shortly or for longer in network games.
See e. g. this bug: https://bugs.openclonk.org/view.php?id=1453

However, while investigating this, I found that there are also actual music breaks in the code:

C4MusicSystem.cpp:785:
const int32_t C4MusicSystem::DefaultMusicBreak = 120000; // two minutes default music break time

Why is that?
Why would I ever want to have two minutes of silence?
Parent - - By Marky [de] Date 2019-05-04 08:55
My best guess: In case there is only one title in the playlist you do not want it to loop forever, your brain needs a break sometimes. Also, I thought that this was something from the script-coded music system (there is one, too, iirc), so I was surprised that this comes from the engine.
Parent - By K-Pone [de] Date 2019-05-05 13:35
Yep, Cavern becomes a bit annoying after two hours in "Rapid Refining" since you mostly move underground and that's (as of now) the only underground music so far (apart from ala's soundtrack).
Parent - By Clonkonaut Date 2019-05-04 13:59
The ambient music system was devised in a long and complicated process between Sven2 and ala.
Reply
Parent - - By ala [de] Date 2019-05-06 17:26
Like Clonkonaut stated, it was the result of the ambient sounds and music conception, and was done intentional.

I definitely agree, that the breaks are annoying and don't work out like we have planned. That is probably true for the whole ambient system.  I guess it was supposed to be the first version, but never developed much further, I also didn't leave much feedback afterwards, which maybe would have been important to develop it further.

We envisioned that the music could be enriched by smaller breaks of silence filled with atmospheric sound recordings (like drips of water and cave echoes, animals, wind etc.). Only to be followed by another casual start of the music fading in. Also to not tire out the playlist too fast.

The break currently is pretty long, and feels like a "cut" of the atmosphere. Also we never implemented many sounds for atmosphere after all. We could deactivate it, or try out a small break (10-20 seconds) I guess.

Another problem is the fading and switching of the tracks, isn't too atmospheric either. Especially bad are the alternating cave-sky segments like in Bristle Ridge.
Also if you don't enter the cave for like 30 minutes, but go back in then it still continues a track from the last time you went in, but it is usually so long, that the player doesn't remember the connection. So in that case a new track should start instead.

We can probably improve the system, and make it a lot better.
Parent - - By Foaly [de] Date 2019-05-06 19:05
Ok.
When I get to fixing music stopping during lag (I think that's still the case?) I will lower the pause length.
Parent - - By ala [de] Date 2019-05-06 20:25

> fixing music stopping during lag (I think that's still the case?)


Isn't the music already loaded into RAM to prevent that? - though, if the lag is really big and exceeds the preloaded time, then it is too much.
I fear I haven't played for quite some time.
Parent - By K-Pone [de] Date 2019-05-06 21:33
Yep, music still pauses on lag after a few seconds.
Up Topic Development / Developer's Corner / Rationale for music breaks

Powered by mwForum 2.29.7 © 1999-2015 Markus Wichitill