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Look into the Crystal Ball... Many people who contributed to this supplement provided articulate and compelling views into the future of game audio. A sampling of some of the most interesting and compelling are expressed here: Brian Schmidt, Microsoft’s DirectMusic and DirectSound program manger, on the future of audio tools: "Our holy grail is to enable developers to create content with high production quality that gives the impression that the music and sound was scored in post-production, even though the content was rendered in real time in response to player actions. It’s a long-term goal that requires combinations of clever software, changes in development procedures, availability and usability of third-party creativity and, in some cases, raw, unmitigated processing power. We’re about 150 miles into our 1,000-mile journey. Giving more power to the ‘person with the ears’ is critical to the holy grail goal. The current process (composer creates content, composer gives content to programmer, and so on) is broken. Audio for games will be only as good as the weakest link in the chain. While I concur that very good audio implementations can come from the current process, it’s an extremely rare occasion where this is so. It requires a programmer of such dedication (and with a good ear) to audio that they essentially become a co-audio developer. I have only ever worked with two such developers in the approximately 150 games I’ve done." Tommy Tallarico of Tommy Tallarico Studios, on the future of interactive music:
"Then there’s the easy way. Let’s say your character is in a cave, and the game is looping a two-minute long ambient audio file. Then the character finds a switch that opens a secret door. I then lower my ambient looping piece and play a dramatic five-second sting, and raise the ambient loop back up to where it was. While inside this area, the character comes across a gazillion demons who want to eat him. I then switch to my 30-second looping "holy crap these demons want to eat my butt" battle tune. And why stop at music? Why not have one- and two-minute looping ambient sounds such as waterfalls, streams, jungles, winds, and so on? Let’s see you do that in MIDI! Guess what — all of this is interactive music. And you don’t have to spend a year to get it to work correctly, and because you’re just using audio files, you can have real instruments galore playing! And don’t forget eventide effects, lexicon reverbs, and mastering! "Now I know that every game on the market can’t be done like this due to streaming restrictions. That is why more complex methods are sometimes chosen. You have all that stuff downloaded and you never have to hit the disk. But as hard drives become bigger, processors become faster, and bandwidth becomes immense, all of those worries will completely go away. And I’m not talking three or five years from now — I’m talking this Christmas. Right now with the Playstation, a four-year-old machine, you can have up to 16 .XA tracks all playing at once (check out Parappa the Rappa) and mute and unmute on the fly to get interactive music. Wait until DVD hits hard and the streaming bandwidth hits the ceiling." Colin Anderson of DMA Designs, on the future of PM and DM: Physical modeling sound effects have the potential to be the next big revolution in interactive audio — hopefully in the next 18 months, but maybe longer. The technology shows a lot of promise, and companies like Staccato Systems have already shown some very impressive demos. But there are still many hurdles to cross before it becomes a viable alternative to the current sample-based technology. Microsoft’s DirectMusic also has the potential to become very important for interactive audio in general, not just music, once the playback latency of DirectMusic gets down to around the same level as DirectSound. There are some other system resource issues which will need to be sorted out too, but the potential is definitely there.
No one person can see the future, or even the present, of this very complex field. It requires the help of the eyes, brains, and hearts of the entire community, just to get one’s head around all of the marketing, artistic, hardware, software, interactivity, personality, and Internet issues. That being said, here is the certain, inevitable future of game music [cough]. 001 – The user
buys the game and installs it. It’s that simple, and I’ll bet on it. The most fitting model for game music is not movies. It is radio." ______________________________________________ |
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Features
"I
think there are two types of interactive music: the easy way (streaming,
which I prefer to do), and the more complex way (MIDI, which I prefer
not to do). Let me explain the differences. First, there’s the complex
way. I think when most people think of "interactive music" this
is what they think of. Everything is MIDI-based, and depending on what
is happening in the code, the MIDI file changes on the fly. That could
mean muting or unmuting tracks, volume, tempo, MIDI branching, and so
on. This is an amazingly complex and time-consuming way to write music.
I bow down to the numerous audio guys who have to go through this hell
for months and sometimes years. I wouldn’t want to do it!
George
Sanger (a.k.a. The Fat Man), presenting his nine steps to better game
music: 
