Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1538144
Maintaining Flow and Immersion Are there musical transitions or implementation tricks you've developed that help maintain flow and immersion? CAG: It's hard to really throw out tips that don't seem basic or aren't hyper- specific to a project. It may seem obvious, but when creating a loop, you have to keep in mind things like length and highly memorable elements that catch the ear. A 30-second loop with a memorable soprano sax solo repeating over a difficult boss battle may not be the right move if you don't want people to turn off the music. Finding ways to break the monotony of a loop is a great way to keep things interesting, and you can play with the frequency of those elements as well. Alternate starts and ends also help keep things feeling fresh and less mechanical. In general, I try to avoid creating situations where players can easily "play" the music system. This means avoiding invisible lines where music changes without a visual cue, and the player can cross back and forth triggering that change. Having separate points, a good distance apart that start and stop music can help with this, along with avoiding elements that call immediate attention to themselves when triggered—unless the intent is to have a sudden shift in the music at that specific place. I'm sure you can find dozens of examples in games that contradict what I just said and still feel really good, but that approach tends to be solid for how I like to design music systems. I want to respect the composer's intent, so making the music flow feel as natural as possible is key. Tools of the Trade DAWs, Middleware, and More What DAWs, middleware, or in-game tools do you rely on in your workflow? How do they compare to the tools used in linear editing? CAG: The last few years, I've been mostly working in Reaper for my DAW and Wwise for my middleware, though in the past I've used DAWs like Pro Tools or proprietary systems. A DAW is highly dependent on the studio or individual, so the biggest difference for interactive work is that the DAW is just an intermediary step. You also have to learn how to take what was composed or what was edited in DAW and implement it into middleware, the game engine, or some combination of both. Not every game uses middleware. Problem-Solving Across Teams Can you share an example of an implementation challenge that required cross-departmental problem-solving or a unique technical solution? CAG: Because music is so downstream—we react to a lot of other departments' work—many of the things we do for implementation are somewhat cross-departmental, even if that just means using another department's work to trigger music. There was one enemy I had a unique music setup for because it was originally acting like an environmental hazard. The player couldn't defeat it; they just had to outrun it. I had to work really closely with the main technical designer and the encounter designer on that enemy because of how many iterations it went through and the specific behaviors I needed the music to interact with. Optimization in Action How do you approach optimization for performance across different platforms, particularly when dealing with large amounts of music content? CAG: To be completely honest, because of the types of games I work on and my position, I don't really have to think much about optimization for the amount of content we use. With compression and streaming settings, it's rare for us to hit any hard limits for music in the game. There have been a lot of great improvements on that front. If I were working on mobile titles, I'd have to be a lot more conscientious of that. Where I do need to think about optimization is when I'm hooking music into the game. Doing things like checking for a certain gameplay function every time the player takes a step may not be the best use of resources, especially if you can hook into something more efficient, like whenever enemies initially become aware of the player instead. It's just good practice to try to be as efficient as possible with your scripting, even if one method may not seem to be much more taxing than the other. An example of setting up transitions in Wwise (©all rights reserved Audiokinetic). M OT I O N P I CTU R E S O U N D E D I TO R S 37