I've noticed that some music that I wouldn't listen to normally works quite well in the background while I'm shooting stuff. Classical music, various tasteful techno, the music from Armored Core series, etc.

If you ask me, several of the Half-Life songs were excellent to play quake in. The Matrix soundtrack also holds some excellent pieces. These are songs I'll listen to in or out of the game.

I hated Cube's music (even though I liked the engine very much). It didn't seem to fit with the newness of the engine, it was annoying, and it was so loud it drowned out the other sound. My favorite song was the one that was really quiet and didn't do so many tacky beeps and bops. :) I mean no offense tho... that's just how I feel about it. There are a lot of midi that would fit perfectly into a fps game. Absolutely perfectly, just not those ones.

I still prefer no music over something that doesn't fit at all with the feel of the game. If I was playing a sidescroller with funny enemies and sprite powerups and everything looked like it was done in the '80s, then I would be satisfied with the matching music. But in quake, I prefer something more advanced.

Understand, my opinion is quite different from most here. I didn't like the original quake1 soundtrack; not my kind of music. I did like Strogg Leader or whatever it was on the q2 soundtrack, but that's all I remember. The UT music seems ok to me in the background, but not to listen anywhere else usually.

Has anyone here played EarthWorm Jim 2? There was one level where the music was moonlight sonata, while jim's running around shooting stuff. It fit absolutely perfectly. I guess it all depends on the situation. 

I remember I really liked playing e3m1 while listening to Nirvana's Polly, generally I don't listen to music while playing though 

i think that if the game has proper music, no need to seek for additional sound there. only if you customise stuff yourself. look at quake - prefect sountracks. personally i like 10th and 11th track, so i set them for all my q maps by desault.
as for the other games, some of them have pretty nice music (dungeon keper, age of mythology, starcraft, war3, avp2, unreal, etc), but some of them turn me to disable it (q2, some of q3 tracks, etc).
so, generally i don't use additional music to replace unwanted one. i just disable it. 

The starcraft & warcraft music was quite good. But many other games have me racing to the menus to turn off the music before my head explodes... 

with music in gameplay is the loss of sound contrast. And that both in the contrast; battle zone area / licking wounds areas. And contrasts in the ambiant sounds put in to increase moods of different areas of the map.

just a reflection.. 

I don't like music in DM, it's too frantic (not that I'm into DM much anyway). But it can be very effective in SP, since you do have some ability to enjoy the scenery and all.

One other nice place for music is intros, although this is more the case in console games. They get you pumped to actually play (in the case of the Saturn game Amok, more than is warranted ;) ). BTW, the only game soundtrack I listen to regularly is Stellar Fire (Sega CD), it's fantastic.

As to Quake, I found there to be an impressive match between the actual tracks playing and the levels associated with them (although other CDs in the drive can surprise you in this regard).

As to Cube, the good track (IMO) is Drannerz' mighty Cubez0r (enter "music songs/cubez0r.xm"), which is the only non-MIDI track. I've started using soundvol 100, down from 150. All my levels use that track or custom music. 

Thought that was DaMaul's work... 

It is DaMaul's track. 

Sorry, I'm currently at a loss as to how I made that mistake. 

I really like games that the music seems to ebb and flow with the pacing. If there isn't a ton of action going on, there is little to no music....but if you are engaged in lots of action the music picks up a bit getting you into the groove. I liken it to a good movie soundtrack, if music was used more in games like it is in films it would really enhance the experience. Deus Ex comes to mind in this regard. I don't necessarily feel that it is a model of perfection, but it was successful on a level. I take that and imagine a soundtrack, or audio anthem for each map/area/environmental style, and then add in differing tracks that can be placed into the mix when the action gets hot.....I think something like that would work nicely. I really think music can play a much bigger role in creating an over-all landscape for a game. It seems to me that on many occasions, music and snd-fx take the back-seat in the production schedule, thought that is changing. 

I don't like songs simply fading into other songs. Ideally it would sound like a single piece that a composer timed to whatever action you are doing. This would be accomplished by packaging the music as a sort of mod format, and having game events modify the playback using some sort of scripting language -- modifying instruments, changing tempo, or selectively mixing certain channels. My favorite example of this is the drum beat in super mario world (SNES) that you can only hear when riding yoshi. It's just a shadow of what can be done, however.

The great thing about qmap being dead is we can have all the old conversations over again. I know i've had the music one at least twice. 

I agree. I was thinking along the same lines. Not fading from song to song, but tracks that are intelligently created, so that an ambient track could have specified timing points, inserted by the composer, at which time an action track could be started. It wouldn't necessarily have to coincide with the firing of a weapon etc. So scripting would be necessary. 

That game has some nice pace-matching music. If you're just walking around looking at shit, there'll be just some ambient woooooshing� and some thematic beats along with the gameworlds ambient sounds. (Fans, miners, bombs, meatgrinders etc) When you enter a room with a lurking danger then, you can hear the music tensen up, the beats go quiet, and there's this trademark 'violin' shound like in movies when the nekkid chick is supposed to get killed and she sneaks around a corner in her basment towards that malicious shadow that turns out to only be last years halloween decorations and the killer clown is actually behind her... that bit is in there. And then when the action breaks loose, and the evil guys come chasing after you, the music immediately gets up to something that might be classified as and 'action beat' or 'chase music' or whatever.
Then when danger is evaded it fades back to the original ambient woooooshing�...
Not the best example maybe, but I still like the effect. Besides, fricking awesome game. Run and buy! Bargain bin, �2.50! 

games with good music;

homeworld.
ico.
riven.

that is all, carry on. 

ELEK said:
"I really like games that the music seems to ebb and flow with the pacing. If there isn't a ton of action going on, there is little to no music....but if you are engaged in lots of action the music picks up a bit getting you into the groove. I liken it to a good movie soundtrack, if music was used more in games like it is in films it would really enhance the experience."

I'd say that's a lot like Metal Gear Solid 2. Dynamic music that beats quietly in the background durring periods of uneventful sneaking around; yet, when the Snake is discovered, or enters a serious/hazardous situation, the music changes to a more stimulating, alarmed beat. The gameplay and the music play hand in hand seamlessly. MGS2 I think is a credit to game music everywhere.

I also liked the old Return Fire game that would play different classical music tracks depending on whether you used the Tank, Armored Truck, Jeep, or Helicopter. It added to the personality of the vehicles and was pretty parallel with the way things moved and felt. 

God I loved that game 

If I ever get around to it. :) 

how many of you MAKE music and how much time do you spend on it? what programs do you use? have you ever released anything (on vinyl if you are a fanatic perhaps..)?

no, i'm not running a poll. just wanting to find out if i't something i ought to pursue. i'll let you know my answers to make it fair:

about 40 hours per song (can be more or less, depends more on production refinement rather than the actual melody)
reason 2, soundforge for fx, various sequencers (didnt buy those, a friend does it for me)
i'm rather clueless on copyright. what do you guys do if say oasis (cough!) stole your music from cube. yes you'd be proud but would you be able to sue them? 

refers to the sequencers. i can do a lot of programming on reason. otherwise it sounds like my friend does everything...lol! 

Try <a http://www.modplug.com>Modplug</a> and get their Tracker program - that's the sequencer proper.

This'll leave you with a file that you can play in <a http://www.winamp.com>WinAmp</a> 2.81 or later. Select the "Nullsoft Disk Writer" for output in Preferences.

Now you have a humungous WAV file (about 10MB/minute). <a http://www.cdex.n3.net>CDex</a> is just the thing for turning it into an MP3, OGG or whatever.

I have a bad case of the ol' CD burners, can you tell? 

for cdex, i was looking for it. i know modplug, i have listened to quite a lot of .mod and xm and so on. they are quite efficient.

i SOMETIMES use winamp to output mp3 to wav but it's not the best in quality (because it's a freeware product so what can i expect). soundforge is good because there is no loss in quality (i know mp3s are lower qual anyway...).

i have played my tunes in a club only to find that i can hear a hiss that i couldnt in my headphones or home sound system. so annoying!! 

uhm...

i used to use Modplug to make music, but i switched to FruityLoops ( http://www.fruityloops.com ) a year ago.
some would argue whether or not FL is good at all, but it does what i want it to do, and sounds nice to me.
although you must pay for it, it's relatively easy to get a ripped version of it somewhere...

the time it takes to make a song varies. if i'm very inspired, i'll whip something up in a few hours, and polish it off for twice that amount of time... some other stuff (like the song i'm doing for a map i plan to release sometime soon) take longer, as in, many, many hours to get it all sounding right.

and of course, there's the 'music' block similar to mapper's block. ;) so that can have an adverse effect on the time taken as well. 

try reNoise.com tracker 

as long as it doesn't stop me from hearing the sounds that can sometimes prove to be lifesavers.

Anyone's listened to the whole main theme of Tomb Raider 1? I think it's beautiful. 

well i got fruityloops and a friend of mine got a copy off me (i'm kind...since he still aint let me hear any of his tunes if he's made any).

havent used fruityloops enough to gauge it against reason. can you make jazz with FL. atm i'm working with reason orchester soundbanks with all the nice orchestral instruments. trouble is, there are lots of nice strings and gongs but trying to find a good saxophone is impossible. trumpets are ok but then you have to arrange them so they form chords (one in C one in bla and one in bla) or they sound shit...

ps anyone like the music from worms armageddon?