Daggerfall Remastered Music Project (Released)

A curated forum for compatible and maintained mods. Users are unable to create new topics in this forum but can reply to existing topics. Please message a moderator to have your mod moved into this forum area.
Post Reply
User avatar
ByteMixer
Posts: 153
Joined: Sun Mar 25, 2018 4:43 am
Location: Philadelphia, PA, USA
Contact:

Re: Daggerfall Remastered Music Project (Released)

Post by ByteMixer »

Enjoy! :D
"Whatever you do, make good art." - Neil Gaiman

johnwax
Posts: 116
Joined: Wed Oct 17, 2018 8:09 pm

Re: Daggerfall Remastered Music Project (Released)

Post by johnwax »

I have been playing Daggerfall off and on since it was released - over 20 years ago! I never did like the music and usually turned it almost off. The music in DFU seemed to be a bit better, but still not good. Your mod has made the background music a pleasure to listen to again. Thanks Bytemixer!

User avatar
mikeprichard
Posts: 1037
Joined: Sun Feb 19, 2017 6:49 pm

Re: Daggerfall Remastered Music Project (Released)

Post by mikeprichard »

Just previewed the remastered tracks on Soundcloud - amazing work, ByteMixer. Thank you!

ifkopifko
Posts: 195
Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2015 9:03 am

Re: Daggerfall Remastered Music Project (Released)

Post by ifkopifko »

I have to say I really like the music.

Just a thought, as I did not test the music in-game really... In the original DF, the music tracks were looping seamlessly if I recall correctly. This is likely not possible with your tracks. I was wondering, whether it is not immersion-breaking if the tracks are stopping and starting anew every 2-4 minutes (the individual tracks are not too long). An easy solution might be, if you could create longer versions of those tracks, which are likely to play for long periods of time (roaming outside, shopping, inside dungeons...). What do you think?

User avatar
ByteMixer
Posts: 153
Joined: Sun Mar 25, 2018 4:43 am
Location: Philadelphia, PA, USA
Contact:

Re: Daggerfall Remastered Music Project (Released)

Post by ByteMixer »

Hi ifkopifko, I'd say, try it out in game if you haven't. I think others would attest that the remastered tracks don't break immersion with the pauses. None of the pauses (to my knowledge) are any more than a few to several seconds, and that's by design in the original midi files. I can go double check. Some songs like the shop or inn themes may have looped seamlessly without pause, but much of the music wasn't really composed that way.

As detailed by another person who did remastering work (I don't remember if it was Dan Goodale, or a person here on the forums), the music wasn't composed for seamless looping without pause. All midi tracks have a near-silent note a few seconds after the melody that marks the end of the file, or rather the loop point. How far away that note is from the actual end of the actual melody indicates the amount of pause before looping. That was by design in Classic. So almost all the midi files have a short pause before hitting that end of file. Once it hits that "EOF" it immediately loops back to the beginning. Some pauses are longer than others, and I didn't change any of that.

My remastered tracks really don't work any differently, because they're just a reinterpretation of the midi, including that loop point. For example, there was only about a 3 second pause between the end of melody Song21 and the actual EOF where it loops back to the beginning. And I'm pretty sure that was by design in the original midi file.

If you use the tdbg console command, you can see the position counter for the music track currently playing. Once that counter reaches max value, (which is EOF) the song loops. I could set the loop points shorter, or remove that last midi note designating the EOF, but many tracks weren't really written to be seamlessly looped without pause. And in most cases the pause is only a few seconds. Once the counter hits EOF, it immediately loops to the beginning as it did in Classic.

I think that's pretty much how it worked in Classic Daggerfall if I remember correctly. All midi files have a silent note X number of seconds out from the end of the melody. This artificially creates a silent pause before the track loops. Some tracks have a shorter pause, some have a longer pause.

I could go back and remove that last bit of note data, shorten the EOF to where the song actually ends and make it truly seamless, but that might sound weird as most of the music was never really composed to loop without pause. But if you really, really, really want me to do it, I can. It's just not high on my priority list right now.
"Whatever you do, make good art." - Neil Gaiman

ifkopifko
Posts: 195
Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2015 9:03 am

Re: Daggerfall Remastered Music Project (Released)

Post by ifkopifko »

Thanks for your detailed answer. :-) It's not that I would really really want it. :-D It was just a thought. It might well be that I do not remember it correctly and the music was not looped seamlessly in vanilla DF, will have to check it out, but currently I have no time to do so. Hopefully I'll find some time later.

And thank you once again for your work on the music. :-)

User avatar
Jukic
Posts: 68
Joined: Sun May 13, 2018 5:51 pm

Re: Daggerfall Remastered Music Project (Released)

Post by Jukic »

wonderful work on the music!!!!

User avatar
ByteMixer
Posts: 153
Joined: Sun Mar 25, 2018 4:43 am
Location: Philadelphia, PA, USA
Contact:

Re: Daggerfall Remastered Music Project (Released)

Post by ByteMixer »

Thanks, and no worries!

When you find time, pop em into the Sounds folder, and see what you think. As I mentioned, some of the pauses are a little longer: 8 to 10 seconds before the music restarts as the counter approaches the end of the file. I should check all the dungeon tracks in game, (which is tricky since their pulled up a bit randomly) but I think most of the dungeon music tends to have a fairly short pause, only a second or two, between the end and beginning of the contrabass drone. So, I think the immersion holds pretty well for the most part. Dungeons are probably the most immersive part of Daggerfall, so I think it's important that the flow of everything sounds good.

In any case, you won't be wandering around in minutes of silence or anything, haha! In my humble opinion, the music is pretty immersive, and I don't feel like immersion is broken during the pauses. In some cases (shop theme) the pause is welcome. ;)

But if certain tracks with longer pause times grate on some people, or they feel it breaks immersion a bit, I may adjust them to have a shorter silence for the sake of things feeling fluid. I don't know that I'll completely remove the pause, but I could certainly shorten it to a couple seconds. It's not a high priority, but I wouldn't mind doing it in the future if there is enough call for it. :)
"Whatever you do, make good art." - Neil Gaiman

johnwax
Posts: 116
Joined: Wed Oct 17, 2018 8:09 pm

Re: Daggerfall Remastered Music Project (Released)

Post by johnwax »

Just installed DFU 0.732 and found that after I transferred the Sound folder from 0.72 to 0.732, the game crashed when I tried to load. Is there some incompatibility with the new build?

User avatar
pango
Posts: 3347
Joined: Wed Jul 18, 2018 6:14 pm
Location: France
Contact:

Re: Daggerfall Remastered Music Project (Released)

Post by pango »

I don't think there has been changes to the way songs are handled since November, and it seems to work for me, it runs fine with just that pack installed...
Mastodon: @pango@fosstodon.org
When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
-- Charles Goodhart

Post Reply