While building the new, luscious soundtrack (being worked on as I speak) , we have also been looking at the issue of music for Wurm Online; something that has been lacking till now.

Music is a problem in a game such as this. It errs towards realism and unless your character is walking round with a Walkman (yeah, I am that old), why would you be hearing music all the time. Anyway, Wurm doesn’t have “personal stereos!”

But Rolf wants music in it – somewhere. So, we have been composing a pile of music which will appear in the game in some surprising places and at VERY rare intervals. Rolf does not think that players want to hear music all the time, so it will be very carefully used.

In trying to make the music different to other games, not just in when it is used, but in what it sounds like, we started playing with the idea of lyrics. And a piece of music with lyrics attached soon becomes a song.

And what on earth do you do with songs in an MMO?

Easy – you put them on Myspace!!

http://www.myspace.com/wurmonline

(The rest of the music will start sneaking in as the soundtrack gets sorted, by the way)

Hey gurubear :)

I usually listen to pandoras Bluegrass station while playing WURM. And although I never liked real country music before, I really love it now, only because it pairs with WURM and the world so nicely. Nothing feels better than mining that hole or wandering around on the vast landscape while hearing a real country song about mountain men, where people use only their voices, whistling, and basic instruments like guitar to sing a story.

I think it would be another major achievement of WURm if there were a music system, rather than music that randomly played. Something where you could build basic instruments like lutes, hand drums, tambourines, etc.. with another basic system underneath that allowed the player to make simplistic songs.

You could even have a back end like notepad or something built into WURM where you could write music and perform it with others. Or for yourself.

You could harvest pig parts for strings ( this is what they used to do ), use wood to form a lute, make basic glue out of tree sap, etc..

Well, as you may have guessed, this is something that has been thought about a bit.

It is certainly something I would like, but there are quite a few herdles.

When it comes to someone making and learning a simple instrument, a flute for example, it would not be a massive stretch to sample a hand carved flute (one of which I happen to posess, of course) and use a midi system to play it back.

We can also add errors. So a lower Quality flute would play more out of tune (a really low QL one would be unplayable). And we can add skill to the player too - squeaky notes or no note, just a breath for novices, and an expert would play with vibrato and a pure sound. And of course, all the inbetween stages where you play the occasional duff or wrong not.

That would be a first stage.

However, I think very soon people would want to play together, and this is where we hit major problems.

I connect live with other studios for some projects using seriously expensive equipment on direct dial lines. But dispite that, playing live is problematical as there is always a delay. Strangely, in the old days of analogue lines round the country, we had less of a problem! Digital not only has a delay due to distance, but also due to processing and converting from digital to analogue - both ends. In consequnece, it is a major problem.

I think the best we can hope for is a collabrative system, where one player starts the song, and the next player adds his or her part and so on untill the final piece can be played back.

For the moment we have too many other things to do, but this is on my list - just a bit of a way down!

Hey again Gurubear,

Interestingly enough I contacted Rolf about possibly volunteering on the team via my artistic talents, something else I have done professionally is design systems like this for games when I used to work in the industry.

I would loove to collaborate some ideas on a system like this, hell, I even have a master of music at home ( wife :) ) so I'm a pretty musical house, nothing of your caliber though.

At any rate, to tackle the problem with collaboration. A simple, yet elegant solution would have several modes to musical production.

Mode A is the soloist. Play a lute/flute/drum/whatever by yourself, players in a radius ( maybe a soundwave system with degredation? ) will be able to hear the music and vice versa.

When playing together though, as in real life, will need broader organization. For example, in real life, musicians work together using sheet music, composed by a composer, to stay in synch. Its also a little bit of knowing what the person next to you is singing or doing and watching the conductor but we're not talking about complex classical music here, just simple folk/bluegrassy type music.

Mode B is this other system, where you play with others. It would involve one or more players creating the equivalent of sheet music that everyone must follow. Someone in the group is designated to "lead" everyone else and will initiate the final command for music to begin. Example:

1 lute player
1 flute player
1 drummist - lead

So the drummer leads off by selecting their hand drum, and hitting a queue music option in the menu, or something similar.

The 2 other players will also do the same.

Once all players have indicated intent to play, music will begin.

The notes that are actually played, along with the QL of the notes is completely dependent on the player.

If 2 of the players have max skill, high quality instruments, etc.. You'll probably hear lovely melodies. In this example, if one of the players is new to music, you will hear the lovely melodies, but while hearing the newer player making lots of mistakes, etc..

In mode B, everything is pre-planned and the goal is to execute the written music and make it sound good.

Like with making clay items, you can improve them while they're in the fire by using more clay, perhaps we could have elements like this for musical instruments, you can keep "improving" your tune by adding an air element for wind instruments for example.

Thinking about this in an even more advanced way, you could add some tech to the game to distinguish between which hand a player is using to do certain tasks, and have a player gradually become better with using both hands, this element could then be taken and placed against instruments that have hand eye co-ordination associated with them, like lute playing, drumming, etc..

These elements, and improving your tune using them, can make music making in a group setting more "active" and more like the first mode, playing alone, using number keys and whatnot to improve your tune.

But anyway, the complexities that make up the game already, can be re-used to make this kind of system and many others.

Another thought before I go, about music and the player not actually having to play it would be a concept similar to a music box. They've been around forever and I can see a player being able to craft one out of basic materials. Maybe those same players can also craft the little cylinder inside the music box to play a specific tune, players can then use these as a luxury commodity and give other players an option to be a musician within the game.

Its been fun ranting :)

yes, I think there are several systems that are possible

On the music sheet side, I would probably create all instuments to be compatible with folk style music, making sure they fit in easliy with that sort of American and Irish folk that works well in the wurm context.

There would need to be some sort of notation, but it can be very much simplified, as many folk musicians who had no training used to do (going back a couple of hundred years). This means it is accessible to everyone.

Anyway - you can always get me through the wurm forums!