In case you missed her blog entry on the subject, my best friend is making a browser game and I'm writing the music for it! THis is the first big project I've been involved with since "Untitled Doom II Project A1", where I was not only writing music but also making maps. While I'm glad I was finally able to put Doom down and never pick it up again, I missed the work. Spending hours a day drawing lines in GZDoom Builder and making MIDIs in FL Studio, I was in my element there.
While I haven't contributed to Riza's game beyond writing music, I plan on doing some foley work and writing fanfares. If she asks me to, I'll help with the game design and art too (though I'm not real confident in my speed, considering the circuitous route I have to take files through now that I can't use Windows 7 to connect to the internet anymore).
Anyway, even though I plan to make a whole other page on the LCI minisite for my work on Gretta's Revenge once the game is complete, I just thought I'd talk about the direction I'm taking the music. Call this a devlog if you want?
Firstly, Gretta, the player-character, has a 2-bar leitmotif which occurs frequently throughout the game. At present, it's easiest to hear in the current iteration of the overworld theme.
I say "current iteration", because; here's something that a lot of people don't realise about game design. Every single file is fungible. Everything made is subject to edits, overhauls, and deletion. As the game evolves, I envision having modify this song over and over, quite possibly until you can't recognise it from its initial form. In fact, I'm prepared to even pitch out this song and start again from scratch if the project requires it. This is all part and parcel of being a game composer. Do you know how many times I had to re-do "It's Hard to Draw Blockletter S'es"? Three. THe first time, it was metal. The second time it was fully orchestral. The third time, it was what ended up in the terminal build. The case study I like to bring up a lot is "Project Dream", the poorly-understood Nintendo 64 game that evolved over a period of years until it became Banjo-Kazooie. Grant Kirkhope wrote an entire album's worth of music for the seafaring "Dream", then was asked to pitch it all out and start again because the project's focus had changed. Even then, he still had to revise the stuff he wrote specifically for Banjo a number of different times, sometimes until you couldn't recognise it except for a riff here and a bassoon solo there. That's what being a game composer is all about. And I'm a game composer.
Anyway, like I said once, I have miles and miles of 12-foot grand pianos, 6-foot baby grands, spinnets, harpsichords, and uprights. I'm up to my spleen in orchestral libraries, to the point you can't sit down anywhere in my studio without sitting on a cellist, pretty much. Sometimes, all these instruments can get overwhelming, even to me. So, I decided to approach this project as though it was a Nintendo 64 game. To that end, I'm limiting myself to the Roland Soundcanvas series, the E-MU Proteus/1, the Digidesign SampleCell II, and one of the stock acoustic guitars that came with FL Studio. As you can see, this isn't limiting in the least, and if I might be so self-aggrandising, I think I've done some pretty good work so far! Like this espionage theme, straight out of a '70s cop show.
That's all the music I'm willing to share at this stage. If you want to hear more, play the Demo version of Gretta's Revenge. It's on Riza's blog.