Cued BGM in Doom Maps and Wads

[Barondante]

Last night I was splaying through some of Inferno with the volume half way down, just in the background. I think it was Pandemonium, but in any case

whatever map it was, I walked into a red room across a little bridge and because I wasn't really concentrating, when it hit a section of the midi and because the sound was 

low it kind of felt like the midi music changed as I went into that room. Now I know it obviously didn't,

 

But I was thinking how cool and startling it would be if a WAD did that. Doom levels are kind of back-trackable and music has to loop, but if there was different sounds that played in an area, for instance when you enter a very strange part of a wad, and they take away you're ability to go back, so more scripting based like very light Half-Life vibes,

it would be startling, where the BGM and tone just changes mid level.

 

I imagine you kind of can't do this as you don't see it happen and it's probably to do with how levels are made. And it wouldn't be worth making a whole new modification to do it. OR alternatively it has been done and it's just on heavily modified games made with Doom engine. It's not something I really need or would look for in a Wad because I kind of prefer creativity within a limitation, and I love how midi tracks for levels have to work for an entire run and maybe twenty minutes play. Plus I know of course the tone changes between levels anyway.

 

But it was just a thought I had. You guys ever find anything that does this in Doom?

 

 

[TheDanMarine]

that's actually not that hard to do with scripting, just set a linedef to execute a script that triggers setmusic(). heck, as long as you made sure every entrance/exit was covered to activate the script, you could have different songs for every area. you could even do something banjo kazooie-esque and have the level track change to something more blurry sounding when in a water section, using the lines around the "pool". 

 

I have no idea what more vanilla style wads use this feature, sorry to say. someone else will have to chime in on that. 

[Tristan]

Basic music changes are possible in modern Boom-compatible ports through the use of MUSINFO lumps. An example of this is at the very start of Ancient Aliens, where the ambience from the start area is replaced by the MIDI music track after you smoke the pipe and the map properly begins. On the GZDoom side, this is even easier as the same thing can be achieved SetMusic scripts, seen in projects like Elementalism, which (shameless plug) the last level of each episode has separate music tracks for the boss fights and the rest of the level. In the Earth boss fight, the boss track itself is divided into two sections in-game to line up with the main fight and the final phase.

 

Generally, outside of GZDoom, maps with multiple music tracks have always been kinda rare but I feel like it's become more commonplace in the last few years (1) (2) (3) (wtf).

 

A more advanced thing, and maybe what you're describing, would be adaptive music - where music responds to specific events, like this, but I don't think a proper implementation of this is possible even in GZDoom, which is a shame because I'd like to make stuff like this.

Edited April 27, 2023 by Tristan

[msx2plus]

12 minutes ago, Tristan said:

I don't think a proper implementation of this is possible even in GZDoom

in theory you could use a bunch of ambientsound commands to layer audio and keep everything happening on a scripted schedule, but between the timing, the sound channel restrictions, and the inability to change sound volumes in real time (as you'd realistically want to include a new volume slider for the non-"music" music, among other reasons) it gets messy fast. an idea i quickly threw out in favor of tracked music with pattern jumps when needed, as imperfect as they are. a real killer feature would be if gzdoom could hook into libdumb more elegantly and control channel volume/pattern jumps without instrument resets, or even tempo. feels like a lot of awesome tools got left on the table with its implementation.

[Catpho]

What Eri- I mean Tristan said. Technical experts can chime in on how feasible it is to include more complicated forms of in-level bgm manipulation, but as far as the current tech goes, Bastion of Chaos has an excellent execution of this concept.

[ebrl]

The most famous mid-level BMG change in Boom wads is probably the secret final fight in Dimensions MAP03. Wouldn't be as effective if the "main" track wasn't a constant low drone which can be cut off and swapped out at basically any moment without making the transition jarring; the barrier for a one-way swap isn't technical, it's more about how well can you expect the first track to follow into the next one since there's no way to control at which point of the loop the swap will happen.

[aRottenKomquat]

It would be pretty cool if the old LucasArts IMUSE system could be brought into modern source ports.

[Barondante]

2 hours ago, ebrl said:

Wouldn't be as effective if the "main" track wasn't a constant low drone which can be cut off and swapped out at basically any moment without making the transition jarring; the barrier for a one-way swap isn't technical, it's more about how well can you expect the first track to follow into the next one since there's no way to control at which point of the loop the swap will happen.

I never though of that it would need to come in with a change at the right point in the previous midi track, this is a pretty clever idea to compensate for that. 

 

Some of the mentions of other Wads by people here sound cool, Ill have to try these out to see the effect. 

 

Though if I was surprised by it like is mentioned in Dimensions that would be crazy. Like playing an PSONE Final Fantasy game and all of a sudden vocals come in to the music, that frightened the hell out of me in FF8 years ago. But yeah it's a cool idea if as people say kind of rare. Wasn't sure it is done sometimes or not. 

[Faceman2000]

There’s this mod over at the ZDoom forums:

 

https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?t=72207

[Barondante]

8 hours ago, Catpho said:

What Eri- I mean Tristan said. Technical experts can chime in on how feasible it is to include more complicated forms of in-level bgm manipulation, but as far as the current tech goes, Bastion of Chaos has an excellent execution of this concept.

Wow... so this is what it's like when Doom graphics and architecture exceeds Quake...