My plan for this project is to create a 3D environment in Unity and use this as a testing ground for experiments in composition. Rather than producing music in the abstract, I would like to create or import a Unity scene that in some way influences the compositional choices I might make.
I will be glossing over this part of the process as I am most interested in the composition task, and not so much in the game level design. I will take every shortcut I can in order to quickly move to the composition stage.
My plan is to roughly follow the technique outlined in the module on horizontal resequencing from Karleen Heong’s great Udemy course Game Music Composition. Horizontal resequencing is music that is capable of moving quickly to different passages as required by game events.
In this module, Heong proposes an open world in which certain zones have a higher monster spawn rate and uses horizontal resequencing to move into battle scenarios. She sets a task of producing music for four game states and implementing them into a Unity scene using FMOD:
- Exploring the field
- Chaos region (higher chance of monster spawning, therefore the music to convey a higher sense of danger)
- A battle scene
- An invincible state
It can be seen from this that the appearance of different musical sections can act in a crucial role of providing feedback for gameplay, in addition to its aesthetic function.
Here’s where I need a Unity scene to play around with. I would like to choose a vivid, interesting scene that sparks the imagination. I have chosen the free asset pack Glowing Forest by SkythianCat. It has a playful, storybook quality that I quite like.
This pack also has a demo scene pre-built, so I will simply use this and modify as needed:
Next I have added some extra paths to the terrain to provide a bit more scope for walking about:
My intention is to map the zones in the following layout:
I’ve also added some coloured lights to mark the zones, including a brighter red light for the battle area. I intend to remove these lights once the implementation of the music is complete.
I might tidy up some aspects of this environment here or there – adding fences and mushrooms for instance, or levelling the terrain, but unless it influences the composition of the music, I don’t intend to comment much on it here.
Finally I have added standard asset First Person Character Controller and it’s ready to go!
Here’s a video of the first walkthrough. Should give me something more interesting than a blank white terrain to set music to!