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[WIPz] COdA - Comprehensive Overhaul di Adagio
Posted:
Tue Sep 06, 2016 7:20 am
by Thema
So, I've been working on versions of this mod for quite a long time now. It started out as a simple idea, I wanted to add dungeon and town specific music like there was in Oblivion, but then after the improvements made to Beth's music system in Fallout 3 and later Skyrim, and music mods like Xiran's Better Music system, I wanted to make something a little more than just a few location specific playlists.
However, this mod is my way of fulfilling a want of mine that Xiran's mod didn't satisfy, and neither did my mod, which only added Dungeon music. I'm in no way suggesting Xiran's mod or any of the other music system mods are bad mods, they just haven't been what I was looking for.
What my mod aims to do, is bring a number of improvements to Morrowind's music system without adding too many specific playlists or extensive feature sets. Instead, I wanted to create music that I felt was fitting with the game's original soundtrack, something I'm very picky about myself, and some subtle changes for immersion. Essentially, COdA is an unofficial expansion for Morrowind's soundtrack that is intended to sound like it was written by Jeremy Soule himself at the time of Morrowind's development.
What music the mod adds:
- "Dreary" Explore music. This will be played in the Ashlands, Molag Amur, Red Mountains, Firemoth, and possibly future TR regions.
- Dungeon Music. This will be played in caves, forts, sewers, ancestral tombs, and other dungeon type areas.
- Atmosphere music. The function of these are similar to the https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7UknoLYtGE. They will play in unnamed region cells in addition to the regular explore or dreary explore music. They may also play in some interiors.
- A few silent tracks. Right now the tracks that will be included will be three thirty second silent tracks, one one minute silent track, and one ninety second silent track. They will play as part of the atmosphere and dungeon playlists, in order to add breaks in between the music.
A something I would like to add is possibly a system for HP/level dependent queuing of the battle music. With the help of a programmer I'd love to make this all native to OpenMw once it's passed 1.0 as well, but that's for later. Initially, I had ideas for other placements of music, such as location discovery tracks, and possibly some other cinematic type tracks, but I wasn't sure how to go about making them, or how to make the system work ingame, so if I do end up adding things like that, it will be in an expansion to the actual mod, rather than the final or a future version.
What's done?
An early version of the soundtrack is done, right now I am reorchestrating it from scratch and have currently finished the atmosphere tracks. The soundtrack currently contains:
- 19:22 minutes of dreary explore music
- 34:43 minutes of dungeon music
- 36:37 minutes of atmospheres
- 3:01 minutes of short "palette" tracks
- three thirty second silent tracks, one sixty second silent track, and one silent track which is a minute and a half long
- the entire soundtrack, not including the silent tracks, totals to 1 hour, and 40:52 minutes in length
- Morrowind's Special Edition soundtrack is 45:48 minutes long, making COdA's soundtrack more than twice as long as the game's OST
- Oblivion's soundtrack is roughly an hour in length, 58:42 minutes, making it longer than Oblivion's soundtrack as well
- Skyrim's soundtrack is a whopping 3 hours, and 35:08 minutes, while COdA's soundtrack isn't nearly as long, it could be in the future, depending on how much additional music I write. Currently, Morrowind's Special Edition Soundtrack Plus COdA's Soundtrack is 2 hours and 26:41 minutes long, which is almost three quarters of the length of Skyrim's soundtrack, and more than two thirds as long.
An older version of the soundtrack can be listened to on a YouTube http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHIpuFLnytJSSCM9CoLk0C9HUFmHqLwgp&feature=view_all. The entire soundtrack will be availible upon completion on my bandcamp (link when it's done) in a variety of formats such as mp3 320kpps, or even 24bit FLAC. It will be entirely free, with payment being optional.
Right now Greatness7 is working on creating all the nitty-gritty scripts and systems to make all this work ingame, while I am working on reorchestrating and expanding the soundtrack. Hopefully we can get a polished, fun, and well tuned product out for release as soon as everything is done. Stay tuned!
[WIPz] COdA - Comprehensive Overhaul di Adagio
Posted:
Tue Sep 06, 2016 4:48 pm
by Jessica Lloyd
I think this is an excellent idea! The only thing I worry about is the HP/level-dependent queuing of battle music, at least based on my experience with Xiran's mod. I had to turn off battle music entirely because it kept crashing my game in some of the larger fights (the fight to get Sara in Uvirith's Legacy comes to mind).
[WIPz] COdA - Comprehensive Overhaul di Adagio
Posted:
Tue Sep 06, 2016 11:27 am
by Tracy Byworth
Mmh, apart from the pitched/inverted music this sounds pretty much like what I had planned for a simple alternative music addon for MAO. I hope you won't accuse us of idea-theft once it's done
What you ask for would be VERY easy to customize in that version and our battle music solution is as good as it can get with MWSE scripting.
It really is a solid piece of script-base that Logitech assembled there, and funcitons in a very different manner than BMS. But sure it would'nt hurt to see a different approach - good luck!
[WIPz] COdA - Comprehensive Overhaul di Adagio
Posted:
Tue Sep 06, 2016 10:53 am
by Dagan Wilkin
@PeterBitt, I was almost gonna ask you about that, but I was worried since you and Logitech added a lot of location specific playlists whereas my mod aims to be more streamlined. I personally prefer longer playlists in more areas to shorter playlists in less areas.
As I said I had considered creating the actual plugin for this using a customized version of Xiran's mod but his scripts were nothing like the scripts I had made in my own dungeon music mod and I had no idea where to begin on such a regard. I also think it would probably be best to stay away from Xiran's in terms of my own goals as his mod adds far too many customizable features, tracks, and location specific scripts for it to be practical for me to use as a base.
I'd be interested in checking out MAO's music plugin, it does definitely seem closer to what I have in mind. I'm gonna continue working on additional tracks for now though.
[WIPz] COdA - Comprehensive Overhaul di Adagio
Posted:
Tue Sep 06, 2016 2:33 pm
by Avril Churchill
Sounds like something to look forward to. Are you using the files from the game or the cd?
[WIPz] COdA - Comprehensive Overhaul di Adagio
Posted:
Tue Sep 06, 2016 6:14 pm
by Ashley Hill
If you're talking about the soundtrack, neither. The soundtrack CD that came with the limited edition of the game isn't a lossless source, it was ripped from the game files and had no association with Jeremy Soule release wise and the track titles also had nothing to do with the game.
The best audio source for Morrowind's soundtrack is the Special Edition soundtrack which is available for purchase on Directsong, it is available in 320kbps, a huge leap above the game's 128kbps. I would be doing the soundtrack in lossless, but there's currently no lossless source for the game's soundtrack, so 320kbps will have to do.
[WIPz] COdA - Comprehensive Overhaul di Adagio
Posted:
Tue Sep 06, 2016 10:36 pm
by Josee Leach
yeah, I meant the special edition. I assumed that morrowind would be on a dvd or something, but yeah, cool.
[WIPz] COdA - Comprehensive Overhaul di Adagio
Posted:
Tue Sep 06, 2016 8:53 am
by Roddy
Well, are you aware of this controversial release http://forums.ffshrine.org/f72/elder-scrolls-iii-morrowind-ost-remaster-v3-88897/ ?
I suspect his work is rather based on that direct song version than on the master tapes, but his results are really awesome!
It's as clear as the direct song version, but has much richer mids and depths, much like the Oblivion/Skyrim mixing.
[WIPz] COdA - Comprehensive Overhaul di Adagio
Posted:
Tue Sep 06, 2016 6:41 am
by helliehexx
I loved! Keep up the good work.
[WIPz] COdA - Comprehensive Overhaul di Adagio
Posted:
Tue Sep 06, 2016 2:19 pm
by Lizbeth Ruiz
Very much to my liking!
Interesting what you did with those ost tracks and I hope you find some help in how to set up the scripts.
Will you compose the other tracks yourself?
In my Morrowind I use compositions from Biosphere to create this deep, tense atmosphere. Or something like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dn4aPjbfkSo. It makes you feel even more alienated walking around in the dark corners of Morrowind.
[WIPz] COdA - Comprehensive Overhaul di Adagio
Posted:
Tue Sep 06, 2016 5:28 pm
by Richard
Got to be honest. For once I prefer something "original Morrowind" It sounds more like they ramped up the volume and strained the string instruments through a tin can. The warmth has just gone from the music in those tracks
[WIPz] COdA - Comprehensive Overhaul di Adagio
Posted:
Tue Sep 06, 2016 9:00 pm
by MARLON JOHNSON
I do very much enjoy Biosphere myself, but their music is much more drone oriented than the melodic tonal approach I'm taking with the dungeon music and atmosphere music, and the mashed up recreations of Morrowind's tracks that I made for the dreary explore tracks.
Got to be honest. For once I prefer something "original Morrowind" It sounds more like they ramped up the volume and strained the string instruments through a tin can. The warmth has just gone from the music in those tracks
I agree. I listened to that, and I didn't like it. The dynamics are still there, and there's no quality loss, but everything just sounds louder. To be honest, I never felt Morrowind's soundtrack needed remastering since it was already remastered for the Special Edition Release on Directsong. That version just sounds too exaggerated. It's like all the range from the original recording is gone, and there's no distiction between the soft releases and build ups and warm, grand, loud crescendos.,
I was waiting to upload the dungeon music tracks to post here again, but I guess since this thread was bumped up, I'll just give an update on my progress.
The majority of the music is done now, dungeon tracks, atmosphere tracks, and dreary explore tracks are done for now unless I end up making more (which isn't entirely out of the question), I may try to make location discovery tracks and a few other tracks but for now I'm calling the soundtrack portion of the mod finished.
COdA's soundtrack now clocks at 1 hour, 30 minutes, and a second. That's about half as long as Skyrim's soundtrack, and if you add Morrowind's original soundtrack onto that length, it's about two hours and ten minutes, which is about two thirds of the length of Skryim's soundtrack. I'm not really worried at all of things getting too repetative, since the soundtrack will be much longer. If it does get repetitive I will probably end up making new tracks, but I've tested the atmosphere tracks ingame and they are very fitting and aren't too repetitive. Seeing as each playlist is around the length of Morrowind's original "explore" playlist, they will breathe a new refreshing take on Morrowind's atmosphere musically and feel very fitting to how the original game did it.
You can listen to all the tracks I've made for the mod so far at the playlist I've linked in the first post, excluding the dungeon tracks, which I'll upload later. The playlist also contains a new dreary explore track which IIRC I have not posted about in this thread yet. It is 10 minutes long (and if you don't count the Morrowind Atmosphere's track, which is a compilation of a number of split tracks) it will be the longest single track on the soundtrack so far.
As for scripting, and getting these tracks to play in the game itself, I'm waiting on PeterBitt and Logitech's standalone music plugin for MaO to be ready. I was told it may be ready in a month or so but you'll have to ask them about that, since it's not my plugin.
For now, you can always listen to COdA's soundtrack while waiting.