Dealing with Music and Dialogue

If there’s one thing most designers would like to have, it’s a system that allows them to control background music at will. It’s painfully obvious that AoK:TC was never designed for a case study in Vivaldi; and why should it have been, considering the fact that it’s an RTS? Regardless, those amongst us (read: everyone) who want to spice up the emotional payload of our scenarios with background music are left with a troubling realization: we’re screwed.

Well, not really. We can use Play Sound, Display Instructions and Send Chat to force Vivaldi to bring the house down, but that still means we have some technical hurdles (read: programming bugs) to overcome before our pretty background track will cooperate with that thing that’s really only marginally important in scenarios: dialogue.

Music and dialogue; dialogue and music. Instead of Mario and Luigi, you get Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader; not even superglue can save that relationship. If you want full control over your music, you lose your main means of displaying dialogue; if you want that back, you lose control over the music. So, what is a young glasshoppel to do?

Confucius Say: Fit Square Block In Round Hole

If only. However, you can better your odds by picking the right tools for the right job. To be able to do that, you need to know what you want. Learning what you want is easy; just look at the game. Where you at, holmes? Are you watching Siegfried getting smacked around the room by Joan in true Friends style, or are you tearing down that fortress with assorted siege weaponry?

The first question you need to answer is: “How important is dialogue for this part?” You nearly always need dialogue, but it isn’t always the dominant factor in the game. If the player is real busy trying not to get eaten by a Grue, you can bet your last buck that he or she doesn’t want to spend a second on reading that incredibly clever play on words. Chances are he or she isn’t even going to notice it to begin with.

The second question is kind of a dead give-away: “How much control do I need over my music for this part?” In general, if you’ve answered “not that important, really” to the first question, this one’s going to be “as much as I can get, Sherlock”. Reverse where applicable. If you get down and dirty with it, it isn’t that hard to understand that you only need full control over your music when the player is in full control of the game; you can’t time the player’s actions. Not much, anyway.

My Recommendations

For Cutscenes, I recommend using Play Sound to play a timed background track, and Display Instructions to handle dialogue.

For Gameplay, I recommend using Display Instructions to play and loop background tracks, and Send Chat to handle dialogue.

A What To The Where Now?

Relax, shit has not hit the fan.

Cutscenes
When the player’s watching a cutscene, you can get away with manually timing the lenght of your background track – so it will stop when the cutscene ends. You’ll need some kind of tool to edit your background track, of course: check out A conclusive list of audio tools for some ideas on what you can use, and where you can get it. It takes a bit of work to get the timing for your background track just right, but it’s well worth the effort.

Since you can play the timed background track just fine with Play Sound, Display Instructions is now available for dialogue use.

Gameplay
If the player is in control, dialogue is usually not overly important; being able to start and stop the background track whenever you want, however, is. You never know when the player will reach the next cutscene, so you need that control. That means using Display Instructions to play the background track; you can then stop the music with Clear Instructions, and it has the added benefit of allowing for perfect loops.

With Display Instructions taken, you will need to display what little dialogue is needed via Send Chat. Send Chat has the added bonus of not obstructing the screen, though it can be a little hard to get it to behave the way you want it to.

Important Notes

• Pausing the game, calling on the Chat Box, or opening any of the menus (Objectives, Technology Tree, etc.) effectively pauses the trigger work in the scenario – but it will not pause any active background track. This means the player can screw up your timing; this is unfortunate, but there’s nothing you can do about it save for explaining to the player that he or she shouldn’t do any of the above during cutscenes. A House Rule under the Tips section usually works well for this.
• If you’re using timed background tracks, keep in mind that the game speed affects the Timer condition! Make sure you inform the player at what game speed he or she is supposed to play the game, or your hard work will have been for naught. Again, a House Rule under the Tips section should do the trick.
  Modding: If you’re replacing an ES campaign, you can lock the game speed by replacing the player settings file with one of your own.
• Whenever you have a looping Display Instructions active (and only then), Send Chat is bugged; every once in a while, the game will interpret the Display Instructions as just another Send Chat, and print it in the Send Chat area of the screen. This is extremely annoying, but there isn’t a thing you can do about it. Limit the number of Send Chats you use to the absolute minimum, and pray the bug doesn’t strike when you use one.

Closing Words

What it do, baby. With this short guide, getting music and dialogue to behave shouldn’t be too much of a problem. Questions? Post them over at the University Forum. Luke out.