Musical accompaniment and arts

Introduction
One of the most important ways to convey the atmosphere and feel of the game is musical accompaniment. In our case, this is background music, the sounds of mechanisms, the flight of a spaceship, and the sounds of the cursor interacting with objects. After days of thinking, I came to some conclusions about what the music will be in our game and in this post I will share them.

I also want to note that in this post I will be using sketches drawn by @igorconceptart, my friend and colleague from my previous workplace. And the music written by my old friend from college Maxim. Therefore, the post will definitely not be boring 🙂

Idea
Space vacuum cannot transmit sounds, and in fact, no matter what happens in the game, the player from his perspective will not be able to hear it. That's why I was fascinated by the idea of ​​making sounds as if they didn't exist at all, and the player invented them himself. In order to achieve this effect, we will make all the sounds quite quiet and very interactive. In other words, in order to hear the sounds of some objects, you will have to focus your attention on them: point the camera, the cursor, or click on this object.

Sounds
Our spaceship should be the loudest. Regardless of where the camera is located, we need to know that our ship is in flight and we will convey this information with sounds.

This is a version of the spaceship drawn by Igor. I note that we plan to make the game in the style of space dieselpunk. It will be very cool 🙂

Unlike a ship, other objects, such as drones, will be heard only if we point the camera at them.

And this is our drone with a drill. It will sit on meteorites and extract resources from them. Top view is on the left. The fan in the middle will rotate during flight and extraction.

Mechanics of music
I thought about not making music at all, but then I realized that was a bad idea. Therefore, I began to think about how we implement it, because this is a very important aspect of our game.

I thought it would be cool to make the music very subtle, staring into the void, the player would hear a beautiful melody in the background. And in this regard, I had two options as to how it could be implemented.

The first option was that the music would always be played, but very quietly. And it will be possible to hear it only if you completely stop interacting with objects. Complete silence, and only in this silence the player hears a simple quiet melody, resting from his "everyday life". But, I'm afraid that this option will create a lot of unnecessary noise for us, so I'm more inclined to the second option.

The second option is similar to the first, the difference is that the music will be played only when the appropriate moment appears. For example, when traveling in open space, or simply away from all devices.

With the help of music, we can convey different feelings to the player. For example, if the base is attacked by other civilizations, the music becomes louder, chaotic and tense. If the player is not in danger, the music is calm, barely noticeable in the background, or absent at all. It appears out of nowhere and disappears imperceptibly when the player concentrates on other things.
This is how I see the music in this game.

Music
The biggest problem I've faced is that I just don't know how to make music. That is, I have absolutely no experience and any musical literacy. The only thing that connects me with music is listening to it all day long. And this is not enough to write music for a game.

But there is a way out of this problem. Maxim, my old friend from college, has been interested in music for a long time, he understands it, knows how to play the guitar, and, as it turned out, not only that.
I told Maxim the idea, how I see it all, and he agreed to participate in the project. And therefore there will be cool music. But later on.

The sound will be simple, quiet, but very interesting and exciting. And I'm not going to try to describe it in words now, but I'll show you some work that pretty much describes how I see it.

This is Maxim's music, and the picture in the background is a sketch made by Igor
This is the first version of the background music

The second version of the background music

Both are a work in progress. It is possible that both will be used. There are also other developments which, most likely, will also be used, we will show them later.

End
In this post, I was also planning to show you the first flight mechanics of the ship, but the post is getting too big, so I'll save it for another time.
I would like to note that everything you hear, see and read is only preliminary work. I try to involve as many people as possible in the project, but now there are none who could allocate enough time for development, because each of us has our own affairs, main work and problems with electricity outages due to shelling. As a result, there is not enough free time even for rest.
Despite this, we are trying to lead the development of this project, and I will make posts.

I also advise you to visit and support the blog of our artist Igor @igorconceptart

That's it, thank you for your attention. Until the next posts✋