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Weekly Update 2020-3 (Development)

5 years ago1,998 words

This week, I want to talk about what I'm doing with the music in Divine Dreams (the MARDEK Reimagining)! Here's the music for the fantasy intro, with the same piece from MARDEK for comparison.

∞ I talked in the paired Personal post about some of the feedback on the previous development post, and some important psychological concepts that are definitely going to apply to anything that I present here ∞. While I understand that not everyone who's interested in the game would be interested in reading about my personal ranting - that's why I'm splitting these up - I do think that if nothing else, you should watch this 2-minute video about something called the mere-exposure effect:



Things we're used to feel nicer than things that are new, and it generally takes a few exposures to any new thing before we warm up to it. So just keep that in mind when reading this.



The music's always been one of the most important parts of any game to me, especially things like character-driven RPGs. I put a lot of care into MARDEK's soundtrack - which I imagine was bigger than any other Flash game's soundtrack by far - though I was very much a beginner amateur composer. I'd never been taught, and my knowledge of music theory was rudimentary at best. So back then, everything I made was full of what I'd call 'raw creativity' - me just pouring out the instincts that bubbled up inside, or came to me from the aether if you prefer - but I hadn't yet developed the skills to properly refine any of it.

Since then, I've read a lot of books and watched a lot of videos about music theory, I've deconstructed and analysed compositions by others (though not as often as I should), and I'd say I've improved my skills a lot, though I've also realised a lot about what I still don't know. I'm still learning.

I think this is a very good metaphor:



A raw gemstone isn't an unpleasant thing. It's shiny and appealing, but it's rough and dirty in places. Cut gems lose a lot of their rough mass in the process, but their fascinating facets give a cleaner, deeper shape. Neither is 'better' exactly, but I'd say you'd find more admirers of the cut gem than the raw one.

MARDEK's soundtrack is a raw gem. I like it, but it's also obviously very amateurishly constructed, if you know what to look for. As such, I'll be completely redoing the soundtrack for this, like I did with Taming Dreams. I'll likely reference the old tracks on occasion, and I might heavily reuse some of the music from Taming Dreams since I was more competent when I wrote that (though we'll see how it goes since I actually like composing new music), but for the most part I'll be trying to capture the essence of much of the old music in a newer form. Trying to cut a gem from the shiny clump.

I've only composed a couple of pieces for Divine Dreams so far, and I wouldn't consider either final just yet. I was going to talk about both here, but I think that'd be a bit overwhelming, so I'll just talk about the music for the intro cutscene, since comparing this beginning section is a good way of showing the similarities and the differences between the old version and this.

The Intro

MARDEK began with a fantasy sequence, where Mardek and Deugan were pretending to be Mighty Heroes off on their quest to slay a dragon and save a princess. I feel that this is an iconic and important part of the story, so I wanted to keep it in this revision, but it has potential that wasn't utilised in MARDEK because of the improvised way the story came together.

So in this, since I know what's going to happen from beginning to end, I'm using this section both to say something important about the characters, and to foreshadow the rest of the story, in a way that wouldn't make sense until after you'd finished the whole thing. It's similar to Taming Dreams' intro in that sense, though I'll be trying to capture the snappiness and lighthearted tone of MARDEK's, so no long-winded esoteric tutorial before you've even started playing.

In MARDEK, Mardek and Deugan were actually little children playing a game of make-believe. In this, I'm using an idea I've been thinking about for ages, which is where they're both young adults playing a game of something like D&D instead. That way, I don't have to make separate child models, or have a huge time jump, and it means their dialogue can be a bit more sophisticated without it seeming wrong.

Originally the 'save the princess' thing was meant as a way of spoofing generic fantasy stories, but I feel that those aren't done anymore outside of parody, so it feels a bit dated. Instead, this is a "defeat the evil villain!" story, in a way that the actual plot wouldn't be. I posted this concept art on Twitter a while back, of The Devil, which replaces (and takes inspiration from) The Dragon, as well as Taming Dreams' Evil God (which was also inspired by The Dragon):



Like in MARDEK, I'm intending the intro to begin with an a stylised cutscene, with text. Here's a comparison of the text from the original and the text from this revised version:



I didn't originally intend it to rhyme, but it evolved into that as I worked at it, and it feels so much nicer like this, in my opinion. It also inspired me to have the cutscene's music match up with the lyrics; not planned exactly, but a nice instance of organic idea development with a really pleasing result!

You can see the original intro to MARDEK in the first minute or so of this longplay, from a post a while back (seems pointless to make a new video for it):



You're probably familiar with that already! Let's look at the actual sheet music of the piece that plays during the intro:



I don't know how many of you can read sheet music or know music theory, so I won't go into things like specific chords; the main thing to say about the harmony of this is "I had only the vaguest ideas of what I was doing". Overall, it's very much an unrefined gem; there's a lot here, but it's not polished.

To be clear, I like the music in MARDEK! When I listen back to this, I feel a twinge of regret that I've since lost the raw creative energy that produced music like this. But I also acknowledge how rough it is.

This piece is in the key of E minor, and it starts on a high E played on the strings. There's a fairly lengthy non-melodic intro section where the instruments are gradually introduced, and the mood is set.

This is followed by a four-bar section with stabbing cluster chords and quick runs, representing The Dragon (marked A in the image).

This is followed by a softer - but busier - section, "The Princess's Theme" (B). It plays once, then repeats, and during the repeat, the Mighty Heroes motif plays over the top of it... oddly, since they don't exactly harmonise with one another. I remember even back in the day I felt that was quite tangled, but I suppose over the years I've just got used to it. (This motif is also used in Emeela's theme.)

The Might Heroes theme (C) - or at least a variation of it - then plays with full brightness, speeding up and repeating with more depth and different variation, until a couple of bars transition into the Mighty Heroes track. It sort of trails off into it though, losing the momentum that was built up, and that music begins with just a drum beat.

I feel that while I lacked knowledge of technical harmony back then, I did at least have a feel for how to tell a story with a piece of music, and this is very much an attempt at that.

Now, for the Divine Dreams version...





I've uploaded it as a video, and you can see how the 'lyrics' correspond to the music, though in the export process some of them have been illegibly clumped together in a way they aren't in the actual file (annoying). Here they are again, for reference:



Unlike the MARDEK version, there's just an A and a B section: dark and light. It begins with the same high E on the strings, but the melody begins on the piano much sooner.

The dark section is quite sparse, with extra notes added to the harmony selectively, to accentuate certain words. The first instance of 'gods' and 'dreams' are seventh intervals, which (deliberately) sound a bit off here. "Slaughtered" hits harder than what came before. "Devil" makes use of what's called a ∞ tritone ∞, historically known as "Diabolus in Musica" ("the devil in music"), which is an amusing little detail. There's some deliberate dissonance in the final line in this section to create a forbidding feeling.

The jump to the brightness - after a brief pause - is a massive tonal shift, but the actual melody is kept very similar, effectively tying the two halves together. The melody has a repeat with variation that jumps up a minor third to build momentum, anticipation, brightness, and harmonic colour that wasn't really there in the original.

This would lead directly into the new version of Mighty Heroes, which would use melody from this bright section as its primary motif. I haven't composed that (fully) yet though as I want to write themes for Mardek and Deugan first so then I can incorporate them into it.

I don't consider this finished yet, so I might change some things, but I like it enough to want to keep listening to it over and over, so that probably means it's a success!



Obviously there's a lot I've not said here, so people will fill in those holes with assumptions, or with memories, likely creating a picture that's not quite accurate. I wish I could just be posting a full demo of the intro section rather than a piece of it like this, but obviously that'll take time!

I've almost finished with planning the plot now (it's still my primary focus), but I'm intending to spend the rest of this month on it just so then I'm starting with as solid a foundation as I can. Then, in February, I'll try to build a demo of this intro section, which I'll then use as a starting point for promoting the game and building more of an audience.

I've got a lot of work to do, but I'm excited about where it's going so far! Please keep in mind the mere-exposure effect though when comparing your feelings about this to how you feel about something you've got an existing strong connection with! Perhaps it's a good thing to be showing this now actually, so then when it comes time for the demo, some aspects of it will be familiar and less jarring.