Envy Music

[The_Head]

Any ideas on what the music is going to be like in Envy?

I'm hoping its going to be as good as the original UT99, the music was amazing for the atmosphere. UT2k3/4 just didn't have the quality of music. (not including the music from UT99 that was included - might have only been with custom stuff, I can't remember)

 

[Tournament0]

I don't have any ideas yet.
But I think it will match the atmosphere.

 

[NeoNite]

Britney spears and michael jackson's comeback cd.

"You aren't fraggin alone...."
"Kill the wooooorllllddd..."
"Spam spam who is da man"

"Frag me baby one more time!"

...

 

[Selerox]

Dancey and Atmospheric

I'm hoping they have a return to the UT99 style of music, maybe including a few remixes of some of the original UT99 tracks. Unreal/UT music was done using tracking, but I think theres nothing wrong with updating that, as long as the music has the same atmospheric style of the first 2 games.

 

[Dark Pulse]

UT's music styles was DEFINITELY the perfect fit, and one of the reasons I absolutely love the game. Each map's music fit like the pants of a man with five penises - like a glove.

2003's mostly sucked, there were a few good ones, though 85% of them were Starsky Partridge's LevelXX series.

2004 had some better ones, with Rankin having a distinct 99 feel to it. Ideally, all the UT99 Music Guys (Van Den Bos, Brandon, et. al) should team up with Kevin Riepl and Starsky Partridge, to make the ultimate soundtrack.

Sound is one way to immerse someone into a game, into the little virtual world you create, and if you get the mood right, they will completely suspend Disbelief. All you oldtimers out there who play with music on, all I have to do is say "CTF-Face" and that familiar tune of Foregone Destruction should start playing in your head. Likewise for CTF-Lavagiant's Skyward Fire.

Which was another good thing about UT's music... variety. It had plenty of Adrenaline-raising stuff (Razor-UB anyone?) but then had calmer fare like Skyward Fire and Foregone Destruction. It completely set the mood, perfectly, and far better then both 2003 or 2004 did (Though 2004 also has some good ones - ONS-Dria's fits PERFECTLY.)

To this day, I play with music on, despite my peers looking at me like I have a disease. Sorry, but I like the music a lot, and I seriously hope Envy has a kickass soundtrack, one right up there with 99's.

Please don't disappoint, Epic.

 

[O.S.T]

secretly I hope james brown writes the music for "envy"
if it's not james brown, I'll stick with turning UT's music off and listening to coltrane's giant steps or some stuff I find on my pc

 

[JohnDoe641]

Riepl should put the UC2 UT redux in for Envy, it's a great new version of UT's opener music.

And hopefully they'll get a better lossless music format and not use the ogg pos. If you've heard the 192 kbps (even that's a bit low) versions of the Hyperblast redux and the 2k4 UT menu remix, you'd know how crappy ogg sounds.

 

[NiteX]

Sound is one way to immerse someone into a game, into the little virtual world you create, and if you get the mood right, they will completely suspend Disbelief.

To this day, I play with music on, despite my peers looking at me like I have a disease. Sorry, but I like the music a lot, and I seriously hope Envy has a kickass soundtrack, one right up there with 99's.

Please don't disappoint, Epic.

I completely agree with you. I have to have music on while playing a game. I find games that have no music or just plain bad music makes the game feel worse and it makes the gameplay for me a lot less great. I don’t know why but music that fits the theme is very important to me. I put all the old UT99 songs into UT2004 so I can choose whatever song I want from UT99. I really hope Envy has a music track even better than UT99 or at least just as great. I know hoping for it to be even better than UT99 is a little too high of an expectation though.

 

[The_Head]

When playing a competative match I'l have music off. But if its just a bit of fun. UT99 music all the way!

 

[Nereid]

And hopefully they'll get a better lossless music format and not use the ogg pos. If you've heard the 192 kbps (even that's a bit low) versions of the Hyperblast redux and the 2k4 UT menu remix, you'd know how crappy ogg sounds.

All of the UT200x KR- music is encoded at roughly 64 kbps. The quality at that bitrate is ok, but it's roughly on par with 128 kbps MP3. With 160-192 kbps Vorbis, the quality would be nearly indistinguishable from lossless, with better compression rates, unless your ears are insanely sensitive.

I did some comparisons of quality between MP3 and Vorbis. Taken from a lossless source (which is Golgoth.umx from a UT map), I converted each to MP3 and Ogg Vorbis at varying bitrates, from 32 kbps all the way up to 192 kbps. At low bitrates, Vorbis obviously having better quality, with a 48 kbps ogg being roughly on par with 80-96 kbps MP3. At 128 kbps, I could still notice lots of distortion with MP3, but the 128 kbps Ogg was nearly indistinguishable from the original.

I threw in MP2 and MP4 in just for the hell of it. MP4 definitely sounded better than MP3, but not quite as good as an Ogg of the same bitrate.

Another reason Ogg is quite popular is that it is free. There are no licensing fees and such.

The only real alternative I can see to Vorbis is FLAC or some other lossless format. However, because of the higher (and irreducible) bitrates, lossless formats are not as likely to become mainstream.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Anyway, regarding the music itself, I really hope that Envy will have a style of music closer to that of UT/Unreal. It fit perfectly. (Damn you Dark Pulse for saying what I was thinking already. I agree with pretty much everything you said there.)

While I do play with music, I generally turn it down quite a bit (to around 0.05 or so) so that it doesn't distract from the game sounds.

 

[Bazzi]

I'd reckon that music by Rob Dougan would fit Ut very well, maybe they could contract him

 

[Nereid]

Listening to what he's done, I would have to disagree, although maybe there's some other music that I haven't heard that would fit UT.

Or are you talking about a different Rob Dougan?

 

[Kantham]

A bit hi tech i guess , maybe some harcore , and some ambiant (I.E. cave ambiance)

I am sure the next ut music won't dissapoint me.

 

[NeoNite]

Definitaly UT style, although there are some nice ut2003/4 tunes.. (the one from Dom-seppukugorge wasn't bad. Ons-torlan had nice music... there's more)

But UT's music is best for me, anyway.

A mix off dance/ambient/trance with rock etc..

Razorback, Botmca9, Saveme, Lock, Mech8 (mechanism8): these are very nice tunes.
Firebreather...

 

[Bot_40]

Yeah, this is what I liked about UT. It had a range of different styles of music, but each track was really good for it's genre and every track fit the map perfectly.
Funny, my favourite track for UT2k4 is easilly Hyperblast-Redux and that's a UT remake. imo this track is just perfect tempo and style to get the ol' adrenaline rushing during a frantic dm match but of course there needs to be a variety of different moods. Nothing like the ol' enigma.umx to get the unreal1 style atmosphere flowing

 

[CyMek]

Yeah, the music makes a huge difference in the game. If it fits well, it really helps the atmosphere (And helps cover up lazy mapping when an author neglects ambient sounds.) Other than that, what Dp, DemonThing, and all the rest of you said.

 

[Tournament0]

CyMek, your sig is too big. Make it smaller!
I think they will have a new mood for "Envy".
So they will probably use different music.

 

[The_Head]

His sig looks fine to me. It has less pixels than yours.

OT MODE

Just listened through some of the songs from UT2k4. generally all the good ones are remixs from UT99. That game had music to a tee.
I cant think of a song I didn't like.

 

[NeoNite]

How could I forget the music from Ctf-face. Foregone destruction. That track simply pwns :O)

And the music from Hyperblast isn't bad either!

Enigma is very nice as well.

Eh, I like most tracks anyway :O)