PlanetDeusEx | Deus Ex | Help | Editing | Music
How to implement music in your Deus Ex level

Go to UnrealED and load the level you wish to add music to.

In Options/Level, you can set the default music, music section, and cd track for the level.

MusicEvent actors work similarly to SpecialEvent actors, in that they let you cause music changes in response to any event, such as the player touching a trigger, killing a monster, etc. In multiplayer games, MusicEvent actors only cause a music change in the player which caused the event, not all players in the game. MusicEvents have a "Song" variable which you can set to "None" if you want to use the song you set for the level in Options/Level.

Now, in order to actually write the special events when you can change the music, here’s what you do:

Take your tracker of choice (for more information on HOW to track as well as acquiring these trackers, go here: www.maz-sound.com … download "The Trackers Bible" from the "Trackers" section, its at the bottom) and figure out what you want to do musically in your game.

If you want to just have a single piece of music playing at all times, piece of cake! Just write your song in your tracker and load it into your level by using the "music" tab in the browser to the right of your screen in UnrealEd. You can import .XM, .IT, and .S3M files, as well as others that are more antiquated such as original .MODs.

If you want more than one, you can use MusicEvent actors as listed above after you have done the following in your tracker.

Write a number of segments in a single MOD file, each can be a different piece of music to correspond to ‘action’, ‘ambient’, ‘suspense’, and so forth. Then, take the first pattern of each segment and put them, in any order you like, into your order list… here’s an example:

ACTION segment consists of patterns 00, 01, 02, 03, and 04.

AMBIENT segment consists of patterns 05, 06, 07, and 08.

Your order list will then look like this, where the left column of numbers is the order of playback, and the right column is where you place your patterns when you put everything together.

00    00

01 05

02 01

03 02

04 03

05 04

06 06

07 07

08 08

Pattern 00, the first pattern of the action segment, uses the Bxx (where xx is the number of the pattern to jump to) command at the end of the pattern to jump to the next pattern in the order.

So in pattern 00, if your pattern is 64 ticks in length, you put the command B02 at tick 063 to make it jump to pattern 02 to continue the action segment. In pattern 04, you put the command B00 to make it repeat the action segment, or continue another segment (use Bxx where xx can be anywhere in the order list).

Pattern 05, the first pattern of the ambient segment, uses the command B07 to jump to pattern 07 to continue the ambient segment. In pattern 08, you use the command B01 to make it repeat the ambient segment, or continue another segment (use Bxx where xx can be anywhere in the order list).

In UnrealED, do this to activate your dynamic music .IT / .S3M file that you import:

Each level has a default song and CD track which is played throughout the level. You can specify the song in UnrealEd in "Options/Level" in the "Audio" tab.

Music can be transitioned dynamically via a SpecialEvent object hooked up to a trigger or any other event source.

Music is not zone based, because that would become annoying when backtracking through maps and in network play.

Music is tracked per player so it can be used equally well in single player and network play.





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