Minecraft Music Rant

I have been playing Minecraft on and off for some time now (since the beta days), and there are some audio related issues I have with the game. I must first point out how much I love the music written by C148, and I bought the volume alpha album off bandcamp immediately after my first experience playing the game [1]. However, many updates have been and gone, yet the music has stayed the same. It is getting to the point now where I feel new music should either be added or replace the soundtrack that has been implemented for so long.

Another area that I feel needs addressing is the way in which the music is implemented by the Mojang development team. With an increasing awareness of interactivity in games, music can be used to convey information as well as being non-repetitive. However, the music in Minecraft is too linear for my likening. For example, you can be exploring the deep realms of the Minecraft world and have no clue to whether it is night or day above. Couldn't the music be arranged to provide this information? Possibly a change in tonality from major (day) to minor (night)?

This month has seen the release of a new Minecraft - Volume Beta audio collection, created and released by C148 [2]. As beautiful and well constructed this music is, I am eager to hear how it will be integrated into the Minecraft game.

[1] http://c418.bandcamp.com/album/minecraft-volume-alpha

[2] http://c418.bandcamp.com/album/minecraft-volume-beta

Manchester Game Jam (03/11/13)

Manchester Game Jam is an opportunity for game developers to gather and take part in a 'rapid fire' one day session of creating computer games. I have never attended an event like this before so I thought I would inquire.

After communicating with the organisers of Manchester Game Jam it became apparent that no audiogame developers have ever attended, which I found fairly understandable considering the limited number of professional audiogame developers out there. So as an aspiring audio-only games developer I thought I would take up the offer to attend the one day game jam on November 3rd. I will probably attempt to develop a small audio-only game that I have been mulling over in my head for some time, which touches on several areas of previous research and practice surrounding auditory dimensions and 'listen and find' systems. I will be using max/msp to develop the game, due to its extensive audio capabilities.

Due to the game being audio-only, I will have to prepare quite heavily for the session, as I will not be able to record any dialogue or location recordings during the session. However, to counter any issues regarding missing or requiring new sounds I will be running a DAW along side the actual game development software, which will be used to alter and/or combine sounds as well as a integrate any additional sounds gathered from a variety of online sound libraries.

One of the most exciting aspects of this event for me will be meeting a load of new people who share the same interest in making and playing games, along with the chance of hanging out with some audio guys/girls who I believe occasionally attend these game jam events!

I will probably post my thoughts on the event along with a standalone application of the game for download after the event.

http://madlab.org.uk/content/manchester-game-jam-nov-2013/