"Scared to death?"

Chris's eyes darkened.

I can't help but think of the experience of playing games in the past.

Don't say it.

There has been a similar experience.

Game producers sometimes have a lot of bad taste, and they will scare the player a little bit in certain places from time to time.

Especially open-world RPG games.

Since it's an open world, there will be surprises, and of course there will be scares.

Let's take Assassin's Creed's last game, Odyssey.

If you are in a bounty state, you have inadvertently walked to some places close to the bounty mercenary.

It will blow the horn directly, buzz, and then jump out halfway a red avatar and directly pull out a knife to cut you.

Stop.

It's not necessarily scary.

But suddenly buzzing, if it is when you slip away, it will indeed be exciting.

"That's right, scare the player."

Li Jinglin nodded.

"Let's say"

"Conscious countdown to some in-game mechanic or stage!"

"Countdown?"

Chris always felt as if he had grasped something.

But it still feels like a wall is separating it.

It's going to be realized, it hurts, and the brain is going to grow.

But it only grew a little bit, and it didn't grow at all.

"Yes."

Listen to the students' questions.

Li Jinglin nodded.

I couldn't help but have a wicked smile on my face.

In fact, from the time when "The Witcher 3" first came into contact with the game soundtrack, Li Jinglin tapped out more fun with the soundtrack.

Instilling "negative" emotions into players through the gaming experience.

Really chill stick.

"Through the form of reading notes, players are vaguely aware of some problems, and from this time, in fact, it has begun to improve the tension of players from all aspects, and pave the way for the follow-up content."

"In this way, although the players know that there must be something big happening after the end of this countdown reading, but on the contrary, they know that it is the most uncomfortable, you must understand that the sword hanging above the head is the most terrifying."

Speaking of which.

Li Jinglin told the students about several common mechanics in games.

"For example, the terrain of the boss battle is not normal, it could be an ice ocean, magma, or poisonous fog?"

"Or the boss is in a fixed time, which is a relatively easy stage to fight, and when the fixed time is up, it will be crazy to strengthen."

"Or the other way around."

"For example, combined with the plot of the game, the boss is invincible, but in order to challenge the boss, the NPC helps the player, or the player gives the boss a bit of a negative status through other tasks."

"But because the boss is really powerful, it takes a fixed time to count seconds to break the defense, in this process, the boss will release skills crazily, and the combat power will be full, and when the time is up, it is the time for the player to play."

Speaking of which.

Chris and the others already have some understanding.

It is also a more "rigid" cooperation.

But if it works well.

It can make this part of the game very emotional.

Really!

"Some bosses will enter a certain reading mode at the opening moment, and after the reading mode is over, it is likely that they will be forced to put a full-screen spike system's ultimate, or transform into a performance."

"This is the intention to put huge pressure on the player psychologically, since this method is easy to be cracked by gamers, as a way to clear the level, then, it is better to take it out directly, with the performance animation and fixed skill mods, so that players can feel the oppression of the boss."

Listen to Li Jinglin's introduction.

Several people looked at each other, all showing very interested expressions.

"And at this time, the dominant thing is not the music itself."

Li Jinglin spoke seriously.

After introducing some relevant knowledge of the game.

I re-entered the perspective of music production.

"The producer will ask for some opinions from the music producer, and the music producer will also give a rough time frame of [emotional guidance] based on music psychology and examples."

"But it is impossible for games to completely compromise with music, and the reason why games are the ninth art is precisely because music, art, and game content cooperate and organically combine with each other, rather than restricting each other."

"In this case, the producer who designed the boss mechanic will sometimes talk to the soundtrack about this aspect and give each other a basic line, and a good soundtrack will flexibly adjust their music loop according to these things."

"For example?"

Chris got excited.

Tell the truth.

As a soundtrack.

Use the art form you are good at.

Collaborate with artists from other fields.

Together, they built a wonderful and huge world for the game, and together they gave birth to the "ninth art".

Such a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction is unimaginable.

"In the development of the game soundtrack, a soundtrack mode was born that reads the instructions with the boss, that is, the game producer designs the next behavior logic according to the boss's HP, and the music changes accordingly."

Listen to Li Jinglin's words.

Chris understood right away.

At the beginning, when the game and soundtrack work together to build the game experience.

It's rather dull.

For example, I fix what the boss will do when it changes, and the music will change at the same time.

This can be seen as parallel.

While this routine still works well, it's not possible to use it all this way in a big game.

【Interaction】

This is the most important concept of a game.

The interaction between literature and music, the interaction between music and game mechanics, the interaction between game mechanics and art, etc.

In the game world itself, a highly entangled interaction is formed, which will be more of an organic whole, so that the player's sense of experience will increase, and various factors in the game will also form an interaction.

For example, a certain music, a certain plot, a certain boss, a certain skill, a certain scene

It can impress players.

It's all through interaction.

Only when the sense of interaction is full, then it will feel fun.

It's not impossible for music to be parallel to the game, but once something goes wrong, it's easy to cause a sense of separation, so in the modern game field, these elements need to be interconnected.

Sure enough.

Li Jinglin said this, and smiled.

"Have you ever thought that the progress of gamers fighting bosses is completely different, some are very fast, but some will ink for a long time, in this case, will the former not be able to feel the emotion of the soundtrack, and the latter will be at the most nervous time, very contrary to the most passionate music, greatly reducing the sense of experience?"

Several students were shocked.

I really didn't think about this question.

Everyone understands the situation according to their own vision.

Assume.

But after Li Jinglin introduced these contents and quickly digested them.

Chris and the others began to understand why they wanted to strengthen the interaction, and why there was music to read instructions with the boss.

Because

There are thousands of players, some have disabled hands, some have no hands, some have very active brains, and some have sharp operations. There may be quite a few shoe teaching styles that you haven't seen before.

How can the speed of this clearance be the same?

Obviously, there are other ways to circumvent this problem.

"That's right, in the next step, the producer will basically transfer the logic of this reading instruction from time to the monster's HP."

Li Jinglin knocked on the whiteboard again.

Got to the point.

"Since the time is too fixed, let's be flexible and adjust it to the amount of blood."

"When the monster reaches a certain amount of blood, it will be graded to increase the rage, or release some special types of powerful skills."

"The production of music, in this mode, needs to be separated."

"For example, the boss that the player sees is a two-stage form, with CG animation in between."

"When designers design logic, they may divide it into four or five stages."

"For example, one stage is full blood, one stage is half blood, one stage is residual blood, then death, the CG of the cutscene, the second stage repeats this concept, and then clears the level."

Li Jinglin's words changed.

It really talks about one of the real difficulties in making a game soundtrack.

While keeping the whole, you also need to be able to segment!

"When you make music, you need to control the whole main musical structure, and at the same time, divide it into different stages of musical phrases, and make these musical phrases loopable."

"For example, the whole music, according to the different phases, is divided into opening A, foreshadowing B, the first climax of the residual blood, C, the cutscene, the second stage, the different opening phrase D, and then the complete explosion of E"

"If it's a normal piece of music production, it's a whole."

"But in soundtrack production, it's going to be looped separately, so we had a hard problem."

Li Jinglin wrote a row of words on the whiteboard.

[Player's tolerance threshold for repetition is limited]

"You have also studied music psychology, and you should know that if a passage is repeated too many times, it is very easy to break through the tolerance threshold of human psychology."

"So, after taking these passages, there needs to be a difference while making this cycle."

"For example, for an opening A paragraph, you need to write A1, A2, A3, so that the player will not be annoyed by the paragraph loop."

"In this way, if you do a good job of fading in and out, this is the gold content of the soundtrack."

It dawned on Chris to him!

Li Jinglin's teaching really opened the door to a new world for Chris.

This compares to other types of music. It's another world entirely.

Really.

In-game music, and the game's soundtrack.

It's not the same thing.

The game's soundtrack album is a complete tune.

It could be the end of an ABCD passage.

But actually, in the real game.

It is necessary to add flowers.

If you stay in phase B, then sometimes, you may find that the music in phase B is a plus fancy cycle of B1, B2, and B3.

Speedrunners are okay, people don't listen to music, just for the thrill of a wonderful boss.

But if it's an ordinary player, the soundtrack is not done well, the boss is halfway played, and the music suddenly climaxes on the spot

It was a real experience.

(End of chapter)