Preview for the Soundtrack of my RTS I'm working on

[Jackyy.BaDitO2]

Hi,

I just wanted to get some feedback on the soundtrack for the game I currently work on (a 2D RTS game).

can't really share more publicly atm because of pending trademarks and really early stage of development.
all the drawings and music you see in the video is done 100% by myself and should give you a rough idea for the artstyle I try to hit.


cheers
BaDitO2

 

[deepstrasz]

Not sure exactly what it's about, but I see it's fantasy with elves and stuff.
The main theme sets a war or rather tragic atmosphere. Is it fitting to the game's story or general vibe? Maybe it's a bit too long on the same line?
Some of the elf and human themes sound similarly in style to the main theme. Maybe a bit more differentiation between styles would work.
Also, the first human theme sounds like one of Warcraft II's orc themes...

Overall sounds like a 90s-2000s game which is good if the graphics support it.

 

[Jackyy.BaDitO2]

Not sure exactly what it's about, but I see it's fantasy with elves and stuff.
The main theme sets a war or rather tragic atmosphere. Is it fitting to the game's story or general vibe? Maybe it's a bit too long on the same line?
Some of the elf and human themes sound similarly in style to the main theme. Maybe a bit more differentiation between styles would work.
Also, the first human theme sounds like one of Warcraft II's orc themes...

Overall sounds like a 90s-2000s game which is good if the graphics support it.

thanks for the reply

graphics style gonna be like this roughtly.
I try to get a "handdrawn" feel to it by well... handdraw everything. the ground textures were even drawn with real oil paint on real painting paper and then scanned in.


yeah the sober mood is on purpose. story-theme wise it's gonna be kinda simular to the barry lydon movie with like the philosphic themes etc..

setting itself is less high fantasy but something I would describe more as "low fantasy". while magic and stuff exists it's extremly rare and special. how the story is structured is more based on like actual historical accounts of stuff rather than fantasy books. I would describe it more as "historical fiction in a fantasy universe".


not going to much into detail because it's way to early to make 100% secure statements but those points I mentioned above should be true for the finished project

 

[deepstrasz]

graphics style gonna be like this roughtly.
I try to get a "handdrawn" feel to it by well... handdraw everything. the ground textures were even drawn with real oil paint on real painting paper and then scanned in.

Awesome that it's hand drawn! I would try adding a bit more details, like visible mouths and eyes and try my hand more at shading. Unless there's a light emission engine/thingy that does that on the "models"?

yeah the sober mood is on purpose. story-theme wise it's gonna be kinda simular to the barry lydon movie with like the philosphic themes etc..

Ha. What a coincidence. A friend of mine just sent me a track from the movie earlier.

setting itself is less high fantasy but something I would describe more as "low fantasy". while magic and stuff exists it's extremly rare and special. how the story is structured is more based on like actual historical accounts of stuff rather than fantasy books. I would describe it more as "historical fiction in a fantasy universe".

That sounds good. It would even be sweeter to ditch all magic and have races like elves, orcs, whatever as real ones with logical biological (pun intended) explanations.

 

[Jackyy.BaDitO2]

Awesome that it's hand drawn! I would try adding a bit more details, like visible mouths and eyes and try my hand more at shading. Unless there's a light emission engine/thingy that does that on the "models"?

the art stuff is mostly dependend ony my current artistic skill level.
just like 6 months ago I could barely draw stick figures. so yeah I hope it gets better over time but overall:
I aim for more of a comic like feeling anyway rather than more relasitc stuff. and also it's mostly a question of time. even in the current detail level just making the art assets alone is atleast a 12+ month affair for me alone. and mostly I I care about readability in gameplay scenarios rather than detail level and from my testing in my engine I noticed that to much shading can hurt readability. (the example screenshot I showed u is very much zoomed in, the relation to the screen would be 128x128 per infantry unit at a 4K 16:9 screen. appropriately scaled to the suiting resolution of the screen of the user.

That sounds good. It would even be sweeter to ditch all magic and have races like elves, orcs, whatever as real ones with logical biological (pun intended) explanations.

I thought about that but I think the way I handle magic adds to the story rather than subtracts from it as a cheap excuse for supernatural stuff. While I have "rational" explanations for how each race evolved in my worldbuilding notes I don't know yet if I even expose it if I even do it at all.
As it is true for our own world no single mortal being has 100% of the answers of how things are. And I try to stay very much "in character" with exposition. so no character would spout stuff like evolution theory in a 18th century setting.

 

[Jackyy.BaDitO2]

the soundtrack of my elven faction is now complete

 

[deepstrasz]

I see there's a lot of text there. Is it a bit like old Blizzard game manuals? There's also a link (blue underlined text) looking part. Is the game for web browsers or using some web design coding language?

Nice music overall, some are more relaxing, some sadder, others more progressive, marches. There's also some modern film influence in a few, that kind of stealth/military operations bass line.

 

[Jackyy.BaDitO2]

I see there's a lot of text there. Is it a bit like old Blizzard game manuals? There's also a link (blue underlined text) looking part.

it's from my as of yet private worldbuilding encyclopedia website. gonna be released along with the game as a kind of subsitute to like OG printed game lore manuals from the 90s.

Is the game for web browsers or using some web design coding language?

nah, the game is a java application. I played arround with trying to make it browser compatible for like absolute platform neutralitly, but WebGL is a nightmare in its current state. so java was the next best option for making it platform neutral as much as possible.

There's also some modern film influence in a few

yeah I looked at the ip man soundtracks to get some very slight oriental influence in there, in the sense as someone from east asia would like make music for their own media and not like the mists of pandaria style of eastern influene so to speak. Since the elven factions are based on east asia not as it was in reality in history but more as it was described in the classics of the mountains and the seas (山海經)