this looks AWESOME! if you dont already, id highly recommend following / getting in touch with @Rekcahdam. his game Band Saga http://www.bandsaga.com/ uses realtime onboard synths, sequencers, etc for gameplay.

so stoked to see indie music games! your concept seems nice and focused too, good luck!

Thanks for adressing Band Saga. That looks like a crazy game involving music. I will definitely get in touch!

We also use Unity 3D and I wonder how they are dealing with the audio optimization. Currently the timing of the samples fluctuate a lot. I also would like to talk about their approach while implementing the idea and concept.

If I make a sweet piece of music with this game, do I own the copyright? 

Also, make the pitch get higher as they come down the screen... thank me later 

Wow that was an unexpected question that came pretty early. You are right. We definitely need to think a lot about the rights of the music generated during the development.

It seems like it will depend on how much we will be succesful in having a differentiated music for different players and complete gameplays. If replay of a level sounds like a version of the same song, then they can only be remixes of the same song by players. But if we manage to make them differentiate enough then they can be music generated. Even in this case it should be discussed if each replay of a level is a different performance of a single interactive music composition or each of that is seperate compositions using a music generating game as a tool.

This is a very important subject to decide. I would love to introduce some CC license suitable for this case.

For differentiation, we are thinking of a way to provide player a toolbox of sounds and patterns. Towers will either have their own characteristic sounds or specific patterns. It maybe like this:
- After finishing a level successfully, the player will be offered some new towers and asked to choose one for adding to the inventory. Then the player will be able to listen to the characteristic sound loop of each tower and adds the faovrite one into the inventory. Then, before playing a level the player will make a subset of towers from the inventory to be used during that level.

Very early to say but if we manage to build a good system for generating music, we want to implement SoundCloud integration for publishing generated music directly to SoundCloud. Our remaining resources, energy and time will be another constraint for that:)

And, thanks for the pitch suggestion (better sooner than later ). It sounds like a very cool way to increase tension as the enemy gets closer. I wish (or I hope) there is also a way to do that with cutoff or filters. But I'm not very hopeful that sound effects are not very much CPU friendly. Increasing pitch is much simpler solution. I'll look into a way of implementing that into the current model that assigns one single note of a scale to each lane.

Concept development is one of the first things we need to solve early and it is a top priority on our production plan. How we communicate with the player, the level progression, some game mechanics and the complete graphic design depends on it.

There are so many questions waiting to be answered:

• Who are we?
• Who is the enemy?
• Why enemy is our enemy?
• Why does the enemy attack us?
• What are our towers?
• Why are the sounds of towers make music?
• What and why are we defending?
• What happens when the enemy reaches the last lane?
• What happens if the enemy beats us?
• What happens if we can beat the enemy?

Our current concept is totally abstract. Just triangles, squares and some wave forms, leaving all these questions open:

Besides the questions above, we also don’t want to leave human element completely outside. Human element would allow better communication and creating more close relationships with the players.

But including a human element is quite a dangerous path. Forcing a poor concept not fitting the game dynamics natively would leave an uncomfortable feeling and alienate the players.

Our first choice is to go safe and stick with the current abstract design and experiment on a sign language.

We also checked various vintage analog synthesizers (google image search) to see if we can get some inspiration:

Here are the first ideas! Keeping things abstract, our priority is to tell more about the functions of each element.

Towers give clues about their sound and type:

Enemies give some clues on what is coming after us, first two are fast and weaker, latter two are slower and stronger:

A possible look into the game scene:

And our poster for #screenshotsaturday:

We are not yet satisfied with this. Keeping things abstract makes it difficult for us to develop a long run progression. Also we need to teach the players some sign language even though there are better ways to introduce things in a way that they can get natively.

Currently we are working on concept development so there is some time before we start working on generating the musical content. That will be great to discuss the algorithms and scales used for music here.

Our most challenging thing was to see the big picture so we prepared a rough production plan. It is pretty old school but we made it on pen and paper:

Hi!

We are building a musical tower defense game based on a step sequencer. We built the original prototype at Global Game Jam 2013 Istanbul inspired by that year's theme "Heartbeat". We liked the idea so much that we decided to build a complete game on it. But, we needed to wait two years to be able to work full time on the game.

Melodefense is a musical iteration to a classic tower defense game in which you make music by defending your base from enemies approaching from linear columns. Player towers can shoot but enemies can only attack when they get near the towers. Every tower has a specific music loop of an instrument attached to it. In this version we have 6 towers and 6 loops: Kick, Snare, Hi-hat, Bass, Arpeggio, Chords. Placing a new tower triggers the music loop attached to that tower type. Music loops are made of 16 beat patterns and towers shoot according to these pattern. Placing towers of different types adds music loops over already playing ones.

In addition to these, a step sequencer continuously scans the battle arena that is also divided into 16 parts. When the scanner detects an enemy, it plays the specific synthesizer note set for each column. This results in randomly generated melody lines shifting slowly in time. This way an interactive music is composed depending on the gameplay. Actually, Melodefense is a music toy that allows you to make music by playing a tower defense game.

Currently, you gain points in time. You can buy towers with these points and enemies reaching the last line gives a penalty that cost you some points. You win if you can pass all the waves, you loose if you run out of points. This will probably change in the future but it was working fine for the game jam.

We are a team of three from Istanbul:
Kerem Tiryaki - Developer
Murat Kalkavan - Illustrator
Guney Ozsan (me) - Composer & sound designer

Melodefense updates will also be on various networks. Please follow us and share your ideas wherever is convenient for you:

"Misket Dance (Misket Havasi)" is an interesting Turkish folk dance with a melody appearing only in synchops. I made a chiptune electro swing interpretation of that song for a small video game for children, "Misket ile Kismet, Bir Ankara Macerasi (Misket and Kismet, an Ankara Adventure)".

I hope you find it interesting:

https://soundcloud.com/analogsheep/analog-sheep-ankara-misket-dance-chiptune-electro-swing-version

Other links to the song:
Bandcamp: http://bit.ly/13H8E92
Spotify: http://spoti.fi/17NWH5N

[guneyozsan]

Here is the soundtrack I made for a 5 day gamejam in germany. I also made all the game art, we did win of course

https://soundcloud.com/ma-simon/dampf-kampf-soundtrack

@guneyozsan :
Very nice! The back an forth of the tremolo strings reminded me a little bit of
John Barry's The Black Hole score:

@MA-Simon : Thanks. John Barry was a great guy who cannot be compared to cliche Hollywood composers. Rest in Peace.
Do you have your game online somewhere?

My original orchestral composition for the game Cosmoplan by Zbam Game Studio. It is a puzzle/action game where you travel into unknown deep space. You can listen to a part of the title music on the first teaser video of the game:




(The game will be available in April.)

Here is the music that I made at GGJ 2013 for the game "Change of My World".

Originally the music is constructed during the game by combining 1 second loops, each of which are attached to a specific move type of the character. Later, I made a special arrangement and released as a single under my electronica project Analog Sheep.

You can listen to or download it here:
iTunes: http://su.pr/1HGYoN
Amazon: http://su.pr/28IhKg
Google Play: http://su.pr/17k2l8
Bandcamp: http://su.pr/22eQm0
SoundCloud: http://su.pr/4VBng2

I hope you like this one.

[MY HEART IS BEATPLOSIVE(Single from Global Game Jam 2013)]

I would like to update some additions to my video game composer portfolio. I released these under my electronica project Analog Sheep:

MY HEART IS BEATPLOSIVE
(Single from Global Game Jam 2013)

https://soundcloud.com/analogsheep/analog-sheep-my-heart-is-beatplosive

RAD SKATER APOCALYPSE
(Original Soundtrack Album)

https://soundcloud.com/analogsheep/sets/analog-sheep-rad-skater-apocalypse-original-soundtrack

[Mp3 locations:]

Here is the music that I made at GGJ 2013 for the game "Change of My World".

Originally the music is constructed during the game by combining 1 second loops, each of which are attached to a specific move type of the character. Later, I made a special arrangement and released as a single under my electronica project Analog Sheep.

Mp3 locations:
iTunes: http://su.pr/1HGYoN
Amazon: http://su.pr/28IhKg
Google Play: http://su.pr/17k2l8
Bandcamp: http://su.pr/22eQm0
SoundCloud: http://su.pr/4VBng2

I hope you like this one.

Hi guys!

I just completed this music for an independent game developer in Finland.

The song consists of two parts. The first part(Approach) sets the atmosphere. The second part (Probe) begins with the bass driven groove. It can loop itself seamlessly in the game. The version below is the complete version.

Listen to Guney Ozsan - Out There (Full Version) @ SoundCloud

The game is called Big Blue World Domination. It is a retro strategy game that you try to conquer the world with secret agents in your super secret base. If you would like to hear the song with the game you can download here (PC). Game atmosphere is close to the classic UFO and simpler. It is prepared for the monthly competition of Adventure Game Studios, so gameplay is not fully tweaked.

Hi guys!

I just completed this music for an independent game developer in Finland.

The song consists of two parts. The first part(Approach) sets the atmosphere. The second part (Probe) begins with the bass driven groove. It can loop itself seamlessly in the game. The version below is the complete version.

Listen to Guney Ozsan - Out There (Full Version) @ SoundCloud

The game is called Big Blue World Domination. It is a retro strategy game that you try to conquer the world with secret agents in your super secret base. If you would like to hear the song with the game you can download here (PC). Game atmosphere is close to the classic UFO and simpler. It is prepared for the monthly competition of Adventure Game Studios, so gameplay is not fully tweaked.

These are the orchestra and keyboard work that I did 2 years ago for my ex-band (power metal).
I collected them in a set:
http://soundcloud.com/guneyozsan/sets/dreamtone-neverland-orchestral/

My latest release "Foreplay" is available at: http://www.youlicense.com/SongDetails.aspx?ID=371907

Cinematic, ambient/chillout with a strong groove, a sexy bass, lots of pads, synths and echoes.

If you are offering a share on future potential success or fail you should give details about your project. For now the only apparent thing is the idea. But everyone can have interesting ideas for future. It is easier to give confidence if you have plans and prototypes.

Why not look for a composer after you show some progress in devlogs?

ambient chillout groove with cinematic atmosphere. I made it this week, I hope you like it:)

http://soundcloud.com/guneyozsan/guney-ozsan-foreplay

[Another World]

Probably I will miss out some very important ones..

Another World It literally took me to another planet.
Civilizations Each run is another complete story, or say history.
Fallout I felt some feelings in real life because of my characters actions.

I am using Mailchimp for my newsletter in my site. I like their approach very much. Its free service is large enough until you become a very big business. Their services are also used by big professionals. I am seeing their stamp time to time in some emails.
http://mailchimp.com/

Hi,

I am Guney. I think the tracks in "Orchestral Arrangement" section of my portfolio suits your project. Please check them here: http://guneyozsan.com/composer-portfolio/

Unfortunately these tracks are not available for licensing but it will give an idea of what I can produce for you. If you comment about the songs, which parts fit your needs and which parts you don't want, I can prepare a quick example for you.

Other examples in my portfolio will be irrelevant with your project but they will give an idea of the production quality. "Beat the Funk up in New York" is my latest production and it reflects my recent production level very well. And this one is the latest album that I mixed:
http://soundcloud.com/guneyozsan/timesailor-once-upon-a-time

You can read some other personal details from my portfolio topic in TIG:
http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=24161.0

You can contact me here or from guneyozsan (at) gmail.com