AI music on the topic of Simutrans

[jamespetts]

I have been having fun with AI music this year, and have generated a few songs on the topic of Simutrans or relevant to Simutrans. 

We have:

• Die Brücke ist nicht frei - minimal synthpop song in German about the history of Simutrans;
• Set the World in Motion - jubilant synthpop song celebrating the possibilities opened by playing a Simutrans game;
• Hail, Simutrans! - 1750s galant oratorio praising the game; and
• This is the Age of the Canal - 1760s galant choral piece about canals, parodying the "This is the age of the train" song from the 1980s television advertisement series (see here)

These are all released CC0.

[prissi]

Unfortunately, AI is almost as bad as current German non-AI songs ... or maybe it is just my age.

[makie]

I like it.
"Hail Simutrans" made me laugh—historical background sung in the style of that era. I'd love to see more of that.

Really, the only thing missing is a sung tutorial.

I haven't seen (or heard) this idea in any other game before.

[jamespetts]

I like it.
"Hail Simutrans" made me laugh—historical background sung in the style of that era. I'd love to see more of that.

Really, the only thing missing is a sung tutorial.

I haven't seen (or heard) this idea in any other game before.

That is an intriguing idea - albeit it would be a very long song!

[makie]

it would be a very long song!

Chapter 1 ....
Chapter 2 ....
selected by the tutorial script.   

This is the Age of the Canal - 1760s galant choral piece about canals

Selected by the current year in the game.
In the year 2000 the song make no sense anymore.

[jamespetts]

Chapter 1 ....
Chapter 2 ....
selected by the tutorial script.   
Selected by the current year in the game.
In the year 2000 the song make no sense anymore.

Yes, I had considered adding a feature (1) to play .mp3 or .ogg files in game; and (2) to give each piece an introduction and retirement date to get era appropriate background music. That is not the highest priority currently, however.

[prissi]

Era dependent music is a nice idea. Will of course massively inrease distribution size ...

[jamespetts]

Era dependent music is a nice idea. Will of course massively inrease distribution size ...

Yes, that is the disadvantage.

[makie]

Yes, that is the disadvantage.

The last game i had downloaded from steam has about 100Gbyte.

[victor_18993]

Couldn't we separate the music into an optional downloadable package? Anyway, nowadays it's rare for video games not to take up 15GB already, and there are even ones up to 200GB

[prissi]

Not on phones though, where simutrans is already 100 MB.

[victor_18993]

On phones you have to be very conservative with space. Even though there are 2TB devices, that's not standard, nor do I really see the point of generating a 10GB package on a phone. Even if the hardware allowed it, I don't think it could run mods and vanilla content smoothly like a PC—on phones, I always see the conservative approach as making more sense.

[Isaac Eiland-Hall]

There's a pretty good chance my server could handle streaming music - especially if limited to android - at least as a possible option. But that's just one option.

[Mishasama]

Era dependent music is a nice idea. Will of course massively inrease distribution size ...

I prefer to keep all music in MIDI format. That should keep it tiny.

Plus, we can choose our favorite soundfont to create a personalized experience.

[victor_18993]

I think that with the introduction in Standard of users being able to choose which repository to play different formats from, a very accessible new door opens up for creators in Simutrans: being able to distribute their own music paks without being tied to any object pak or to Simutrans. I think it will be quite interesting to see if this allows artists to create music now and creates a new space for musical content creators with this simpler access to make music resources, and of course for players, who can customize their gaming experience even further.