{"id":14959,"date":"2012-08-20T20:14:25","date_gmt":"2012-08-21T00:14:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bumped.org\/psublog\/?p=14959"},"modified":"2012-08-22T06:44:10","modified_gmt":"2012-08-22T10:44:10","slug":"phantasy-star-online-2s-dynamic-music-system-sympathy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bumped.org\/psublog\/phantasy-star-online-2s-dynamic-music-system-sympathy\/","title":{"rendered":"Phantasy Star Online 2's Dynamic Music System \"SYMPATHY\""},"content":{"rendered":"

At CEDEC 2012, Sega Research And Development Team (including PSO2 sound director Hideaki Kobayashi) discussed the concepts behind how PSO2's music is procedurally generated.<\/p>\n

This process is done through an in-house program they call \"SYMPATHY<\/strong><\/span>.\" It allows them to dynamically change the music back and forth depending on the situation.<\/p>\n

Now this kind of article discusses the concepts behind the music which can make it somewhat hard to understand. So if you are not a music major, you'll have to brush up on certain music terms.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Basically, each sound file is known as a \"clip<\/strong><\/span>.\" A clip is approximately the length of 1 bar of music. When you place many of these clips together, they become a \"phrase<\/strong><\/a>\". When you connect these phrases together they become a musical movement<\/a><\/strong> (Here we go!). We can refer to these movements as sections of a song. When you connect these movements together they become \"Parts<\/strong><\/span>\".<\/p>\n

(Though they didn't specify, a \"part\" could be the entire song itself, possibly the entire non-battle portion makes up one part of the song, and the entire battle portion makes up another part of the song. Parts however do not play the same way when looped as will be explained further on.<\/em><\/span> )<\/p>\n

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In the slide above, if you check out the right side of the pic, each large box is a subsection of the box below. So several clips make up a phrase, a line of phrases make up a movement, a line of movements make up a \"part.\"<\/p>\n

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Clips are the length of 1 bar of music plus reverberation<\/a>. Basically each clip will fade into the other clip. PSO2 can have several thousands of these clips and the Sympathy system can arrange it all.<\/p>\n

There are various clips that contain different components of the song. A clip can consist of the \"rhythm section\", the \"melody\" and \"sound effects\" etc.<\/p>\n

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Phantasy Star also has transition music where the song switches from one mode to another. If you follow the red arrow, the non-battle music heads from one phrase to the transition music then exiting out to the battle music.<\/p>\n

PSO2's music system has even evolved from its previous counterparts. For example, in PSO1, after the battle portion of the music ends, and you immediately encounter a different enemy, the non-battle music would play for a while.<\/p>\n

In PSO2, there's another musical piece known as the \"Sudden Battle Music\" that can be inserted mid-way.<\/p>\n

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To illustrate this, at the top of the slide the battle music is playing, after the battle is over, it starts to play the transition music when suddenly, another enemy appears. It will then quickly play the \"Sudden battle Music\" to transition into the battle music.<\/p>\n

There's three main points to SYMPATHY's music system. For one, its intent is to prevent the player from losing interest. Since they will play similar quests multiple times, they may lose interest when the same BGM is played over and over. The SYMPATHY music system allows them to play a different BGM every time. We can illustrate this in the next slide.<\/p>\n

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They can:<\/p>\n