I was wondering if it was possible to make dynamic music in-game, similar to Skies of Arcadia (great game, must play). In that game, during boss battles, the boss fight theme has 3 different states:
- Normal
- Crisis - plays when the party average health < 50% OR one party member is down
- Opportunity - plays when the boss health < 50% (thereabouts)
Depending on player and boss state, the game changes which version to play. I was wondering if it was possible to do this in RPG Maker, at least as seamlessly as possible. I’m not well-versed in plugins so I don’t know how you would do it that way, but at least I can think of using battle events possibly?
You can do dynamic boss music in MZ without any plugins. Just use Troop Events to swap the BGM based on HP conditions. Start the fight with your normal track, then make a repeating Troop event page that checks if any actor is under 50% HP or KO to switch to the crisis track, and another page that checks if the boss drops below 50% HP to switch to the opportunity track. Add a couple switches so each track only triggers once. MZ changes BGM instantly, so it feels pretty seamless.
This is not true at all. Changing instantly is the exact opposite of “seamless”. It’s possible to get a cross-fade with a bit of coding, but even that isn’t precisely seamless.
I’ve never used it before in RPGMaker, but a common solution for dynamic music is FMOD Studio – it was used for the music in Celeste, for example. It’s free to try out if you make an account on their website; I think there might be a small license fee for commercial projects, but I’m not sure. Its API definitely does support web deployment, so it could be used in RPGMaker; I’m not aware of a plugin that actually integrates it though.
Pfft! Shouldn’t you be on RM Planet? FMOD is overkill for RPG Maker unless you’re replacing the entire audio pipeline. I’m talking about native BGM behavior, not middleware. Audacity is free to tweak your songs to transition however seamlessly you want.
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It’s not overkill if it does exactly what you need. If you don’t need all the things it does, then sure, it’s overkill. But it can certainly handle exactly what the original poster asked for. That doesn’t mean it’s the only way to handle it (as you already noted) but it does do what they need, so it’s not really up to you to decide whether or not it’s overkill for them.
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I tried a variation of this method recently, thanks for the idea. It works well enough, and I even managed to make getting into a phase instant using only Turn, though I can’t manage it for getting out of a phase (specifically Crisis), which causes there to be a bit of delay during the swap, especially for the ATB system. It’d be the pluginless method I’d use, though.
Interesting! Unfortunately after looking at it it seems a bit much. I’d probably end up having to workshop a solution to plug it up into RPG Maker directly, since it seems like it only really properly connects to Unity and Unreal.
Ideally, the music would change instantly and not be a sudden switch to the new BGM, no matter what phase you’re in and what phase you’re switching to. Most likely a plugin thing there, but I like the eventing solution a lot, since it’s only a mild hassle.
I know that the music of Skies of Arcadia split the boss fight into several pieces so that the switch happened as seamlessly as possible.
If you had a plugin that stitched up music like this, it’d probably be possible the way I ideally want it. Would be a PITA to compose though, I bet.
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MZ already gives you Fadeout BGM/BGS, which can help smooth the swap. If you prep your tracks in a DAW like Audacity, matching loop points, trimming silence, and exporting as OGG…you can fake seamless transitions the same way Skies of Arcadia did. Just organize the pieces and switch between them with battle events.
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