Primary and secondary mood settings

Suggestions
#1

Hello, I’m not sure if this has been suggested already or not but a primary and secondary mood feature would drastically smooth out transitions and variations of situations.

For example, you would set up music and sound effects for a battle with wolves as the primary mood, then have secondary moods for weather, time of day, location etc.
So you can have the wolf battle sounds and music playing all the time and you can change the secondary mood to suit the situation like starting in the forest, it starts raining and you chase them into a cave.
At the moment you would need three seperate moods for just this wolf engagement.

In my mind, I see this as something similar to the global one shots but with secondary moods; set up the engagement sound effects and music and then you can select the correct secondary mood depending on the situation.

Could also be used in multi stage battles and have a fade in feature; the creature summons a storm when enraged, the rain slowly gets heavier/louder, then the thunder starts.

You could also set the combat music and sound effects as secondary moods and slap them on the global mood list for thoes ‘all of a sudden, the reoccurring bandit boss shows up at the tavern because someone didn’t believe saying his name three times whilst holding his hat makes him appear rumour’ moments.

People’s thoughts?

1 Like
#2

This is a pretty cool idea.

So basically you’ve two layers of MOODs that don’t interact with each other.

MOOD layer 1 = click a new button and any elements playing because they have been started by a MOOD layer 1 get stopped and the new ones start.

(same for MOOD layer 2)

Sounds a bit complicated to impliment, and there might be many weird edge cases…

  1. What do I do with an element that is running in layer 1, but now has been started by a layer 2 MOOD, which layer does it now belong in?
  2. How do I save these… what is playing OR not in which layer when I hit SAVE CURRENT STATE.

I wonder if there is a more simple conceptual way of achieving this same result (there often is).

The way we acheive this at the moment, is to simply have many variation of MOODs:

  • Combat
  • Combat (in the rain)
  • Combat (more music)
  • Combat + other monster
    MOODs are cheap (ie don’t take up much disk space (or UI space))

Thoughts, any one else?

#3

I guess one way to make it easier to differentiate is to name it something different like ‘supliments’ so you’d have moods and supliments.
That way if they do share the same effects, one would be effect-mood and the other would be effect-supliment or have it give priority to the primary layer so the effect would be temporarily disabled on the second layer.

Although it’s not exactly more simple, having the second layer creation/organisation on a totally seperate page would mean you can be sure that you’re making a second layer; the idea of having the second layer is to make it and then never/rarely need to go back to make it again.
As for saving them, I believe the second layer could have its own seperate page since these are designed to be used in conjunction with just about anything, thus you wouldn’t need that many… Or is it the other way around…

The way I’ve got it set up currently is under a single ‘combat’ catagory with wolf battle and all of its variations, then undead battle and all of its variations, then humanoid battle etc… The list of moods is quite long.
With a dual layer system, the same list would be 3 buttons for the types of combat and then maybe 5 or 6 buttons along the bottom or where ever the secondary layer (global or not) buttons can be placed.

#4

When you start a new mood, if an element is present in the precedent one, it’s not restarted from the begening. So create several moods for each situation is a good way to do what you need.

#5

I get that but then you’d flood your mood list. This idea is to universalise a second layer of moods which hold mood settings that can be applied to any or all primary moods; two small lists opposed to one long one.

#6

Sooo… just to be clear.

  1. this is in my brain now, and I’m thinking about it, and we’ll discuss with the team going forward.
  2. I’m not convinced yet at all, and this is not something we are planning to impliment at this stage
  3. I’m happy to see continued conversations about this and advocating for it, and have in the past been known to change my mind. :smiley:

But just thought I’d get everyone’s expectations in the right place here. :slight_smile:

#7

Here what I do. I create a private soundset per session where I put all the needed mood. I’ve a list with mood attached to a campain and a small one with the moods for the session.

You can apply this to your problem. First layer will be a soundset and second your moods.

#8

I would very much like something like this, as I am now experimenting with creating more dynamic music for my games.

One idea that might perhaps be easier to add (although I could be wrong as I have not seen the source code. XD) would be for a mood to have a checkbox that if set to true would make it so hitting another mood does not turn that mood off, if that makes sense.

So in terms of creating moods you are still creating two separate moods and hitting Save Current as mood would of course, make that mood play both moods which in my opinion would not be a large issue in any way.

#9

This is very interesting.
I can see the appeal of having a secondary and primary mood that play over each other. Maybe it could be as easy as a check mark that sets them as primary and secondary or something simple that says “keep playing when switching to another mood” and you could toggle that on or off.
.

2 Likes
#10

Yes, either of those two options would be really cool!