Comments on: Level Design Music

By: Sidney

Sidney — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 19:31:01 +0000

I listen to music while working on levels all the time too. Sometimes when I listen to songs that I haven’t listened to in a long while I’ll get flashbacks and remember some random level I was working on that never saw the light of the day. Sometimes going back years even, to early UT99 days and the like.

I’d have to agree that aggressive/pumping music gets me going more when shelling/concepting/generally working on the more creative parts while mellow stuff calms me down during bugfixing/polish. %&#@ Metal etc can sometimes greatly enhance the pain of fixing annoying bugs heh..

By: Warren

Warren — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 16:37:58 +0000

It’s funny how music can influence the level itself. Loud, angry music gives you more ideas for harsh geometry and good mood setting. Ambient music will give me idle thoughts and I find I’ll spend more time polishing and tweaking than actually building anything.

By: scar3crow

scar3crow — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 15:58:34 +0000

I’ve found I have just as hard a time making out the lyrics from clean tone singing versus extreme styles - the vocalist’s personal enunciation takes my understanding further than the actual style. But I also used to perform Nile styled vocals myself, so maybe I’m just used to it =)

However on that front, most of those bands use rather harsh vocals, though Opeth and Bloodbath are rather understandable (and Opeth often uses clean vocals, something he has gotten surprisingly good at).

Amon Amarth is a band popular amongst my friends who don’t like growls, as though they do growl, it has a cleaner edge to it. Its just straight up viking metal. I imagine it would be good if one was making a map for Rune or such…

By: Spirit

Spirit — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 18:06:56 +0000

Try Disturbed’s latest album (don’t look at the silly cover…) Indestructible. And maybe some stuff by genius Devin Townsend (Ziltoid is fantastic if have a awkward sense of humour like me ).

By: Warren

Warren — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 17:09:57 +0000

I’ll try some of those bands, thanks! However, I have a hard time getting into bands like Nile where I can’t hear anything the guy is saying. I need lyrics and intelligible singing/yelling.

By: scar3crow

scar3crow — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 16:06:27 +0000

Slayer never did much for me, but at work, which is generally less creative, I tend to listen to Dying Fetus, Opeth, FUCK!…I’m Dead, Bloodbath, Disgorge and Nile.

“nobody pounds out double bass like Lombardo” I’m gonna lean towards Martin Lopez or George Kollias myself (he heel-to-toe single foots most extreme drummers bass kicks).

Granted, when I have poked around at level design or modding, or anything generally Quakey, I tend to go for the Quake and Blood soundtracks, and sometimes tapping into the Darkside of Phobos Doom album from ocremix.