Grab your bow, defend the castle! Ars Arcus provides a playground to experience different game-music mechanics, from traditional layering of parts as tension increases and simple stings for events (e.g. kills) to complex mappings between individual notes in the soundtrack and objects in the game world - see below for a list of dynamic soundtrack elements in the Ars Arcus mini-game.
Manhattan seamlessly integrates code with music sequencing to support soundtracks that flexibly combine manual composition with any amount of dynamic or generative elements - reacting to and/or driving events in the game world. Code expressions are embedded in the score, executed alongside notes at playback, to change any aspect of the evolving piece.
Ultimately, Ars Arcus will offer Manhattan users the opportunity to live edit the soundtrack, with the Manhattan editor running alonside the playing game, enabling you to view, audition, change, or entirely replace the music with your own explorations of procedural game music. As well as a demo of the potential of procedural music, it is being designed as a platform to help composers explore and practice skills in combining music and code - as an stepping stone to using Manhattan with Unity in your own games.
Follow Manhattan and the project for new developments!
Things to listen for / play with, in Ars Arcus:
- The underlying theme is based "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" - an arrangement based on both manual (pre-composed) and dynamic (generative) parts.
- The game's introductory drum pattern is algorithmic - based on rules and probabilities; different every time.
- Procedurally-generated tribal drums play when there are no enemies.
- As the number of enemies mount, new parts are added - snare, piccolo, cello, violins, brass, choir.
- All parts use Manhattan's built-in instruments and synthesisers.
- When an NPC is killed, bass drum and bells are struck - both in time with the music and drawing notes from the current harmony (chord).
- A virtual band can be seen to performing the live soundtrack - each part, instrument, and individual note is simulated.
- Wounding a musician harms their performance - introducing missed notes, wrong notes, squeaks, etc.
- Killing a musician removes their part from the arrangement entirely (until they respawn and retake their place on the stage).
- Changing location triggers segues between arrangements of the piece in different genres (cued at the end of the current phrase):
- Castle Approach - Classical March
- Town/Castle - Folk Rock (becoming Heavy Rock with more attackers)
- Harbour - Orchestral Sea Shanty
- Valley - Synth/Electronica (placeholder for 'future' work)
- Castle Approach - Classical March
