Camwoodstock wrote:
A quick explanation; every instrument in the DROD music tracks of AE are made of samples. These songs play in real-time and are not unlike MIDIs, in comparison to the tracks of DROD 2.0 and onwards, which are .ogg and unchanging. Every instrument--be they the strum of a violin, the pings and pongs, and quirky horns--are all kept as samples.
I forgot about that. Yeah, there was a window of time in the early 90's where it did not yet make sense to distribute MP3s and Oggs for games intended to be downloadable, e.g. shareware. MIDI was unreliable for getting a song performed in a nice way due to the different instruments used by various sound cards and drivers. So tracker formats were a good option for distributing game music at that point in time.
Later, when it was fine to take up more space for music, I continued creating music in a tracker program called Sound Club, and just exported them to wavs/oggs. Sound Club was kind of like an early version of Garage Band--very easy to use, minimal, and with a left-to-right "
sheet music"
layout I liked.
However, a few of the music tracks have odd "samples" among these instruments. These samples are entirely blank when played, and as a result, are entirely silent.
This was not an attempt at an Easter egg on my part, but some idiosyncrasy of the file format and/or software I was using.
However, what really makes them shine out is not their contents, but their names. Several of these have differing names; a track will always have at least one sample that has no name, but the interesting ones are the ones that have actual names.
Looking through the names, I think you have discovered the "
draft"
names I gave the songs. And by the time I got ready to distribute the songs, the name of the file was what I'd picked, for whatever reasons.
I'll tell you what each song was about in my head when I wrote it. (Or at least as well as my unreliable memory serves me.) It might be a bad thing to hear for some people, so I'll secret-tag them. And by bad, I don't mean spoilers. I mean that a lot of these songs don't have much to do with DROD at all other than being included in the game. And if you like a song, sometimes you ascribe your own meanings and story to it, which is not something I want to disrupt for everyone.
Delusions
Click here to view the secret text
×About how you can feel on the verge of something great creatively, the manic feelings, but also the sadness when you realize it's not... *that* good.
Fortune
Click here to view the secret text
×I think I made the song first, and the name came from what I decided it sounded like. Good luck. Good fortune.
Glad You Came
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×About showing hospitality and kindness to friends that are going through troubles. There was a time I was really broke, and a friend made me a box.
It meant so much to me--helped me to rise up a little. The song was about experiences like that.
Gustomatic
Click here to view the secret text
×This is one of the songs I specifically tried to make upbeat, noticing my tendency to work in gloom and darker moods. The title is just a portmanteau of gusto and automatic.
Next Things Next
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×There is a longer song called Ancient Machine which Next Things Next was yanked from, and given a title that fit its role in the game. Ancient Machine was kinda long--maybe 10 minutes, if I remember right, and had 3 parts to it that corresponded in my mind to a non-DROD (Sorry!) story. This was about a town that relied on a machine for its infrastructure, and the people took it for granted. Then the machine broke down and nobody knew how to fix it, or even how it got there in the first place. Though not a DROD story, it fits the pattern of mystery over how systems work that was explored in DROD later.
Night Walk
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×
I used to go on lots of walks at night in the early AM hours before I fixed my sleeping habits. Night walks were always pleasant and mellow. This song captures how they felt for me.
Settle Down
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×
I can't remember what this song was about or why I named it Settle Down. I don't think it's that deep. I think in this case, I just played with sounds until I liked what I heard.
Simple
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×
At one point, before DROD:AE was released, I thought I would make a game like DROD with the same mechanics, but different characters. I was worried about Webfoot owning the copyright and claim to the story. (They were so reasonable about all that in the end.) The not-DROD sequel was to be called Beneath Simple Earth. The main character, something like Beethro, was named Jedkabin. It was like I was plagiarizing myself! I wrote Simple for Beneath Simple Earth, and I was probably thinking it would be the title screen music, hence the draft name of "Simple Theme". Then of course, later, it just got moved into DROD:AE.
The Givers
Click here to view the secret text
×
There were half-finished lyrics that went with the Givers, and I remember trying to record them myself with some cheesy 90's industrial vocal style. (Did not sound good!) It was about some insane guy howling about how certain people were trying to give him things he didn't want. Wasn't a DROD story, but could easily have been a DROD story.
The Spaces
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×
Rejoice, for this is a proper DROD song. Its topic is literally vast spaces and depths. I loved (and still do) thinking about these things.
The Way Down
Click here to view the secret text
×
Yet another song directly inspired by DROD. It's all about the downward journey of Beethro. It's meant to sound daunting, but keep some grim joy in the undertaking.
Underway
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×
A song written for the game. Like all my upbeat songs, I have to work a little to keep the sad notes out. So whenever you hear a song that is just happy or celebratory--it means I stuck pretty hard to that goal.
Waiting
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×
I believe I was working on this song around the time that the 'Neather level was freshly complete or at had at least been started. I knew that I wanted the 'Neather to fall into a pit. And I imagined a lot of things that could be be in the pit or beyond. I don't think the Pit Thing was planned out as a character until JtRH work began, but all of these ideas start somewhere.
Whistler
Click here to view the secret text
×
There are actually lyrics to this song on the forum somewhere. It's very 4th wall and treats death as something silly to fear over. Which from the context of a game, is entirely true! From the draft name, I think "Unstoppable" came from the relentless cheerfulness of the song--like whoever was whistling needed to get slapped.
Note that I can't get into "The End of the Game"; that is encoded into a different type of audio file I don't know how to open. OpenMPT sure ain't the way, though.
Yeah, I'm not sure about that. I'll say the lyrics describe the song pretty well. But a few more thoughts...
Click here to view the secret text
×
This is just me talking to the player, and it's pretty close to my voice. I did have a feeling that any player that had done all the work to reach the end of this difficult game had something in common with me in my effort of making DROD. I thought about how despite years of work, the game was some insignificant blip in the world of computer games, and most people wouldn't like it. But the person who I was talking to did. So it was a special moment, with a well-selected audience--a person I felt I knew unusually more about. We could both grieve a little that a good thing came to an end, but celebrate it too.
I'm a little sad that me explaining the songs might undermine your speculations. (Ah, the burden of being the canonical authority on something.) Anyhow, I appreciate the speculation too. Thanks for the post!
-Erik
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The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
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