What are your favorite songs in 0 A.D.?

[ShadowOfHassen]

This game has a really amazing soundtrack. Years ago when I first discovered the game, I downloaded the zip with the soundtrack in it and from time to time I listen to them while writing. @OmriLahav did an amazing job with composing it.

I'm wondering what are you all's favorite songs in the game?

My top three:

Celtic Pride

Calm Before the Storm

and finally my absolute favorite and one of my favorite songs from video a vide game soundtrack Tavern in the Mist.

[Vantha]

I find 0ad's soundtracks fantastic too. It's very hard to choose favourites, but I'd put these as my top three:

3. Peaks of Atlas
2. Cisalpine Gaul
1. Honor Bound (the main theme)

 

[Vantha]

Oh man, you're more than right, Tavern in the Mist really is brilliant. It's wonderful.

I never got to listen to it in the game, though... it's one of the default soundtracks, which are superseded by the civ-specific ones. I'd love to have it somewhere else too. Maybe for the future German civ?

[ShadowOfHassen]

1 minute ago, Vantha said:

Oh man, you're more than right, Tavern in the Mist really is brilliant. It's wonderful.

I never got to listen to it in the game, though... it's one of the default soundtracks, which are superseded by the civ-specific ones. I'd love to have it somewhere else too. Maybe for the future German civ?

It's not linked to one of the civs? Not even the Britons?!? That's a crying shame! Forget A27 feature freeze, we need to fix that!

Oh, how did you find it, just listening to the soundtrack while working?

[Vantha]

1 hour ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

Oh, how did you find it, just listening to the soundtrack while working?

Yeah, it can be a bit distracting, but it's so inspiring.

1 hour ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

It's not linked to one of the civs? Not even the Britons?!? That's a crying shame! Forget A27 feature freeze, we need to fix that!

Would be a really quick change... which civs would you add them to? Gauls and Britons?

[seeh]

i often have to listen to same musing. so its connected to the CIV you play? ahhh ok.  Eventually we could get a checkbox play randomly music?
most of time i play gauls. so then always same music i guess

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

For some previous alpha it was decided to genericize the playlists a little, which is something I did not agree with. It made the soundscapes for all the civs too generic. For instance, hearing Celtic music when playing the Mauryas or whatever. Didn't make sense to me. Still doesn't make sense to me. My mod remedies this, but I'm not sure if I'll make a PR for the base game or not. 

[ShadowOfHassen]

5 hours ago, Vantha said:

Would be a really quick change... which civs would you add them to? Gauls and Britons?

Yeah that would make the most thematic sense. Personally, I'd add it to the Helenestic civs too because I play those too and really like the song.

 

4 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

For some previous alpha it was decided to genericize the playlists a little, which is something I did not agree with. It made the soundscapes for all the civs too generic. For instance, hearing Celtic music when playing the Mauryas or whatever. Didn't make sense to me. Still doesn't make sense to me. My mod remedies this, but I'm not sure if I'll make a PR for the base game or not. 

That does make sense-- it'd be kind of immersion breaking to hear something like Ammon Rah, if I played the Britons, or even Athenians. I don't think we have that problem, though?

 

I wonder if we should have the map dictate the playlist first, then the civ because sometimes the map designer might have a specific song in mind. (I really wouldn't mind listening to Ammon Rah if I was Britons playing in the desert maps). Also looking forward to the campaigns, I'm pretty sure we'd want to dictate what music we want to play in a campaign then leave it up to the civ

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

55 minutes ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

That does make sense-- it'd be kind of immersion breaking to hear something like Ammon Rah, if I played the Britons, or even Athenians. I don't think we have that problem, though?

 

I opened the very first civ json and see that "Highland Mist" plays for the Athenians, which is clearly a Celtic-inspired song. 

 

1 hour ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

I wonder if we should have the map dictate the playlist first, then the civ because sometimes the map designer might have a specific song in mind. (I really wouldn't mind listening to Ammon Rah if I was Britons playing in the desert maps). Also looking forward to the campaigns, I'm pretty sure we'd want to dictate what music we want to play in a campaign then leave it up to the civ

Creating playlists that the map can trigger would be nice. 

[Outis]

On 24/01/2024 at 10:22 PM, ShadowOfHassen said:

I'm wondering what are you all's favorite songs in the game?

Hands down Eastern Dreams 

[seeh]

9 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

For some previous alpha it was decided to genericize the playlists a little, which is something I did not agree with. It made the soundscapes for all the civs too generic. For instance, hearing Celtic music when playing the Mauryas or whatever. Didn't make sense to me. Still doesn't make sense to me. My mod remedies this, but I'm not sure if I'll make a PR for the base game or not. 

i understand your point. ppl are different. e.g. i have no historical background (knowledge). for me it makes not difference. and i feel no connection between the music and the civ. but maybe it should be. therefore my idea to enable players do same decision? checkbox in the sound properties don't take much space.

when i stream (yt of twitch) i use sometimes https://freemusicarchive.org/  needs a bit extra to start the page + click somewhere + sometimes it stops

 

Edited 19 hours ago by seeh

[Vantha]

9 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

For some previous alpha it was decided to genericize the playlists a little, which is something I did not agree with. It made the soundscapes for all the civs too generic. For instance, hearing Celtic music when playing the Mauryas or whatever. Didn't make sense to me. Still doesn't make sense to me. My mod remedies this, but I'm not sure if I'll make a PR for the base game or not. 

Just took a look at DE's soundtrack distribution and I gotta say, I like it a lot better than what the base game has. I'm all for it.

 

5 hours ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

wonder if we should have the map dictate the playlist first, then the civ because sometimes the map designer might have a specific song in mind. (I really wouldn't mind listening to Ammon Rah if I was Britons playing in the desert maps). Also looking forward to the campaigns, I'm pretty sure we'd want to dictate what music we want to play in a campaign then leave it up to the civ

4 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Creating playlists that the map can trigger would be nice. 

I'd like the idea too, I might look into it. (Only for scenarios/campaigns or all maps?)

 

26 minutes ago, seeh said:

i understand your point. ppl are different. e.g. i have no historical background (knowledge). for me it makes not difference. and i feel no connection between the music and the civ. but maybe it should be. therefore my idea to enable players do same decision? checkbox in the sound properties don't take much space.

I can't speak for everyone, of course, but that sounds like a good compromise.

 

[hyperion]

4 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Creating playlists that the map can trigger would be nice. 

The playlist api is exposed and I see no reason why map makers can't already make use of it if they choose to. An example use of the api is the cheat "retro me".

 

44 minutes ago, seeh said:

checkbox in the sound properties don't take much space

So an option to enable mind reader mode to find the desired playlist? Writing a mod offering a playlist editor might have a few users tho.

 

Now to the topic, all pieces are of high quality and it's hard to make out a clear favorite. I'd say they can be listened to not just as game background music but as pieces of art on their own.

12 hours ago, Vantha said:

I'd love to have it somewhere else too

Suggest to load them into an external media player, the lossless versions of the tracks are in the art repo, tho the compressed version shipped with the game are very good already.

[guerringuerrin]

My favourite song is 0.8.Bit  

Helen Leaves Sparta and Harvest Festival are the ones that move me lately

[Vantha]

4 hours ago, hyperion said:

So an option to enable mind reader mode to find the desired playlist? Writing a mod offering a playlist editor might have a few users tho.

The idea was to enable players to switch between civ-specific and more generalized playlists (maybe for those who tend to always play the same few civs)

[ShadowOfHassen]

5 hours ago, Vantha said:

I'd like the idea too, I might look into it. (Only for scenarios/campaigns or all maps?)

I'd do it for all and make it default for the map-- but if you don't have a playlist for the map, it defaults to the civs. That way, map designers can pick 3–5 tracks that reflect the area they're making.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

6 hours ago, seeh said:

i understand your point. ppl are different. e.g. i have no historical background (knowledge). for me it makes not difference. and i feel no connection between the music and the civ. but maybe it should be. therefore my idea to enable players do same decision? checkbox in the sound properties don't take much space.

 

This could be an interesting option. "Civ-Specific Music" or "Random Music" in options. I'd have Civ-Specific be default. 

[seeh]

6 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

This could be an interesting option. "Civ-Specific Music" or "Random Music" in options. I'd have Civ-Specific be default. 

great. btw what before game is started / config-time? random? language-specific? ( not important question. just loud thinking )

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Back to the topic, I prefer the tracks that are less "ambient" and more lyrical. We have several "ambient" style tracks now that I'm not a huge fan of, but I've chosen to sprinkle in anyway. My favorites are the older tracks, such as 

 

and

 

 

 

 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

2 minutes ago, seeh said:

great. btw what before game is started / config-time? random? language-specific? ( not important question. just loud thinking )

Personally, pre-game, I'd have the Main theme play once, then transition to 2 or 3 ambient tracks. I probably wouldn't bother having an option for it. It'd leave the option for in-match music. 

[ShadowOfHassen]

2 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Back to the topic, I prefer the tracks that are less "ambient" and more lyrical. We have several "ambient" style tracks now that I'm not a huge fan of, but I've chosen to sprinkle in anyway. My favorites are the older tracks, such as 

 

and

 

 

 

 

Forging a city state is a good one--

 

The soundtrack as a whole is a banger. I listened to 0 A.D. soundtrack and portal music as I wrote my first book that didn't deserve to be burnt with fire. Because it was Medival Fantasy, I favored more European/ Hellenistic sounding tracks, and those are still my favorite.

 

I'm not sure I understand the difference between lyrical and ambient, I don't know a lot about music other than that it sounds good.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

I like the OG honor bound too:

 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

6 minutes ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

I'm not sure I understand the difference between lyrical and ambient, I don't know a lot about music other than that it sounds good.

What I mean is, Omri's OG tracks are complete self-contained pieces. The other tracks are more like ambient sketches. 

 

 

 

2 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

I like the OG honor bound too:

 

A lot more bombastic, isn't it? I kinda like it. 

[ShadowOfHassen]

3 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

What I mean is, Omri's OG tracks are complete self-contained pieces. The other tracks are more like ambient sketches. 

Aren't they all made by Omri?

 

4 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

I like the OG honor bound too:

 

Yeah, it's just a little bit more-- is it still in the art repo? I've been meaning to pull the new full soundtrack and get it set up nicely so I can listen to it while doing stuff.

[Stan`]

1 hour ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

Aren't they all made by Omri?

@Samulis made 24 of the 26 that were added in A26