Creating music for Computer Game - Confusion

[kosmokrator]

Originally Posted by Christiaan

Hello

I'm not sure if this is a stupid question but here goes.
I'm doing some music for a Computer Game but there are a few of the technical things I want to make sure of, before there is trouble.
All the music is in MIDI. With just a wide variety of Samplers and Virtual Instruments. But what I actually want to know is, how do I present this music to the Gaming Company and how does it get put into the game.

I'm not sure what file formats will be used and what exactly will be expected of me. I'm a musician and it's the first time a gaming company has asked me to do some music for a game of them.
Please any help will be greatly appreciated. I'm just scared there are some things that I am not aware of and is gonna come back and bite me in the ass.

Thank you

Woha, you should ask them of course!
This is a huge minefield.
Look into the interactive music systems in Wwise, FMOD, and UDK.

[anthonythecat]

Any reason why you can't just ask the gaming company what format they want you to deliver the music in?

In fact, you should expect the gaming company to tell you this as only they know how they are going to use it so they should tell you how they want the music formatted.

[Christiaan]

mmm... That's true. I have a meeting with everyone tomorrow to discuss everything I guess they will give me more information then.
I just wanted to do some research in the meantime so I don't sound like a complete noob in the meeting. I did come across some information but it seems that different places use different file types and ways of putting it into the game.
It's a Nintendo DS game that's getting ported to work on PC. So basically everything is getting re-programmed and the old graphics is just getting a make-over. I need to stick with the existing music but I need to write some extra songs. And I got the MIDI files for all the older songs. But is it actual Wav or mp3's or some sort of Audio waveform file that's get used or is it something weird about MIDI that's works in some way that I just don't know about.

Does anyone know something about .mod files? Can't find a site that explains how it works just what it actually is.

But thank you for the help so far I really appreciate it.

[Xperienced]

Originally Posted by Christiaan

Does anyone know something about .mod files? Can't find a site that explains how it works just what it actually is.

Tracker files. Think of them as MIDI files with embedded samples and effect information. Tracker players are basically MIDI sequencers that read the samples from the Tracker file itself and play them accordingly with any effect applied in real time.

It was THE way to make music in a computer in the pre-DAW era. It still has a following but it's pure computer nostalgia. Anyone from the DAW era (I include myself) would find it infuriating to work with, everything's expressed with hexadecimal and 8bit values.