Feature: Music

Music is easily one of the most overlooked parts of any game. Done right, it can go by without being noticed in-game. But if it’s missing, the experience will never really captivate you. When I think back on the games I’ve loved over the years, they all share something in common – a memorable soundtrack.

When working on Minecraft Frontiers, we understand that if we want our explorable places to stand out, they will need a soundtrack to accompany them. Whether you are walking around the capital, or fighting your way through a dungeon, the memories you keep should have the right flavour to them. Music lets us quickly express what the current setting means. Is it a dangerous area? Is this part of town full of rich politicians? Was this ruin built thousands of years ago? All these questions would take pages of lore to answer, but a soundtrack can do that in couple of seconds.

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Creating the plugin:

The music plugin (MF Music, as we call it internally) has already gone through several iterations. We want our experience to be easily accessible by anyone – the music system has to be handled by your Minecraft client. Downloading an extra piece of software is a hassle the player should not have to go through. The early prototypes of the system were interesting, allowing us to play the custom soundtrack to our players, but they did not respond to the world at all. The main point of having music is to attach it to the world in a meaningful way. Without it dynamically adapting to the world, there is little point of putting all the effort in.

Today marks the day when the system is complete and rolled out on our test server.

A powerful system:

In the current state, the soundtrack seamlessly integrates with our regions. Not only will you hear music based on which region you are in, the soundtrack is also able to prioritize a specific location. Are you in a tavern in the capital? The soundtrack will understand that being in a tavern overrides being in a town, selecting the tavern music. This allows us to define very specific areas in the world that will have a signature piece of music attached to them. Dungeons may be broken up into sections (or sections of sections, the inception potential is endless), giving you just the right song for your memorable boss fight.

Next to that, the soundtrack is able to change on the fly. Coding all of our plugins internally means everything can dynamically respond to what is going on. The soundtrack is no exception. The songs attached to regions are not set in stone, but can change as the world itself is changing. Walking through town, doing your Sunday grocery shopping, will sound very differently than walking the same street during a bandit invasion. The current system is as flexible as any of our other features, able to adapt instantly to what the world is doing.

A taste of our world:

All of our music was created by professional artists. When it comes to immersion, we strive for delivering something that will blow you away. Music is a big part of our experience, so we decided there would be no compromises. As a result, all of our songs are properly licensed. We are able to deliver great quality with no fear of copyright infringement.