Composer's Comment

My first try at interactive music! I'm always a huge sucker for games which feature dynamic music, like the Hyrule Field theme from Ocarine of Time or anything dynamic in recent Mario games, really. The idea here is that there is a large route, and there's a festival taking place in one part of the route. So the first version would be the regular theme for the entire route, and as you got closer to the festival area, the festival layer would fade in.

Implementation wise, we wanted to use the same capability that allows for sound effects close to e.g. waterfalls and such, so the game would not cross-fade between one version and the other, instead it would let the regular version play all the time and fade in and out the festival layer. This made it challenging for me, since I had to ensure it sounded good with both going at the same time. Especially combining drums and orchestra kit could be troublesome, but it didn't give many problems, really. Now I know I probably could have phase reversed parts I wanted to fade out and rely on those instruments being cancelled out, but I'm not familiar with how this all works in RPGMaker. Something tells me it might not be so easy to get it sample-perfect, so that technique could give some phasing problems.

Afterwards, I think the regular version could use some more energy, since it all is saved for the festival version. That said, I love the feel of the festival version. And hey, turns out I can make something 100% happy, without making it equally sad :P