LucasArts#iMUSE

IMUSE (short for Interactive Music Streaming Engine) is a technology developed by Michael Land and his friend Peter McConnell game engine, whose job it is to each dynamically adjusting the music to a computer game at the scenes, characters and mood of the game. iMUSE found its first application in version 5 of the SCUMM engine for adventure games from LucasArts.

Motivation for the development of iMUSE engine was Michael Lands dissatisfaction with the music technology used at that time at LucasArts. After he had composed the music for The Secret of Monkey Iceland, he wished for a more flexible system, with which the music would be better adapted to the events on screen. After the first work on the new engine, he realized that it would take more development time than planned, so he asked his friend Peter McConnell for help.

The first game, in which the iMUSE engine was used was Monkey Iceland 2: LeChuck 's Revenge, since iMUSE was not only used in all LucasArts adventure games, but also in the entire X-Wing computer game series.

The basic idea of the system is to enable smooth transitions between songs, so that the background music of the game sounds like a continuous soundtrack.

Examples

A typical example of the use of iMUSE engine in Monkey Iceland 2 is the cemetery on Scabb Iceland: While the player is staying outside the cemetery, an eerily mystical music is played. When you enter the cemetery, the same melody is played in a more intrusive something with drums underlying variant. Enters the player's tomb, the background music is reduced while maintaining the melodic theme to a single flute.

In Star Wars: X-Wing a rather unobtrusive, based on the Star Wars Soundtrack Background music sounds normally. But if, for example, a rebel spaceship enters the sector, sounds briefly the rebellion theme, or the first few bars of the Imperial March are true when an Imperial starship enters the sector.

By iMUSE briefly with variable transitions interrupts the current music of a game with situational, short music racks and then continues the original background music, it reached the impression of a continuous, is the way of play anpassendem soundtrack, instead of as hitherto very common to rely on static background music per game scene.

  • Computer game development
  • Computer game music
X-wing (disambiguation) Burial vault (enclosure)
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