DevGAMM – Daniel Rosenfeld (C418) – Creating the music for Minecraft and designing sound by playing games

Who you has played Minecraft sure almost everyone I’m not surprised so the other question is do like the music from this game yeah sure you do as well as I am and now I’m glad to welcome on the stage person we could be grateful for this cool sound

His name is Daniel Rosenfeld and he is a composer and sound designer of Minecraft please welcome hello before we start this thing was anyone with Lego anyone no well uncle I’m gonna put note you don’t get it I’m gonna put this thing here and anyone can take it it’s fine

It’s ready okay say hello as you know my name is Daniel Rosenfeld I’ve worked on Minecraft and this is a weird name for a talk um it’s like a mouthful what did it say creating a musical Minecraft I’m just sorting sponsible so what I actually mean with that is I I kind of

Want to like tell you guys why minecraft sounds the way it does nowadays and why it sounds kind of weird and not very normal and I oh I just want to like just like give you like through like my life when I started working on Minecraft and like hopefully you understand why the

Game sounds like what like it does so first of all um I want to show you guys this video this video is from 2008 and I was before minecraft had any sounds or like was even like end game that anyone knew yet it was like really early

Now if you played the game before you probably realize that the game does not really sound like that at all it sounds completely different and the reason for that is that we had limitations and I kinda want to tell you that guys about the limitations I had in this game

Specifically it’s kind of interesting so first the biggest reason is Java sucks don’t make games in Java don’t like Marcus keeps telling you Java is amazing in the past no don’t just make get the unity um anyway so imagine this this is like a visual representation of

Whatever guys tell you so like imagine you have like the sound of rivers because you’re standing next to a river right and like it has a sound that loops for like five seconds and the de loops loops over and over again it’s fine it’s

It’s a river sound but if you put like a next second sound because like you are next to trees so of course you want birds in the forest so we have to the looping sounds at the same time the problem with what we have in minecraft

Is if you do that it crashes so we can’t do that so basically the technology of Java is still in 1996 I think so the next problem is if you have like some cows for example like like like imagine like this is like this is starting and

This is like the ending like this is like a five second thing that happens and there’s a lot of cows that like make moo moo-moo-moo-moo that’s fine but the problem of the sound engine also is that if you have a lot of those sounds and in Minecraft you like make farms and stuff

Like that like this there’s like 50 cows in one farm and they all move which is annoying but I mean it’s cows but if they do that the sound engine dies and like all the sounds get cut off instead of them saying Moo they say that

So that’s the next problem that we have and we never really solved that until like me that is still a problem with the engine today and the next problem is minecraft the concept of it is that it is a voxel based game that is completely procedural which means that it’s

Randomly generated nothing like don’t script anything we don’t predict anything everything is just like it happens because the player wants it to happen or just because the random generation tells the player that things are happening and so like imagine this you are in a cave and there’s a zombie

But the zombie is not with you the zombie is in a different room right so you are over there technically if the zombies makes the zombie sound you should not hear it because there’s a wall but what happens you still hear it anyway so you’re on that wall and you

Hear zombie in you just look around and there’s like a wall and you’re like what is this and so it’s so the reason for that is like like calculating um like like what did I say about this of like like this a sound file or like just like

A sound effect ryx right like it could bounce over there technically because it’s of all you should calculate that it should stop there that was too complicated for us because back then in 2008 Marcus and I we were not sound programmers I kind of know how to do that stuff nowadays but

Now it’s kind of too late so so far as this was too complicated and probably probably too expensive to do so we just didn’t do it and then you can hear zombie next in the next role even though you shouldn’t be able to which it’s kind of bad but it’s also

Kind of cool because it’s creepy because there’s a sound that you shouldn’t there anyway and the next problem like imagine this so the zombie makes this zombie sound and basically that the sound sound travels a little bit like five meters or something so there’s like a circle

Around it and if like I say well that sound effect is a little bit too loud I need to make it quieter so I make it quieter and what happens in the engine is that the circle of the travelling of the sound also gets smaller

Same time which makes no sense so what I end up having to do is I have to go to my like program and render out the sound quieter than before and I’d put it back in the game and that is the dirtiest way you can program sound effects in me just

Don’t do that ever it’s like make them loud and put them like changes volume at the game cells but hey whatever minecraft so next problem music that’s quite interesting so imagine this the player is in the savanna and there’s a force next to it

But who cares and like now you say oh it makes sense that a place in Savannah you know we can play a Savannah music right and then you just like randomly play Savannah music but now the player goes to the forest and because players don’t really stick in one point in minecraft

That play is the for is really quick and now the Savannah music is playing now we have to stop it and then it’s like just play forest music all of that is really clunky and like uncomfortable and it’s really complicated and here’s another problem so imagine this so this is like

A topographical view of like Minecraft thingies like imagine let’s see if I can do this thing here probably not yeah laser pointer no oh yeah cool so imagine like oh no I think totally doesn’t work it’s just crash well nevermind so we I just imagined like on top of the

Green that’s like where the forest would be or like there’s anything that is green like stuff like that and the players up there and technically we can’t predict that well it should be Forest because when the game started it was a forest and then he like if you go over lower you

See like the cave area and we assume it’s a cave because that’s what we had it before the game like the player went in there so it must be a cave so what we could do is like clay cave ambient sound effects and that would probably make

Sense and then like way below there’s probably like lava area so why don’t we choose like play like creepy lavash stuff because that would make sense but in actuality because the game is whatever you make it to be it’s like up there the player made a really terrible ugly house so if you

Play jungle stuff that wouldn’t make sense anymore and how do you predict how not to play jungle sounds anymore and then like way below the player like built art is like I don’t know wouldn’t I do something and the cave sounds good technically but still play because we

Don’t actually know how to make them stop playing and then way below the lava would be it though I don’t know that if they made like a forest and it makes no sense so we can’t even really play those sound effects because we don’t know how to

Make them stop and then here’s the next problem more music stuff so imagine there’s an enemy in a player and well it’s elder that he should start making battle musics right so we could play battle music but a problem in Minecraft is that battles are really short so the

Player could just run away and it’s like a two second thing so we can’t really play battle music because there’s no time or the player could kill the enemy but that’s all such as a fight second thing is really fast in Minecraft so why would you play battle music or the

Player might make gigantic cave full of enemies and exploited the system to breathe enemies and just kills them over and over again to like get whatever the enemy drops technically we would say well here we have to play battle music which we can’t because obviously it’s exploited and it would be really

Annoying if battle music would play it’d be playing all the time as if the play is that thing so we can’t really do battle music either and then there’s like how how about we make scripted events happening like music happens if you walk into the forest there’s no scripted events it’s like all

Randomly generated so we can’t even do that and then in this next problem gave players potentially play the game infinitely so if anything I do before this sound thing the game is annoying players are gonna hate us forever so these are all the problems I had to

Tackle but let’s go back to 2008 before the game actually was a thing so yeah let’s just like ignore all the bugs because I don’t want to talk about them anymore so that was like when I met Marcus on a website called dick sores so like this you should go there it’s beautiful

Website and be basically hung out and I was like just like the random composer guy like hosting music and like hey please listen to me I make music please hire me for your game and Marcus was basically the supportassist dude that made like terrible prototypes of not

Really good games and he was like hey look at me I make good games please play my games and we basically both met and kind of liked each other and that’s how we kind of got into the like like talking about making music for this thing which was I know like there’s a

Thing you could do in there is not very much it’s who’s randomly generated world not very pretty it had like a limited space of like I don’t know 128 blocks by 128 blocks probably more than that but not very much you couldn’t actually go anywhere because it’s just limited like

He couldn’t go infinitely like you can’t do now and they were only three blocks which is dirt grass dirty dirt and a lot of this very much of this that’s pretty much it and the only other thing is president I think the G button to spawn these guys

That just jump around like idiots and that’s literally it and Marcus asked me to make music and sound effects for that so I want to get it I want to put you guys like in my mindset like in 2008 and like show you the things that interested me to

Hopefully make you figure out why minecraft has this calm weird stuff so this game for example it’s called you Floria you can’t still you can buy it on the iPad right now it’s a really good version so this game it is a very stressful RTS game like it is really stressful but the

Thing that this game does is have this really beautiful I like program art and the music is really calm like it’s saying they call like it’s 10 minutes songs that are the same thing over and over again but it’s like because of the music you still don’t feel like you’re stressed so even

Though there’s like a million things dying right there and this is amazing I hate those guys so much yeah I love that game uh what else what they have but I don’t actually know how to show the videos from here hey there we’re back oh yeah I don’t care about do you oh

That’s what I’m seeing by the way it still doesn’t help me no I don’t I need to see that because I can’t say where’s my mouse that is not the button I want that’s a button I want oh how about I just go here with my mouse that’s that’s a thing right

Yes yes that’s what I’m searching for okay cool previous video good you like that it’s a let’s play I don’t look from you super fast so this is Samorost that was I think it came out in 2007 six ish I don’t remember but it it’s a I think

It’s a checked people they hired this really a like weird IDM electronic based artist and he mates makes this really cool some escape and I really love that game so directly after that I get 2008 they announced this game which you guys probably know it’s called Machinarium

Yeah in 2008 it didn’t it wasn’t really successful but when it came out on the iPad did that get made a lot of money it’s basically the same idea she’s way more polished as you can see the music is just like really serene and like just like generally just like comfortable

See that’s just fast-forward and see what it says oh yeah and all the sound effects a little you can sell like that what else do they play um what is this game Oh World of Goo you probably you probably know that that game is famous that made

A lot of money so the interesting thing about a world of gurus it is supposed to be a cute game but most of the music in that game is like and the idea about diet that the music of the game is that it like will suppose

I don’t know if they kind of I don’t know if they pulled it off but the music was supposed to like uh tell the story about how this game is actually a sad sad tale of these goofballs dying like for me kind of work because I kind I

Think I understood it and I kind of liked I liked the idea of the bait music as storytelling because the game itself really didn’t have any story at all what else oh so this is also a game from 2008 you can’t tell but because this is not

An iPad this game is called Korean physics by Petri poro you can still get it on the iPad it’s a good game and it’s it’s a very simple game but I think what most like people made the Cape’s like people kept playing it because the music was really good

Like the the visual style is not that interesting but just because the music has this professional-grade style which was unheard of in indie games back then like all indie games were chipped to you basically not a bad fake but it was generally always the same yeah like the music like like it invites

You to just to stay around it’s calm just like breaking antennas like this which I think this is LIF Nicholas’s game Nicolas Nygren he’s Swedish it’s called MIT K&Y TT and this game is ugly I I don’t care what if Lass’s this game is ugly but nifflas is a like guy that

Freely cares about sound effects of music and stuff like that where’s my mouse super here let’s just fast forward so the music is like really nice you know here as you can see it’s I mean the visuals are not really good but they’re passable at best but you see

Atmospheres creates life liked hearing the water things like like if I when I played this game I kind of like just played that to like hear the next song essentially I didn’t really care what happened in the game itself what else what is this oh yeah I guess

Nobody knows this game anymore this is a game called blueberry guard by Eric’s with egg it it won’t be Uncle Bob it won the Seamus McNally grand prize at the IGF which by the way minecraft also wanted and so the thing about this game is it’s a very simple game you have to

Fly around and I collect things but it has low quality piano recordings by some dude whose name of a god I don’t think he makes music anymore unfortunately but I mean that guy recorded the music in low quality because that’s the best equipment he had but to me I was amazing

Like I like the idea of low quality music that is still good and I kind of wanted to emulate that this is weird game the idea is that you have to like grow plants and those plants make like seeds happen and those seats make a berries happen and you eat

The berries it’s so late what else um oh this game is even playing you know and then there’s like people like cactus you could you probably know characters from a very famous game called hotline Miami but before that he made like weird experiments like this so this is just a

Simple jump and run with like some experimental stuff that you have to figure out but the Busic is so serene and I think that’s also literally the only reason why I kept playing this game is because it music is sad and I don’t know why it is sad and it’s like

Neglected like it’s like place if your expectations of what you have to do do I just walk right because I just walk left previously I don’t know what I love that game anyway and then there’s probably the best best example as of why I made minecraft so already this this game is

The ugliest of them all it still is ugly it’s called war fortress um it is a very complex game you can still get it it’s like they’re still working on this game but it’s free it is extremely complicated it is basically the sims Dungeon Keeper and

Since City at the same time so it basically left wharves and you have to like to tell them like that you should work there and then they might be unhappy and not kill themselves stuff like that it’s really crazy but this game is ugly but the thing is once you

Start that game that you hear it is a flamenco music which makes kind of no sense because it’s in a DOS window and you like back then you never assume that thus windows can make music like that happen and that is why what made me stick around like only dislike harsh

Contrast of normal music after like ugliness and yeah that’s kind of why I won’t like made the minecraft music sound like um let’s see how to switch thingies now I’ll see if I can make it happen right so the thing about Minecraft is let me just set us up because I have a

Lot of remote controlling things happen good see this works so the thing about Minecraft is even back then before we had players we assumes that the game that like the selling point of the game is that you can’t play forever and ever and ever and the thing about that is

That a music needs to like like not be annoying at all so what we basically came up with is how about we are because we can’t really predict anything how about we just have general music that doesn’t really say anything is maybe a little bit like a melancholic but that doesn’t really mean

It’s sad it’s just it’s just like a boot space like that’s not some here if this one is especially electronic so but like as we basically made the music search like randomly happen between 15 or 50 minutes just like it like for no reason at all and what happens because

If that is like playas do like they’re terrible third hut and is like it’s an ugly fake but they like had an effort put into that and like if the music just randomly happens to play because of that like just because like they made like a third hug

It makes them remember that moment like more like specifically that’s actually kind of an interesting thing I didn’t even know keep occurs at the music could do that like or or like they like build abode and the Sun is setting and the music kicks in and then like people keep

Coming up to me and tell me oh yeah I had this thing happening I went to into a dark cave and I was loved and scandalous and the music came and it was amazing and that was that’s pretty cool and like the good thing about like this

Fairly generic music is if players like do something that is also very generic fatal they don’t like really care that the music is playing and that is a good thing because they don’t complain about it being annoying and that means people still listen to the music for at least

Another 200 hours until they start iTunes I guess and that’s I guess that’s all I need really yeah okay but then we kind of made like the game change my katana is still 2008-2009 beat made the game change and we had this really insane looking creative miss mode and

You didn’t have any music fitting to that and that was kind of depressing to me because I didn’t know if the music is ever gonna fit again but then we made like this is survival mode and it all made sense again I did make music for creative mode eventually let’s see if I

Can find it it’s kind of different it has a like it has like percussionist Vega yes I like that like more heavy stuff about anyway another thing we did is like get new things like this this is the nether which is actually a new region that you have to load into and

This is technically like a scripted moment so I could finally actually make music that is different from the rest of the game so yeah you have like stuff like yes it’s even play yeah just three peanuts but the thing about all the music that I still wanted to have is

That all the music should never sound like it’s attacking you it should still be like kind of welcoming so even if you’re in Hell the music should never like say it’s creepy you should go away so yeah all of the music still won’t I slaughter to beat you in general even if

You are in the worst places there’s even stuff like this let’s see have to set this up shut up shop thank you so this is the end which is basically the end of the game as we like like we kind of even though the game is infinite potentially

We wanted to have the game to have an end so like people feel like they finish the game and I can move on with their lives but they usually never do so I I actually this is also my favorite song because like basically it’s a 15 minute song that just sounds like this

And it eventually does that what else will you be my audit kids so like that yeah I have that and it is like kind of lectures like switches between those figs that’s all it does and it also like um and then there’s also a part that place all of the

Minecraft music again but kind of like this retrospective way because this is the end of the game right so he listens the music again but it’s in the mood of this this thing goes on for 15 minutes because I calculated how long players usually takes to kill the dragon

There’s my favorite piece for Minecraft that thing and let me made this thing that was my idea I’m sorry um these are jukeboxes the idea of that is basically if players want more music they can find it in the game didn’t really work out because we intended to hide the records

Like in specific areas but we decided would have no scripted events so we couldn’t really hide them so the ways you acquire discs is stupid I’m sorry don’t worry about it and finally I want to show you this guy at this thing so if we ever manage to get rid of this bug

Which we still have in the game that like to looping sounds at the same time the game crashes if you ever gonna fix that I can uh let me set this up again I have so much setting up to do right this cool I can do like soundscapes that are

Specific for biomes so um let’s see right to imagine like an egg stuff like that imagine you’re in a forest you walk around and it’s nice for us but then it becomes dark in the forest because so you don’t like that so you keep walking you end up in a jungle you keep

Walking because you don’t like jungle sex you’re born see the color you go into a safe thing I guess that’s enough yeah you keep walking and it becomes really messy and you are suddenly the desert that is not a picture of there such as imagine it but yeah it’s really

Hard when you finally find the river and as he walked the river you go to like you its sons become cold and really cold and you are on a frozen illusion by the way this those a real sounds of cracking like frozen oceans like the guide I recorded it is insane even today

Like it artists and like just like put microphones there and like froze almost to death doing that or I don’t know like you you keep walking and then there’s like a mushroom forest it’s kind of weird yeah so if you ever manage to fix that bug we can do that and that’s gonna

Be amazing that’s that’s pretty much it that’s like pretty much all I did for Minecraft so far I’m still working on it it’s still it’s probably never gonna be over I mean Microsoft bought the thing but they still didn’t kick me out so I guess

I still have a lot of work to do so yeah it’s pretty much it um thank you guys thank you thank you for your amazing talk guys now it’s time for question I’m sure you have them let’s show of hands if you have a question any question it

Doesn’t really need to be a blind curve because usually no I don’t believe they don’t have jappa refers lon um wasn’t that PD what yeah Bruno discussed earlier process okay yes leaked Akita a granny chain of service mr. genre nice person instrumental okay he asks if 0 any you

Know like a limitation for using some instruments dependent of a game-changer is it somehow connected the game changer and the instruments you use oh yeah so I actually didn’t talk about it yeah right um so the music out or the instruments I chose like a piano or harp or strings I

I used them because back then and like 2008 most indie games and we burn in the game they were all based around ship tune and pixilated like kind of soundy stuff and minecraft looks like chip tune and I hated that so I decided to go as acoustic as possible and also because it

Makes a really nice contrast between between there’s not very pretty game and isn’t the music that sounds like very blob of Brian Eno ish no tokoto prostitute washed or as no no characteristics cachito towas minecraft let’s alliances diana to nibble EG produced eros mozuku in prostitution in personage Pineiro

Illustrator which is me music user recesses the rhyme of objectors as the way instructor in Minooka panini militaristically maybe let’s divided into parts college too long ok so considering that the main one of the main things in my minecraft is a creation of Sam Samson the question is do you have an idea

Belay device show us the Chelios gorilla motion produces Eve sistema mozuku illustrates who is meaning a music user is me such as the wahhabi actor ok didn’t you have an idea to illustrate with the help of the music as the idea of changing the objects vial changing

The music so if you change the object music changes oh yeah absolutely yeah I I wanted to have dynamic music that like changes based around what you do the problem is still that we can’t do that because we can’t have tools like sound effects at the same time like looping

Sound effects at the same time so I totally wanted to do that but technically not possible I don’t even know if it’s possible now yes Louise daeyoung Goro to all NASA graybridge alone Masuka at massage sir curves in muscle machine you from coming year or

So ago area but I you need to work on Siesta musically in a summer structurae catalysis NIOSH II you’re as near Oslo Nagar area visually zeros she’s not showing a musica choose your TM brave young humans that like when you create mountain maybe you should make some mountain music when

You create watch her some water music and while the mountain grows up the music should you know like her so the sound grows herbs and some sizes I basically I like about this for example I’m actually doing that like if they fix that and I’m forcing them to fix it they

Will be like if you go up to a mountain there’s gonna be like wind sound effects so yes I’m gone I am doing that thank you more questions you can ask question in Russian Ukrainian and German I know although just lying to yourself alright so let’s imagine you have a desk

To make music for doom or quake or something like that what would you do hmm oh I’m sorry I really can’t you would usually how would you make music for games like doom or quake oh so like like not ambient not without ambient garbage um I actually don’t know I think

If I would make music for doom it wouldn’t be rock music because I’m pretty bad at guitar so it looked like if it would be a new tool like it mash it like a iolite I don’t know like a space shooter I would probably like this means make music like um System Shock

Stuff like that what do you think about catchy tunes is it good or bad I wish to our tools caters well so I mean like like in contrast to Minecraft catchy tunes are always useful because they are good for marketing and advertising and getting people to like remember self so this I

Think one song called cat that is kind of like people think it’s catchy I don’t think so but in minecraft you can’t really do catchy tunes because the music needs to be generic but yeah of course catchy tunes are really important for happy games definitely in Skyrim I guess that

That is a catchy song okay it’s a question for me oh okay I think it would be interesting for everyone as we already started to discuss of good games what’s your favorite games and your favorite generous and divided hmm that’s always a hard question for me to answer

Because I don’t like to pick favorites in the recent years Fez that is a really good game it it’s a puzzle game but it really it’s insane puzzle game and maybe thief’s like like a spy he games basically and horror games I really like horror games a lot like Silent Hill yeah

If no one has has a question so let’s give it a one more aggression okay sure here emotionally still at the horror agree pre-eternal total universe is you musical card with jo letter the collide chick okay I is it possible to make for a horror game the music which is

Simultaneously if you know like Pleasant and a scary absolutely that’s a possibility and how do you do this have you played PT so PT has this part where the radio and actually like does the radio unknown sir but it actually is it’s a Swedish guy talking about a Citizen Kane thing and

The music is really Pleasant but it’s in a room where there’s a zombie up there and that the lamp is shaking as you stand there and it makes this really creepy noise that is a really good example so there’s definitely ways you can make like Pleasant things just be really

Uncomfortable and I love that stuff yeah okay please use a microphone so you say everything is possible when you are a professional I think oh yeah okay so thank you very much let’s give a big round of applause to our speaker thank you so much