Music

Music files should be placed in a subdirectory of data/music/. They must be in .ogg format, sampled at 44100 or 22050 Hz. All music are copyrighted CC-BY-SA-3.0.

Music in core/ will be played by the default player script, modules/MusicPlayer.lua. Mission or per-system scripts should add their own music to a separate sub-directory.

Music in core/ is selected based on game events. When a particular game event occurs a song is chosen at random from the appropriate subdir. The subdirs are as follows:

• space: ambient music, played while flying in space. When music for a specific event finishes the player will start a song from this category. This is also the fallback category if any category subdir has no songs in it.

• near-planet, near-spacestation: ambient music specific to planets and orbital stations. The player will play something from one of these categories if ambient music is requested and the player is near a planet or station.

• docked: played when the player docks (ie as the station menu appears)

• undocked: played when the player undocks (ie when the request launch)

• ship-nearby, ship-firing: played when the player's alert state changes because a ship is nearby (within 100km) or starts firing. Note that the presence of a ship (even a firing ship) does not necessarily mean the ship is hostile and the player is (about to be) in combat.

• ship-destroyed: played with the player destroys a ship

• player-destroyed: played when the player is destroyed. Will continue to play over the "tombstone" screen.

Music Style

Pioneer's soundtrack is a combination of electronic, orchestral and classical pieces; most being electronic.

Electronic ambient music is synthesizer melodies generally accompanied by soft beats. Most of Pioneer's original compositions are in this form. Some of them, however, have a smoother and more mysterious mood and they will probably be moved to the "unexplored space" suite.

Pioneer2.ogg by Emajogi is an excpetion; it is an orchestral piece in the form of "ambient" music. Probably feels more like Frontier Elite II, considering it is an old piece in Pioneer and it is probably composed with something like Elite II in mind.

Rest of the ambience is classical pieces such as Moonlight Sonata and The Blue Danube. They fit really well to the feeling of core (familiar) systems.

Pioneer has situational music as well, most notably the space stations and ship-to-ship situations.

Space stations are classical piano pieces, except one original piano piece.

In ship-to-ship interaction, if a ship gets close to the player, orchestral suspensing/alerting tracks play. Note that this does NOT mean the player is at immediate danger, but should expect it.

If the ship(s) starts firing, combat music starts. They are faster-paced electronic tracks. They don't have a really set mood, but they shouldn't go as fancy as Doom OST or Radix OST and it should be OK. Pioneer is not so much of an arcade shooter.

If the player destroys an enemy ship, a short and fast classical piece is played. Player should feel accomplished (as combat is currently trash and it is near impossible to win unless you've been playing for quite some time).

If the player dies (either in or out of a combat situation) a sad music is played. Those are NOT electronic.