# Stargate (the game) ost



## Alex W (Feb 9, 2006)

As some may know, both Scott Cairns and I worked on the soundtrack to a Stargate SG1 videogame... ages ago... seems like a lifetime ago now.

Anyway, recently the game was cancelled. It was due to a number of reasons, one of them being that the developer fell out with the publisher (Jowood) and then failed to secure a new one. Bit of a bummer, we were both hoping to gain a bit of exposure / industry credibility after its release. Ah well, shit happens.

The game itself was designed as your classic action shooter. The brief was to write an orchestral piece of loopable music approximately 1.5 minutes in length for each mission. The catch was, we had to write 2 versions of this piece; a *"non combat"* or *"_nc"* version for times when there were no enemies around, and a *"combat"* or *"_c"* version for when the player got attacked.

The 2 pieces had to follow the same melodic lines, chord progressions and even the same tempo so that they could seemlessly crossfade between the two depending on what was happening in the game. The brief seemed a bit restrictive at first, I remember thinking "shouldn't the tempo ramp right up for the action sequences?" I started by writing the non combat versions first, and then just fit the combat version over the top of the basic structure of that.

For anyone interested, here's the link to a zip file containing all the tracks I created for the game.

http://www.alxproductions.com/stargate_ost.zip

Or here's a few of examples from the zip if you don't want to download the whole thing:

http://www.alxproductions.com/1_nc.ogg
ò0À   1žÙ0À   1žÚ0À   1žÛ0À   ...0À   1Ÿ0À   1Ÿ0À   1Ÿ0À   1Ÿ0À   1Ÿ


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## Alex W (Feb 10, 2006)

Thanks a lot Evan and Jack, I appreciate the encouragement. Yeah it's just one of those things...



Scott Cairns said:


> I feel sorry too for the employees of the developer, many of them spent two years of their life working on this game.
> 
> __
> 
> ...



Yeah I especially feel sorry for Aldo the sound designer, he's a really nice (and talented as) bloke and always put in tons of hours of overtime etc for years on end - creating and arranging / keeping track of thousands of sound files, voice acting parts etc etc...

Thanks btw man, yeah I should really get around to making a new demo reel.


Choc - sif not have an ogg decoder :wink: 
Do you use winamp?

http://www.wmplugins.com/ItemDetail.aspx?ItemID=681

if not, then I found this - apparantly this gets it working in windows media player... perhaps I should just upload an mp3 version...?


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## Niah (Feb 10, 2006)

Excelent work guys, very enjoyable ost. 8)


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## Thonex (Feb 11, 2006)

Sorry about the news guys!!

I'll listen on a real system in the next few days (on a laptop right now... and I refuse to insult your music by listening to it on thelaptop).

Since he game was canceled, does the ownership of the music revert back to you? Ie.... the publishing?

T


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## TheoKrueger (Feb 11, 2006)

i've heard so much about the work you guys put into these pieces and now that i heard them i understand... Excellent work Alex, truly proffesional sounding and deep refined compositions. what a shame really :(


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## Alex W (Feb 12, 2006)

Thanks very much Niah and Theo.

Thonex - I'm not really sure, I asked the developer a while back and the audio director said he'd get back to me soon... it didn't happen so I thought... whatever I'll just post it here ...


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## Thonex (Feb 12, 2006)

Alex W said:


> Thonex - I'm not really sure, I asked the developer a while back and the audio director said he'd get back to me soon... it didn't happen so I thought... whatever I'll just post it here ...



Did you sign anything... if not... it's yours!!!!!

If you did sign something and the project dies, did your attorney put in a clause like "the publishing of any music not used in the final release reverts back to the composer..."?

Is there any reversion clause? 

If the guy has to get back to you, then it would seem it's not so cut-and-dry.

The only reason I bring this up is not becuase of you posting it... but more because I hate it when composers get the shaft and then they can't even re-claim their music. 

In the future, make sure you have reversion clauses in your contract in the event the project is never finished etc...

I look forward to hearing it tomorrow.

Cheers,

T


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## choc0thrax (Feb 12, 2006)

Ok I got it all to work. Some very nice stuff there. I probably already asked this but did you listen to the Stargate score a lot in preparation? Were you asked to come up with something similar? Quick trivia!- Anyone know who co-composed Stargate with Arnold?


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## Alex W (Feb 13, 2006)

choc0thrax said:


> Ok I got it all to work. Some very nice stuff there. I probably already asked this but did you listen to the Stargate score a lot in preparation? Were you asked to come up with something similar? Quick trivia!- Anyone know who co-composed Stargate with Arnold?



Many thanks Choc. They said they wanted something like the movie and TV show score. I did listen to the Stargate movie score before starting, and pretty quickly realised that I wouldn't be able to do something that sounded anything like that , so I just tried to capture the mood in my own way.

Thonex - thanks a lot for the tips. Reversion clause. I'll remember that . I've got the contract somewhere, maybe I'll dig it up at some stage but for now I'm pretty happy to just let it lie, I don't really have any plans for these pieces other than to maybe post them on my website.


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## Evan Gamble (Feb 13, 2006)

perhaps you could try selling them to a music library?


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## Alex W (Feb 13, 2006)

I didn't even think of that, very valid point. Thanks.


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## Thonex (Feb 13, 2006)

Alex W said:


> I didn't even think of that, very valid point. Thanks.



Hello!!! This is exactly what I'm getting at. It would really suck if all this hard work didn't have a life after the project has been cancelled.

Intelletual property is everything my friend. Don't sell yourself short and there are plenty of avenues to generate income from cues that you own. This thing is... you have to own them.... ie... own the publishing.

T


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## Christian Marcussen (Feb 14, 2006)

Evan Gamble said:


> perhaps you could try selling them to a music library?



Yeah or keep them if you get a similar gig and get frightningly close to a deadline.

It's very solid stuff Alex - I like it!

As for shit happens - well the next game I was going to do in 6 months time just turned into a different genre which would not require my services. Thats maybe a years employment right out the window... I got the memo 3 days after having my kid, and a month before moving into the house I just bought! :D


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## Alex W (Feb 16, 2006)

Christian Marcussen said:


> Evan Gamble said:
> 
> 
> > perhaps you could try selling them to a music library?
> ...



Thanks very much Christian, and yes that's certainly a case of "shit happens" there. Real sorry to hear that, at an inopportune time too, hope you find something to cover it. GDC and E3 are both coming up real (too) soon, time for some serious schmoozing perhaps . All the best whatever happens.

Edgen - thanks a lot dude, I'm glad you liked it. Just to clarify, this is the stuff that I solely worked on. Scotty worked on the other half.

All this talk of licensing is interesting, maybe I should read over the contract during the month of recovering I'll have after going in for jaw surgery next week... :?


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## Alex W (Feb 16, 2006)

btw Edgen, your websites really kick arse, man...


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## Christian Marcussen (Feb 16, 2006)

I'm pretty optimistic about getting more work after my current gig, since I'm getting pretty good vibes from the publisher. So I'm not in total shock, but when I got the email I was like "bloody hell - what will I do!" :D


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