Music & Sound

Music & Sound

Layered Music and Filters

In Orbital Dodge, music is separated in two layers, the drums and the rest of the instruments. In the game, a circle that determines the playing space is drawn that can be expanded by hitting its edges from within with the player character (which is a planet).

The layer that contains the drums has its volume controlled by the size of the circle arena, creating this effect that liberates the music as the player does better in the game. To further enhance this effect, I added low-pass filters that have their cutoff frequency slightly adjusted depending on the size of the circle, too.

One final layer of interactivity includes the entire master track getting filtered out drastically whenever the player gets hit. After this, the music slowly starts to bring the high end frequencies back in, creating this easing of the impact that helps players get back on track, as if they are reclaiming the full spectrum of frequencies from the song playing.