WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.840 {What I Love!} 00:00:01.840 --> 00:00:08.400 Hello! I’m Scruffy, and today, I’m discussing  some fun bits of adaptive audio in Wii Play,   00:00:08.400 --> 00:00:11.200 which was a Nintendo party game from 2006 designed   00:00:11.200 --> 00:00:15.120 to showcase the features of the Wii’s  flagship controller, the Wii Remote. 00:00:15.120 --> 00:00:19.840 It was a cute little game, kinda felt like an  arcade, with these nine minigames with very small   00:00:19.840 --> 00:00:24.800 gameplay loops, and the goal in each one is just  to get a high score. But nearly every one of them   00:00:24.800 --> 00:00:30.800 had some little gem of adaptive music, music that  responded to gameplay conditions. For instance,   00:00:30.800 --> 00:00:35.440 one minigame was just a table tennis volley,  with electronic music that sounded pretty bouncy. 00:00:35.440 --> 00:00:39.600 [electronic music plays] 00:00:39.600 --> 00:00:44.480 But as the volley got faster, so would the tempo  of the music. Since it’s all played in real time   00:00:44.480 --> 00:00:49.280 with virtual MIDI instruments, that tempo  could change fluidly. Another example would   00:00:49.280 --> 00:00:53.920 be the billiards game, which featured this  jazzy tune between electric piano and bass.   00:00:53.920 --> 00:00:56.560 ["Billiards" theme plays] 00:00:56.560 --> 00:00:59.840 And if you pocket a ball,  this brush snare gets added…   00:00:59.840 --> 00:01:03.234 ["Billiards" theme plays with brush snare] 00:01:03.234 --> 00:01:07.600 And that all dynamically goes away on the  beat when it’s the next player’s turn. 00:01:07.600 --> 00:01:13.440 Really cool stuff. But I think the most complex  system comes from the last game in this selection:   00:01:13.440 --> 00:01:19.920 Tanks! In Tanks!, you play as a little toy tank on  a wooden floor, facing off against waves of enemy   00:01:19.920 --> 00:01:25.360 toy tanks. You need to fire little pellets and  lay little mines as you negotiate the increasingly   00:01:25.360 --> 00:01:31.360 challenging AI and attacks of each color of enemy  tank. These tanks also determine how the music   00:01:31.360 --> 00:01:36.560 sounds, and since the music is played with MIDI  instruments, it can change on a dime as soon as   00:01:36.560 --> 00:01:41.920 a tank is dispatched. So let's break down the  surprisingly intricate system governing this. 00:01:42.720 --> 00:01:45.120 When a stage starts, you hear the following intro,   00:01:45.120 --> 00:01:48.647 and then it leads into a  very short loop. Here goes: 00:01:48.647 --> 00:02:01.723 [An arrangement of the "Tanks!" theme plays] 00:02:01.723 --> 00:02:06.480 And that's it, really. A little pastiche of  military fanfare with a toyish snare drum   00:02:06.480 --> 00:02:09.120 and flutes, and only four measures to the loop.   00:02:09.760 --> 00:02:13.360 It's the layers that are added or  subtracted that make this interesting. 00:02:14.080 --> 00:02:17.120 On stage 1, you'll hear no  difference. The brown tank,   00:02:17.120 --> 00:02:22.320 which stays in place and fires at the player  very seldom, doesn't change the music on its own. 00:02:22.320 --> 00:02:26.320 In stage 2, you meet a grey  tank, which moves around...   00:02:26.320 --> 00:02:30.480 and fires very seldom. It adds a little  metronome sound layer to the music. 00:02:30.480 --> 00:02:33.280 ["Tanks!" theme with metronome plays] 00:02:33.280 --> 00:02:38.640 Now in stage 3, we jump up to two grey tanks and  a brown tank, which introduces another feature   00:02:38.640 --> 00:02:44.640 of this system: the number of enemy tanks in the  stage influences what timpani pattern gets added.   00:02:45.440 --> 00:02:49.840 These three tanks together add this  timpani part, which I’ll call “timpani A.”   00:02:49.840 --> 00:02:51.840 ["Tanks" theme with timpani A plays] 00:02:51.920 --> 00:02:57.200 If you defeat one of these tanks, timpani A goes  away. The same with stage 4, where there are two   00:02:57.200 --> 00:03:02.320 brown and two grey tanks. Get the number of  tanks below three, and timpani A goes away.   00:03:02.880 --> 00:03:08.400 But notice that the grey tank is taking priority  here: we can still hear its metronome in the mix.   00:03:08.400 --> 00:03:13.920 That’ll be important too, this idea of priority:  it scores whichever tank is the most dangerous. 00:03:14.800 --> 00:03:20.960 And in stage 5, the most dangerous tank is the teal tank, two of them in fact. They fire rocket-powered pellets   00:03:20.960 --> 00:03:26.800 that travel extra fast. Where the brown and grey  tanks were “regular” tanks, the teal tank is a   00:03:26.800 --> 00:03:33.120 “special” tank. Firstly, just one of these teal  tanks on stage is enough to activate timpani A.   00:03:34.080 --> 00:03:39.440 But if you have three or more of them, then you’ll  get timpani B, an alternate timpani pattern that   00:03:39.440 --> 00:03:44.904 focuses on offbeats. You can also hear that these  teal tanks introduce a layer of cymbal crashes.   00:03:44.904 --> 00:03:49.920 ["Tanks!" theme with cymbals and timpani B plays] 00:03:49.920 --> 00:03:54.560 And finally, “special” tanks like these do  something unique to the music when there   00:03:54.560 --> 00:04:00.000 are fewer than 3 tanks left. I call  this “boss mode,” as though this tank   00:04:00.000 --> 00:04:05.520 becomes the final boss of the stage. For teal  tanks, when the last remaining tank is teal,   00:04:05.520 --> 00:04:10.180 the snare drum is removed, leaving just  timpani, metronome, and cymbals for percussion.   00:04:10.180 --> 00:04:14.640 ["Tanks" plays in teal-tank boss mode] 00:04:14.640 --> 00:04:20.880 Somehow that feels more… final? Climactic?  Anywho, you’ll see that appear from now on as   00:04:20.880 --> 00:04:26.480 we go through more powerful “special” tanks. And,  without looking internally, I can’t really extract   00:04:26.480 --> 00:04:31.520 a pattern here, it seems kind of custom-made  for each tank. But I’ll make a chart at the end. 00:04:32.640 --> 00:04:37.920 So, next comes the yellow tank, which doesn’t  shoot much, but moves fast and lays mines often.   00:04:38.720 --> 00:04:42.000 These add a bass drum layer that  works well with its other layers:   00:04:42.000 --> 00:04:44.000 cymbals, metronome, and timpani A.   00:04:44.000 --> 00:04:49.280 ["Tanks" theme with bass drum plays] 00:04:49.280 --> 00:04:53.840 You’ll often hear it with timpani B though, as  long as there are at least three tanks remaining,   00:04:53.840 --> 00:04:57.760 and a majority of those tanks are  special tanks. The yellow tank also   00:04:57.760 --> 00:05:01.520 removes the snare drum during its “boss  mode,” when it’s the only tank left. 00:05:01.520 --> 00:05:06.880 ["Tanks" plays in yellow-tank boss mode] 00:05:06.880 --> 00:05:13.680 Next are red tanks, which move and fire often,  with clever ricochets in mind. These guys disrupt   00:05:13.680 --> 00:05:19.280 the established patterns so far. They come with  cymbals, but they also come with timpani B,   00:05:19.280 --> 00:05:23.840 even if there’s only one on the field.  They’re the only ones that do that.   00:05:23.840 --> 00:05:28.640 And now, if a red tank is the most powerful tank of  two remaining tanks, the snare drum gets cut.   00:05:28.640 --> 00:05:32.800 ["Tanks!" theme plays without snare drum] 00:05:32.800 --> 00:05:36.400 If you beat the other tank and the  red tank is the only tank remaining,   00:05:36.400 --> 00:05:39.920 add the snare drum back in. See  how disruptive these tanks are? 00:05:40.800 --> 00:05:46.240 But it gets better, next are green tanks, which are  stationary but shoot rocket-powered pellets that   00:05:46.240 --> 00:05:52.080 ricochet twice, allowing them to calculate and  pull off these long-range trick shots on you. They   00:05:52.080 --> 00:05:58.640 add cymbals, bass drum, tuba, and tubular bells,  some more classic military band instruments.   00:05:58.640 --> 00:06:02.480 ["Tanks" theme, green-tank variation plays] 00:06:02.480 --> 00:06:07.440 But they have even more special conditions. If  they make up the majority of three tanks left,   00:06:07.440 --> 00:06:13.760 switch to timpani A, instead of B. If they’re the  most powerful of two tanks left, remove the snare   00:06:13.760 --> 00:06:20.800 drum. And if the only tank left is green, remove  the bass drum. So now the only low end is the   00:06:20.800 --> 00:06:25.680 tuba, sometimes removing percussion really does  increase the tension in a final moment like this. 00:06:27.520 --> 00:06:31.680 Green tanks win priority against every  other tank we’ve mentioned so far,   00:06:31.680 --> 00:06:36.880 and also against the next tank on the list,  purple tanks. They’re like red tanks but they   00:06:36.880 --> 00:06:42.560 move faster and lay mines occasionally. And on  their own they get cymbals, bass drum, and tuba,   00:06:42.560 --> 00:06:47.280 removing the bass drum if they’re the last tank  left. But if they still share a stage with a   00:06:47.280 --> 00:06:52.880 green tank, the green tank’s music wins out.  The only thing that overpowers a green tank is: 00:06:52.880 --> 00:06:58.320 What I’m calling “super special tanks.”  These are the ones you only meet far into   00:06:58.320 --> 00:07:05.200 the game. The first ones, white tanks, are met  at stage 20, the final stage of a normal game.   00:07:05.760 --> 00:07:10.480 They turn invisible when the stage starts, so  you can only see their tank tracks, pellets,   00:07:10.480 --> 00:07:17.280 and mines. They feature metronome, cymbals, bass  drum, tuba, and synthesizer, perhaps scoring   00:07:17.280 --> 00:07:27.040 their supernatural nature. And they supersede  all other tanks. If it’s among two tanks left,   00:07:27.040 --> 00:07:33.440 remove the cymbals, but keep timpani B. If  it’s the only tank left, remove the metronome,   00:07:33.440 --> 00:07:40.080 keep the snare drum, and switch to timpani A.  Whew… there is but one tank that can take priority   00:07:40.080 --> 00:07:45.840 over this complex system. To find it, you not only  have to win stage 20 and return to the main menu,   00:07:45.840 --> 00:07:50.000 you have to go back in, get all the way  back through stage 20, and now find that   00:07:50.000 --> 00:07:55.920 there are 80 more stages to tackle. If you  manage to get to stage 50, you encounter: 00:07:55.920 --> 00:08:01.360 Black tanks. These are the most powerful  tanks, traveling the fastest of all,   00:08:01.360 --> 00:08:07.200 laying mines, and firing rocket-powered pellets  at a far greater rate than teal or green tanks.   00:08:07.200 --> 00:08:12.800 And if at least one black tank is on the stage,  you get the smorgasbord of layers in the music.   00:08:12.800 --> 00:08:19.680 Metronome, cymbals, tuba, tubular bells, synth,  no snare drum for added tension, and timpani B.   00:08:19.680 --> 00:08:25.920 It overrides everything, as it should! ...As the  most formidable enemy this minigame can offer.   00:08:25.920 --> 00:08:31.760 And is it really a “mini” game at this point?  There are a hundred stages, each with a unique   00:08:31.760 --> 00:08:37.360 progression of adaptive music simply because the  strongest tank dictates the percussion, and you   00:08:37.360 --> 00:08:42.960 defeat tanks in a unique order. You may hear  the same four measures of music over and over,   00:08:42.960 --> 00:08:48.000 but you’ll never hear it quite the same way twice.  That’s why this game deserved to be talked about. 00:08:48.960 --> 00:08:54.640 And now, here’s a chart of all the layers in this  piece of music, and, to the best of my knowledge,   00:08:54.640 --> 00:08:59.840 what tanks make them occur. Feel free to  pause the video to take it in, I suppose,   00:08:59.840 --> 00:09:05.600 and see how much variety can come from using  both enemy type and enemy number as inputs in   00:09:05.600 --> 00:09:10.960 this adaptive music system. Now, I’d like  to thank my friends Wolfgang and DavoGato   00:09:10.960 --> 00:09:16.320 for their help as always in making these videos.  And I’d like to thank my supporters on Patreon,   00:09:16.320 --> 00:09:21.360 who help keep my video-making process sustainable.  If you’d like to support my work directly,   00:09:21.360 --> 00:09:26.560 and get perks like your credit here, seeing  videos early, a vote on what music I arrange,   00:09:26.560 --> 00:09:31.120 and more behind-the-scenes content, you can visit  my Patreon link in this video’s description. 00:09:31.760 --> 00:09:35.840 And with that, I’m Scruffy, and  thank you very much for watching.