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Stellaris - Dev Diary #82: Synthetic Dawn Music

Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary! This time I'm going to give the word to our very own composer, Andreas Waldetoft, who will be talking about new music in the Synthetic Dawn Story Pack.
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I have once again been given some time to work on Stellaris, which always has been something very inspiring for me. There is so much freedom in writing the music for this that I never run out of ideas. For me, it is not the harmony or melody that is the hard part for Stellaris, it is finding the right sound and synth for the job.

For Synthetic Dawn I wanted to have the focus on simple synthetic sounds that would sit in the front seat throughout the songs. Some would call it a retro feeling with that 80-90’s game soundtrack kind of feeling, with my own style blended in. Musical lines that keeps changing more in tempo, dynamics and shapes rather than in musical harmony.

I did not however want to change the focus and soul of what has become the essence of Stellaris music so that it would sit wrong with all the other tunes that is in the game now. There is still similar musical language and ethereal sounds that we have heard before.

In total there are 3 new tracks, totaling ~18 minutes of music. Here is one of them, called 'Synthetic God' for your listening pleasure:

That's all for today! Next week we'll be going over a number of smaller changes coming in the 1.8 'Čapek' update, including the rework of Core Sector Governors and changes to democratic elections.
 
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How do they always manage to take exactly the same amount of weeks to develop each update as they have stuff to talk about in the weekly dev diaries? That's what I want to know.
 
Fixed the placeholder on minutes of music. Sorry about that!
 
Well at least we can say that Synthetic Dawn should be out soon...
 
Partially disagree, add some power metal metal on top of it.

P.S. I guess people disagreeing are not fan of Machinae Supremacy.

Heavy metal music most suited for this game would be "space metal" such as some of Arjen Lucassen's work or even space-themed power metal such as Iron Savior and (sometimes) Metalium, imo.
 
Ahh, quite splendid art once more! Aesthetic game, now with some synthwave in it too!

Keep up the stylish work - It should look really nice when it's done. ^_^
 
EDIT: That track is AMAZING! Liked it at the start but the increasing tempo is what made it! Clearly you have mastered that most ancient of instruments: the synthesizer.

Yep ... the change in tempo is so awesome. At the beginning I was also like: ahh nice sound and then the few drum sounds around the 2 minute mark I was like: "what is happening" and tempo increases and then at 3:30 or so there is another change (the "darker sounding drums" and the additional synth) ... and then outro again slows down ... what an amazing song. Have to play more Stellaris to listen to the songs while playing :)
 
Ok, honestly I lost interest in Stellaris for a while. It's a good game, but it got a bit tedious for me at some point and still a bit bland. I didn't buy Utopia, knowing I won't find the time to play it, but still hopeful.

I've been watching the dev diaries with growing enthusiasm. The game finally shapes up to be what I wanted it to be and now the most wonderful incentive of alll - @Jazzhole 's delightful tunes made me actually excited! :)
 
Partially disagree, add some power metal metal on top of it.

P.S. I guess people disagreeing are not fan of Machinae Supremacy.
IMHO the whole soundtrack for a game should be made in same style, so if you deep in game you won't notice the track changes. And by the way: Stellaris is in the club of very few games where I don't turn music off.
 
I'm excited for democracies actually feeling democratic

anyone else
 
Sounds wonderful!

So....I assume that a DD about music indicates that we are close to see a release date?
(PleasePleasePleasePleasePleasePlease)

Going by the current pattern of announcement/release date reveal/actual release:

Leviathans:

Leviathans announcement: 2016-09-15 [0].

Leviathans release date reveal: 2016-10-10 [+3.5 weeks].

Leviathans release: 2016-10-20 [+5 weeks].

Utopia:

Utopia announcement: 2017-02-02 [0].

Utopia release date reveal: 2017-02-27 [+3.5 weeks].

Utopia release date: 2017-04-06 [+10 weeks].

Synthetic Dawn:

Synthetic Dawn announcement: 2017-08-03 [0].

Synthetic Dawn release date reveal: Unknown [+3.5 weeks = August 28th, 2017].

Synthetic Dawn release: Unknown [+5~10 weeks = September 7th till October 5th, 2017].

The assumption here is that these three-step announcements are a reflection of Paradox's internal milestones. So if we do not get a release date reveal around August 28th, we can assume development on Synthetic Dawn is going slower than on Leviathans/Utopia and actual release will be further away. (Obv. it can also be that Paradox's announcement policy has changed since Utopia, but in that case all bets are off anyways.)
 
Another beautiful track, and the underlying sounds merge well with the existing music within the game. Will you be releasing these tracks on Google Play or Spotify like the main soundtrack, as I love listening to the Stellaris OST while work.