World Scoring
World scoring is how Motif connects music to game geography, factions, biomes, and encounters. The goal: a game’s music sounds like it belongs to one world, not a playlist of unrelated tracks.
The Score Map System
Section titled “The Score Map System”The Score Map screen has five panels, each addressing a different dimension of world scoring.
Score Profiles
Section titled “Score Profiles”A score profile defines the sonic identity of a musical context: tempo range, intensity range, key/scale, palette tags, and default automation targets. Profiles are reference constraints — they declare intent.
Motif Families
Section titled “Motif Families”A motif family is a collection of thematic variants linked to scenes. Motif families are the connective tissue of a score. When the forest exploration scene and the forest combat scene share a motif family, the music feels unified even as it adapts.
Cue Families
Section titled “Cue Families”A cue family groups related cues by role (exploration, combat, boss, stealth, recovery, safe-zone). They answer: “What are all the musical states for combat in this region?”
World Map Entries
Section titled “World Map Entries”A world map entry maps a musical identity to a specific game context (region, faction, biome, encounter, safe-zone) with linked score profiles, cue families, and motif families. They answer: “What does the Frostlands sound like?”
Derivation
Section titled “Derivation”Derivation creates new musical material from existing material with a tracked transform. The supported transforms are: intensify, resolve, darken, brighten, simplify, elaborate, and reharmonize. Each derivation record tracks the source entity, target entity, and the transform applied, preserving full lineage.
Use createDerivation(id, sourceId, targetId, transform) to record a derivation, and deriveScene(source, newId, transform) to produce a new scene from an existing one with an appropriate name suffix. Use derivationChain(records, startId) to walk the full lineage graph from any starting point.
Building World Coherence
Section titled “Building World Coherence”- Define score profiles for each region/faction/biome
- Create motif families for core thematic ideas
- Group scenes into cue families by role
- Map everything to world map entries — each entry ties a context to its profiles, cue families, and motifs
- Derive new material from existing material — maintaining lineage and connection
The result: music that adapts to game state while sounding like it belongs to one world.