Unofficial Soundtrack for "Dimension of the Machine"

Quake
1

I’ve been working on this since the Quake 1 rerelease dropped, and now it’s finally done
I’ll go ahead and put the download link at the start of the post here – most of the rest of this information is also in the readme inside the archive, since I’m going to be putting it out on a couple Discord groups, too, and I don’t want to be making really long posts there. The only thing you really need to know before downloading is that the zip archive contains two versions of the soundtrack, one of which adds some experimental voice stuff to some of the songs; so if you just want to set it up, you’ll have to take a quick look at the readme to figure out which version you want to use.

So here’s the whole thing:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ce6lvypb668LAGxDfAKmSJHSjCUqHuqS/view?usp=sharing

EDIT: I’ve now mirrored both versions of the music pack on Quaketastic as well:
The vocal version
https://www.quaketastic.com/files/music/Machine%20SRP-V.zip
The instrumental version
https://www.quaketastic.com/files/music/Machine%20SRP-I.zip

And, now, for what you’ve all been waiting for… hearing me talk even more.
That was sarcasm :wink:

This is a soundtrack mod written specifically for MachineGames’s 2021 Quake episode “Dimension of the Machine”. Given the higher monster counts and overall faster pace of the combat in the episode compared to the base campaign,
I chose to write a mix of ambient and heavy tracks with an emphasis on dark and hostile atmosphere across the board. To that end, the biggest genre influences on these songs were probably industrial, doom/sludge metal, and a little bit of black metal for good measure
The overall effect is meant to come across like a mix of Quake’s original NIN tracks and the heavier, discordant guitar-synth-and-orchestra stylings from Scourge of Armagon and Dissolution of Eternity.
I’m not a great guitarist by any means, and I’d really describe the style of this as “metal-adjacent” rather than “metal”, but hopefully there’s still something in here that the metal fans in the iD communities can enjoy. Or maybe I’m asking too much.

While the default version of this soundtrack is instruments-only, I’ve also made an alternate take of some of the songs which contain a sort of atmospheric vocal. The idea here is that, with the voices fairly low in the mix; and performed, layered, and produced in bizarre ways; the sound of these voices could make the level environments feel even more inhuman. If you’re curious about it, I’d certainly recommend at least giving it a try-- the overall effect isn’t entirely unlike the “metal choir” parts in Doom Eternal. If you think that’s not for you, you can just stick with the default version of the mod-- this stuff is definitely experimental.
Both versions are included within the download archive.

While there’s nothing stopping you from using these tracks with Arcane Dimensions or some other set of levels, I can’t promise that they’re going to fit very well-- these songs were pretty specifically written for this one purpose.

Finally, if you don’t feel like playing the game but you do want to listen to some industrial rock with truly bizarre vocal styles, this whole thing is also available as an album, entitled Mythos Mechanism, at https://vertigofox.bandcamp.com

2

Since insideqc.com seems to be gone forever I added a Mods category now. Congrats on being the first post in it :slight_smile:

3

Thanks! I’ll just get rid of the first line there now to make things unconfusible

:smiley:

4

Could qualify as a mod, could qualify as a general artistic contribution; with the latter one, probably not having enough occurrences on the forum - statistically speaking - to make a separate forum section for it.

@‘Neofelis nightmarus’, I listened to your creation on the ‘bandcamp’, through the link you provided. Well done, the album, sounds rad. It was the vocalized version - from what I understood, you made one vocalized and one unvocalized option. Vocals, do not really fit a game, if we talk about soundtrack. The soundtrack itself, sounds like a music inspired by an event - which to my recognition, is a category of own, unnecessarily having to become an event soundtrack itself. It is a self-standing release, the way I see it. Some of the tracks, could fit ‘Quake’, some - not all that much, albeit they still rock, in own regard. I would have to hear the unvocalized version, though, to tell better.

Congrats!

By the way, I have not played ‘Dimension of the Machine’, nor the ‘Quake’ re-release by ‘Nightdive Studios’; I guess it would help as well, if I knew practically what circumstances you addressed with your music - but the music, told of some rough gameplay!

5

hahaha, absolutely, it got pretty intense even in co-op. I’m glad to hear you liked the music itself. :slight_smile:

I’m not surprised these songs don’t seem like they would fit Quake in general-- like I said above, I expected it. They were very much designed for this one set of levels in specific, that was part of the challenge I set myself. And some of these levels had really inventive themes, or mixes of themes.
The whole idea was to experiment with the music and take risks. I see no point in doing what’s been done before when the stuff that has been done – both from the community and from Reznor himself – is already so good.

And the vocal is something that I thought would maybe work for some people but not others, that’s the reason there are two versions. I was thinking of the sorts of people who used to try out different CDs with the game back in the day just to see what other sorts of music might fit. I was just a kid back in 1996, but if I had been old enough to understand how it worked you can bet I would have been one of those people.
I got to mess around with different voices and try out some things I didn’t even think I could do-- the hissing-and-spitting lead voice on track 6 is a good example of that. You can certainly believe that none of the voices you’d hear in-game if you used that version sound anything like I do in real life. It was incredibly fun to come up with all of them and then actually get to record them.
And most of the black metal influence I mentioned probably comes from that mindset too.

6

I’m sad to see so little feedback on this. I really didn’t want to listen to the original Quake soundtrack again on repeat for the new episode. This is just what I needed.
While I don’t have any constructive feedback, I thought it matched the atmosphere great, while also boosting the intensity of the combat.
Even went with the vocal version which, normally, wouldn’t be my thing. But to my surprise I didn’t hate it.

So thanks for making this. Hopefully it gets more recognition in the future.

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Thanks! Honestly I’m glad to see even a little more attention, especially from someone who liked it.
I’m glad you enjoyed the vocals – I worked really hard on trying to mix those into the atmosphere to make it more unsettling. :slight_smile:

8

Anyone got a mirror link? For some reason my phone fails to download from Google Drive.

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I think Dropbox is the only other site I can use right now to host something this size. Hopefully it works for you :slight_smile:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/an3blu2xep62qri/Machine%20SRP.zip?raw=1

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See https://www.quaddicted.com/help/how_to_package_and_release_a_file#hosting for proper hosting alternatives that might survive linkrot better than personal shares.

11

[quote=Neofelis nightmarus]I think Dropbox is the only other site I can use right now to host something this size. Hopefully it works for you :slight_smile:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/an3blu2xep62qri/Machine%20SRP.zip?raw=1[/quote]

Nope!.. :cry: Thanks for trying. Maybe you should follow Spirit’s advice and upload to Quaketastic when you have a moment. And if you have trouble with the filesize, you can always split the archive in 2 or more parts. Surely your archive manager program must have this option.

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Yeah, I’ll give that a try. Sorry for making you wait. :slight_smile:

I’ll have to split the archive in two for quaketastic, but since there are two versions in there anyway that should be pretty simple to do even by hand.

EDIT: here we go – I’ll add these to the OP as well. Both of them include the same text file from the full archive.

The vocal version
https://www.quaketastic.com/files/music/Machine%20SRP-V.zip
The instrumental version
https://www.quaketastic.com/files/music/Machine%20SRP-I.zip

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No need to apologize. Thanks!