Description

This is a remake of the TFTD soundtrack. It is my imagination of how the game would have sounded like had it been made today and by the same people. It is NOT a simple MIDI transposition: every track has been re-orchestrated, re-arranged, and expanded—but will always stay faithful to the originals. Think back to when you were a kid, looking at Doom's pixely graphics, and seeing glorious hi-def gore instead.

👽 PLAYABLE: 99% of play-time covered by new music

⭐️ ACTIVE: New tracks every week, three weeks estimated until completion

Installation

Place the zip in your mods directory:

• Windows: C:\Users\<user>\Documents\OpenXcom\mods
• MacOS: ~/Library/Application Support/OpenXCOM/mods
• Linux: ~/.local/share/openxcom/mods

Then enable the mod from the main menu.

About the mod

TFTD taught me how our oceans are so close, yet much scarier than outer space can ever be. Looking at this lone blue globe in space always makes me feel so insignificant, so meaningless. Space is vast, but empty, and sterile. Down the abyss, not even light can shine to bless and purify. Damn, now I'm creeping myself out.

With its unnerving soundtrack of screeching horns, harps hitting on the same two or three notes, eerie synthesized howls; there's a feeling of utter despair, hopelessness. A sense of doom, as aquanauts armed with teeny darts and harpoons grunt through the deaths of their colleagues, outmatched by opponents so unfairly superior, in the harshest environment on Earth.

This mod aims to recreate that feeling and build upon it, while staying true to the source and the intentions of the authors. This is not a simple transposition of midi files with new sounds – it is my imagination of how this soundtrack would have been, if done today.

Roadmap

Work on the soundtrack will proceed in three phases:

1. Get a good initial version of each track out and playable:
   Tracks are cleaned up and re-instrumented, setting the sound and tone for future work. Obvious gaps in instrumentation, passages, progression and tempo are taken care of already, but without drastic changes. The aim is getting a good grip on the overall mood, and start collecting feedback from people and play-throughs. It's gonna sound pretty neat already, trust me.
   
   
2. Improve the orchestration, details, flowering, add new passages:
   With the overall mood in place, themes are revisited, improving the orchestration, with realistic instrument sections swelling in-and-out, new harmonies, decorations and flowering, modern rhythmic sections, and entirely new passages – as long as they stay faithful to the original. At this stage, it will be an entertaining listen even as a standalone album.
   
   
3. Create a couple new tracks from scratch, in the same style:
   More on this later.

This project tries to follow semver, and will release:

• a patch version (x.x.2) for fixes, levels, and general polishing
• a minor version (x.2.x) for new tracks and additions that match the existing material
• a major version (2.x.x) for notable changes in mood and tone (after 1.0.0 only)

Project Status