+1 for Cutting All The Strings, great little piece for mystery/horror.
Works well, very illustrative, especially for games that have a bit of suspense, where you don't quite know what's around the next corner.
Keep doing what you're doing.
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I'm not sure if there's a rule of thumb for looping length.
One of my all time favourite classic games is Heroes of Might and Magic III which has a great orchestral soundtrack.
It's on Youtube, here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q43G9FTaomg
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The soundtrack for Heroes III contains these MP3 clips:
–
9 short Victory/Defeat/Battle clips - from
0:04 to
0:22 (4 to 22 seconds)
–
25 Main/Campaign themes - from
0:42 to
1:41
Here you have for example "Main Theme", "Good Theme", "Neutral Theme", "Evil Theme", "Secret Theme" etc.
The music becomes "happier" when the gamer is winning against (for example) the Dragons.
It switches to a darker theme when you're in trouble and about to get eaten by the Behemoths.
–
23 Terrain/Town themes - from
1:52 to
3:46
These clips are longer - they are played when you move across the map or when you're in one of the towns.
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I'm no expert on loop lengths so I'm just guessing.
But based on the classic Heroes III, I'm guessing that a "main theme" could be about 45 seconds to 1 minute in length.
Might use 3-4 different "main loops" that are similar in style and sound.
Then play them in the order of "
clip1-clip2-clip3-clip4-clip1-clip2..." etc. until the gamer presses the "Next" button.