Created: August 8, 2023
Updated: August 8, 2023
Updated for version: N/A
Where did the Cydrea Music idea come from?
During the Covid lockdown, I decided to embark on a project idea that was lurking in my head for a long, long time: make and publish a game!
It was not the first time I was going to make a game. Back in 1990 (yes, I'm that old) I made a game called "Labo", built using Turbo Pascal, to enter a competition held by a national computer magazine. I won the contest and the nice sum of 300 Euros, not bad considering it was more than thirty years ago.
This time, I wanted to make a 3D game. Using procedural generation, of course, because I am, and have always been, a huge fan of procedural generation. Even today, Cydrea Music relies on procedural generation. Heck, even Labo in 1990 relied on procedural generation!
The new game would be called "Cydrea". Its story would revolve around a cybernetic, electronic world like Tron, in a huge, almost infinite domain like No Man's Sky. The game name, "Cydrea", is therefore a contraction of "Cybernetic Dream".
The game would feature an almost infinite number of connected cities called "nodes" that would form a layered cube. The player would traverse, looking to expand their knowledge, wealth and resources. The objective would be to reach the cybernetic core, located at the center of the cube, and escape the cybernetic world through its interface with the real world, an inspiration taken from Tron.
A map of the cube world of Cydrea
Cydrea nodes would be teeming with cybernetic life, mostly made of avatars like your own. You could interact, buy, sell, and everything else you could do in a real city, a lá GTA. And, like in GTA, you could tune in to music stations!
Because Cydrea was meant to be a game of infinite discovery, everything was procedurally generated, including the music. For that, I would need an automatic music composer, that would simulate, not only music, but also musicians, bands and their albums.
I think you already guessed where Cydrea Music came from.
The game was coming along but a few months later I realized that making a successful game, one that was successful to others, not just to myself, would require a lot of time and resources and, as I experienced myself a few times in the past, would end up with an incomplete product a few years later, and lots of frustration.
Therefore I decided that I should immediately stop the development of that game, to save myself from disillusionment further on. At the same time, I also realized that the music composer was the most developed part of the game, and was showing some promising potential.
So, instead of continuing a product that I was starting to believe would never see the light of day, I would concentrate on just a tiny part of it, the music composer.
This is the story of how Cydrea Music was born. Its logo is a cube, honoring its origin, the cybernetic cube world of Cydrea!