This lead-in to the main loop introduces a melodic theme. The theme is revisited and expanded upon later in the battle loop.
This lead-in to the main loop introduces a melodic theme. The theme is revisited and expanded upon later in the battle loop.
The main loop is broken into stems that can be controlled independently. Different combinations of these stems evoke different moods, and they can be adjusted on the fly to match the current game state.
A transition between the main loop and the battle loop is played immediately when triggered with no fade-in. This method of transitioning between loops is simple and has the benefit of immediate feedback, but it only feels natural under the right conditions.
In this case, we are moving away from a track with an ambiguous rhythm and meter, so the beats when a change would feel most natural are less well-defined. We are also moving to a track with much more energy, and the transition itself sounds purposefully sudden and surprising. The combination of all these qualities makes a transition at any moment feel intentional.
The battle loop has a very clearly-defined rhythm and a lot of energy, so transitioning away from it seamlessly is much more complex.
Here we have many short audio tracks that serve as \"exit ramps\" for various points of the loop. These tracks begin by duplicating some part of the loop exactly, but then they diverge into a setup for the outro. When the battle end is triggered, we quickly and imperceptibly fade between our loop and one of these exit ramps, which directs us to our outro.
This transition method offers the most musical and natural transitions possible at the expense of complexity and delayed feedback (there will be varying amounts of delay between the trigger and the outro depending on the length and frequency of the exit ramps).