Dreams’ big The Music Update is out today – here’s the patch notes

A big update for Dreams is out today, stuffing Media Molecule’s creation-based game with tons of new musical-themed content for creators to play around with. This will bring the game’s version number up to 2.18.

One of the most immediate improvements this brings is with hundreds of new orchestral instruments, new synths, drum kits, pianos, guitars and even church organs, so you can compose pretty much anything you can dream up. To handle all of this, the musical instrument collections have also been redesigned, nesting collections within one another to hopefully help you find what you want more easily. Oh, and all the recorded previews are better balanced, to sooth your tender ear holes instead of blasting them.

Actually putting these instruments into use is enhanced with a few new effects. Tempo sync allows you to sync up audio to the beat more easily, Bipolar LFO means effect fields will oscillate between two values – turning this off means the wobble only goes to a value and not to the polar opposite – and you can change the priority and influence of effects with Height, so they can target specific sounds.

If you’re more into working with samples, then Clips are a library of pre-composed loops and phrases, all in the same key and tempo that you can mix, match, modulate and twist into whatever form you want. To help get your creative juices flowing, there’s also some ‘Starting Points’ which are an experimental new idea to give you a basis from which you can develop your own creation, and there’s also just a bunch of full new compositions that you can add to your projects.

It all sounds like a pretty great update for those who have enjoyed fiddling with the game’s audio creation tools.

Update: Here’s the full patch notes:

New Instruments

The Mm instruments library is fuller, more organised and just plain better than ever. Featuring a full suite of brand-new orchestral instruments, synths, drums and much, much (much!) more. Tuned and Non-Tuned Percussion have grown so much, they each have their own unique collection! Fan-favourite legacy instruments are still here – you’ll find them in the ‘More’ sub-collections. Don’t forget to listen to any updates on instruments after you accept them! Your existing music may be affected, because we’ve carefully balanced the mix of our older instruments, helping newly-created music in the Dreamiverse sound as awesome as possible.

Including:

• New drum kits
• New keyboards
• New guitars
• New percussion/tuned percussion – now in separate sub-collections
• New synths (and a complete overhaul of the collection)
• New bass
• New strings (and a complete overhaul of the collection)
• New wind and brass (and a complete overhaul of the collection)
• New sampled phrases & effects
• New vocals
• Some legacy instruments are now in ‘More’ sub-collections of each category

New Music Clips

Clips are an easy, fun way to make music in Dreams – as simple as stamping on a timeline. And we’ve made it better, adding a whole load of new music clips, spanning multiple genres! There’s more variety than ever before, it’s all designed to work together, and it’s carefully organised to help structure your tracks.

Including:

• New clips covering more genres and moods, organised by Melodies, Beats, Textures, Harmonies, Chords, Bass.

New Music Tracks

We’ve added a whole range of new tracks to the collection, polished and ready to be stamped into your scene, and now organised by mood and style. There’s also a brand-new remix-friendly ‘starting points’ collection, to help kick-start your own creativity. Finally, for advanced music dreamers, we’ve added more logic-based interactive music.

Including:

• Sub-collections of tracks organised by mood and use, from Peaceful to Intense, and including new generative/interactive tracks.
• New collection of musical starting points to kick-start the creative process.

New Effect Field Features

Including:

• New effect field tweak menu page ‘Movement’ added to control LFO settings
• New ‘Beatsync LFO’ button synchronises the LFO rate to the tempo
• With beat sync on, LFO Rate slider now subdivides the tempo
• ‘Bipolar LFO’ controls whether LFOs range from -1 to +1 or 0 to +1
• ‘Reverse LFO’ reverses the LFO wave shape
• New effect field ‘Upper/Lower Height in Timelines’ sliders added to the tweak menu’s Options page
• The above means that effect fields on timelines can now be used horizontally and vertically, to affect specific instruments
• LFOs now work in microchips, timelines and in the world itself

What’s New Elsewhere?

• Controller Sensor Motion Controller Mappings: A new addition to the controller sensor tweak menu, displaying the button mapping for motion controllers (as applicable).
• VR Subtitle Positioning: A new option in My Preferences to adjust the position of subtitles when in VR.
• Disable Comfort Mode: Creators will now have the option to temporarily turn off a player’s Comfort Mode setting if their creation is not compatible. Players will receive notice of this before continuing.
• Basic AIM Controller Support: AIM controllers will now function when connected, interpreted as a wireless controller.
• How to… Label: A new How To… video focused on labelling your VR creations correctly. Watch here
• Controller Compatibility Labelling: A new option to specify the controller(s) your creation is intended for.

Updates & Improvements

• Updated: Changes to VR labels, providing clearer information on ratings and compatibility (e.g. Non-VR has changed to TV Only). The changes are highlighted on an in-game screen (see screenshot).
• Updated: You can now choose more gizmo types for the Hand/Imp Tracker (wireless controller, motion controllers, wireless controller – VR, motion controllers – VR). All these options show imps, sized and positioned appropriately for controller, but the VR options also show the controllers, positioned and sized for VR.
• Updated: A reminder to new VR players that Reel operates differently in Play and Create modes.
• Removed: The ‘Welcome Dreamers’ page when booting up Dreams.

Source: PS Blog