seamlessly looping bgm

[john 'mr. customer' smith]

I'm not trying to speak for anyone else, but I find that, in a vn, when a track loops by fading out and in again, it's always kind of immersion-breaking, and it makes me wonder why they don't just loop them seemlessly, without interruption.

From my limited experience, I only know one vn that does this with some of its tracks, and that's Planetarian.

Obviously, the engine needs to be capable of it and the composer needs to compose and arrange his tracks in a specific way for it to work, but overall, I can't imagine it to be too difficult.

So what do you guys'ngals think? Why is this feature so rare? What are advantages and disadvantages to consider as a dev? Or am I just completely wrong and are there actually loads of vns that do it?

I can kinda think of a reason that's specific to Planetarian for doing it, but I need to think about that for a bit longer, and I just want to hear your opinions first.

[Narcosis]

There's really nothing behind why Planetarian does it, while other vn's don't. It's all about composition and arrangement; most people are simply too lazy to put in effort to actually trim and arrange already completed tracks for continous playback. In most cases they are written as musical pieces, having a start and ending, instead of scores. Composers want to deliver a definite experience and music is usually scheduled for a soundtrack release. You can't really make these with continously looping tracks.

It's one of the reasons I actually prefer full digital releases instead of physical CD's, because they actually allow creators to release as many tracks as they want, without any limitations imposed by physical storage mediums.

[john 'mr. customer' smith]

15 minutes ago, Narcosis said:

There's really nothing behind why Planetarian does it, while other vn's don't. It's all about composition and arrangement; most people are simply too lazy to put in effort to actually trim and arrange already completed tracks for continous playback. In most cases they are written as musical pieces, having a start and ending, instead of scores. Composers want to deliver a definite experience and music is usually scheduled for a soundtrack release. You can't really make these with continously looping tracks.

It's one of the reasons I actually prefer full digital releases instead of physical CD's, because they actually allow creators to release as many tracks as they want, without any limitations imposed by physical storage mediums.

Thanks for your opinion, but I'm not going to give up on my theory that there's more behind it than that. There are vn companies that are known for having much more attention for details like that than Key.

[Zidan209]

I am a sort of musician, and i can say it s not really hard to do it. Just end the song with exactly the same part as the start, and while u think it s still ending, it actually starts again, just need to set some non-stop replay, and it s done. Lenght of the song doesn t matter very much