Right before Spring Break you know things are going to be hectic. Not only do we have to wrap things up before the break, but we also have all our other classes. Between balancing the work in senior production and all our other classes, there is only so much time to get work done. While we had plans to create a sound toy, after doing all my work there wasn't enough time. This is the plan for the break, I am going to make this "toy" and it will serve as a prototype for the idea our professor insists we try.
Hopefully this new idea will push our games audio in a new direction and give it the notice we are hoping for. Along with just this new toy, I have also created a new track for our game that fits the levels extremely well. I am very proud of the work I did in this case and it is a big step forward in our games audio. Hopefully people testing will take notice and really appreciate the audio.
I look forward to seeing what my team has done this past week. When we pull everything together, I have a strong feeling it will all mesh really well with the new audio. I also look forward to getting some feedback on our game and making more and more adjustments to the game in order to improve the experience.
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
Thursday, February 20, 2014
When things change
Due to the fact that our group is still in the first half of the semester it would make sense to believe changes are going to happen. work we have done will not be used. This is one of those weeks and it is something you need to prepare. My sound director told us that we are shifting directions to something more electronic which essentially means that I have to change everything I have done so far. Also my group doesn't want to merge the sound with the game design anymore; this all confuses me considering the fact that electronic is even easier to merge with game play.
This entire week I spent finishing up the track I had for our minigame but it ended up just becoming placeholder. I planned on remaking all the music for the minigames by the end of the semester anyways so now I just have to do it sooner.
The electronic music will have a focus on getting the players to notice it, dramatic tempo changes and large dynamic switches will definitely help make this happen. I had a feeling during the beginning of this semester that electronic music would fit our "robot-esk" themed game much better. I look forward to seeing what we can possibly create with this; there is much more creative liberties on electronic music than swing.
This entire week I spent finishing up the track I had for our minigame but it ended up just becoming placeholder. I planned on remaking all the music for the minigames by the end of the semester anyways so now I just have to do it sooner.
The electronic music will have a focus on getting the players to notice it, dramatic tempo changes and large dynamic switches will definitely help make this happen. I had a feeling during the beginning of this semester that electronic music would fit our "robot-esk" themed game much better. I look forward to seeing what we can possibly create with this; there is much more creative liberties on electronic music than swing.
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
The merge
So as you know we planned on combining the Audio much more with the gameplay. We have finally made the push to put the two together and plan on testing it for the first time this week . I created two different audio tracks for my team to choose from that would be used in our "Dodgeball" mini game. This track works directly with the pillars we have the balls perched on in the game. When a certain part of the song comes up the pillars will bob up and down and disturb the flow fthe game. This will add in a fun surprise for players who haven't experienced it before and a much greater challenge for the players who have.
The players in the game will have to listen for the audio cue and prepare to alter their gameplay until the song and game goes back to normal. we plan on doing this for all the mini games and then our adventure mode. Considering the amount of work that has to go into this as of now my sound director and I have decided to split the work. I will be doing the mini games and he will be doing the adventure mode; we will of course be consulting with each other but we will mainly be focusing on our parts of the game. We also plan on changing the audio for all of the game multiple times before we are completely finished; as of now we are using the audio we are creating as a "permanent placeholder" for lack of a better phrase. We want to test the way the audio works and make variations of the placeholder should it be successful. The idea is that by the end of the semester we will be much better at creating the audio for the game.
One the other fronts we are in the process of creating our Four Square like game and have art assets for the hub world and previous dodgeball game flying in. We are slowly coming up with ideas for the level design of the adventure levels and all the designers including myself are trying to give suggestions to make the levels better and fit the overall feel of our newly designed game properly. For this game all the departments really have to work closely. We look forward to seeing what we will be able to create and also what the actual world is going to be.
The players in the game will have to listen for the audio cue and prepare to alter their gameplay until the song and game goes back to normal. we plan on doing this for all the mini games and then our adventure mode. Considering the amount of work that has to go into this as of now my sound director and I have decided to split the work. I will be doing the mini games and he will be doing the adventure mode; we will of course be consulting with each other but we will mainly be focusing on our parts of the game. We also plan on changing the audio for all of the game multiple times before we are completely finished; as of now we are using the audio we are creating as a "permanent placeholder" for lack of a better phrase. We want to test the way the audio works and make variations of the placeholder should it be successful. The idea is that by the end of the semester we will be much better at creating the audio for the game.
One the other fronts we are in the process of creating our Four Square like game and have art assets for the hub world and previous dodgeball game flying in. We are slowly coming up with ideas for the level design of the adventure levels and all the designers including myself are trying to give suggestions to make the levels better and fit the overall feel of our newly designed game properly. For this game all the departments really have to work closely. We look forward to seeing what we will be able to create and also what the actual world is going to be.
Sound Design, Literally!
This week is a great week in the Sound Design world. Our game has taken a very interesting turn when it comes to the sound. We had the suggestion made that we incorporate the sound into the visual aspect of out game. Give the sound reasoning behind it and not just have it be background music. This was a very cool suggestion because of the way we are making our video games.
We decided that instead of just adding a visual representation of the audio that we would actually have it effect the gameplay. We would have the minigames get more difficult depending on the part of the song that was playing. Certain things would temporarily change which the repeated melody would come up. This would add a lot of fun and variety to the mini games while also giving players something to look out for; kind of like a sign a boss gives in a game before they do their big final move.
As of right now we plan to do this for all of the mini games, finding multiple things we can vary during the gameplay that will add competition and enjoyment to or already exhilarating mini games. We believe that is will be one of the many things that set us apart from other games out there that include minigames.
The workload will definitely increase though; we need to make sure that myself and the Sound Director work very closely with the art and design to make sure everything fits properly together and that all the audio fits with the way the game is played. This isn't as easy as it sounds however because we have to anticipate what the game will play out before we are able to even get it into testing; it is after that point which we will be able to tweak the audio tracks to work even better.
We decided that instead of just adding a visual representation of the audio that we would actually have it effect the gameplay. We would have the minigames get more difficult depending on the part of the song that was playing. Certain things would temporarily change which the repeated melody would come up. This would add a lot of fun and variety to the mini games while also giving players something to look out for; kind of like a sign a boss gives in a game before they do their big final move.
As of right now we plan to do this for all of the mini games, finding multiple things we can vary during the gameplay that will add competition and enjoyment to or already exhilarating mini games. We believe that is will be one of the many things that set us apart from other games out there that include minigames.
The workload will definitely increase though; we need to make sure that myself and the Sound Director work very closely with the art and design to make sure everything fits properly together and that all the audio fits with the way the game is played. This isn't as easy as it sounds however because we have to anticipate what the game will play out before we are able to even get it into testing; it is after that point which we will be able to tweak the audio tracks to work even better.
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