Make some noise!
Hello! Look at me, makin stuff on time! Hope you've been good since we last chatted. I've been busy! I've been learning about sound effects and makin sound systems! Although I've done a few other things too, let's talk about sound first!
So you know, I've been programming this game for a while, and during programming I kept remembering this suggestion, "sound is so important for understanding the emotion behind your game. You can't put it off until the end!" so now I'm doin the sound effects!
But where to start? "Why not start with the main character" I said! And even though I have no clue what I'm doing, I began work makin sound effects for Terra's running animations!
Makin, "steppin on dirt" sounds. Gotta get it ready!
So with no real space to work, I did my best with a small plate, some rocks and dirt, and shoes! Stepped all over that dirt I did! Made a big mess in my room too! But it was all worth it because in the end I'd have the sounds I'd need for my game!... or so I hoped.
Eventually I was able to get the sounds into the game... but they didn't really live up to the expectation I had for them. I went and talked to a friend of mine for help and suggestion. And boy did he deliver! He gave me so much advice sharing links and tutorials and what things I needed to buy! He really opened my eyes to how much I needed to know in order to make good sounds. I mean, I already knew I have no clue what I'm doing but now I have a path!
I decided to not use the sounds I made for the game and instead plan on learning more about sound design and try again in a couple months (plus I'll also have the money to buy the mics he suggested I buy).
Fancy new sound system!
So my new sounds were a bust, and there's dirt everywhere. What the heck am I suppose to do next?! Well how about.... I just pretend the sounds are good and keep goin? I gotta replace them eventually, but for now there needs to be a way to play the sounds in game right? So let's start work on the sound effect system!
So I got to work making the ability to play sound at certain parts in the game. Jumping, landing, running, and all the other things Terra can do! But I didn't have sounds for them. And with that I can up with the "best" idea of letting the people watching me work give me my place holder sounds.
They chose... farts.
And they chose farts! Among those they also chose a bunch of meme sounds. Guess I should have saw that coming. But either way we have the sound effect system setup and ready for when we do have more professional stuff made!
Resizing bug nightmare!
This one bug took me weeks! Weeks! This freakin bug was so difficult to fix I was worried I wouldn't be able to fix it! I mean I did, but it still was ridiculous. And the worst part is it doesn't even sound like a difficult thing! Here's the bug. If you want to re-size or zoom in and out the game, it doesn't draw tiles on screen correctly and the hole game goes crazy! See for your self.
The world's just disappearing!
Now this might look familiar. A similar bug cropped up in the past. It did this when just playing the game. But this bug only happens when you re-scale the game. And it took re-doing a very confusing part of the code! I had to throw out an old system for how the game draws tiles on screen and make a completely new system!
It was a lot of work but the results are worth it. Now changing the screen size (or zooming) is possible without any weird effects.
There! Much better.
It's nice though when things work. After a while of fixing I finally get it done. It's a bit tough because there isn't anyone to help. But that's fine because in the end I can solve these problems.
Little things, future plans, and extra
There's also been a couple other things I've worked on. A few tiny nameless bugs as well as one other thing for the game. The coins you collect in game can be spent in the shop. You can't use the shop items yet, but you can give Beep the shop keep all your money! So there's that!
In the future I plan to have more of the sound effects system built. Right now it's just Terra, but soon hopefully it will be the whole game! That's probably going to take some time! But if there's still some left at the end of the month I'm going to work on cleaning up all the placeholder art in the main gameplay area. Things like the background, the wizard's taunts, and other stuff like that!
Oh as well we'll be testing the game! An open invite to those who want to help with testing the game out! This Saturday (09/07/19) at noon EST in the Jolt Space discord (link below) we'll be testing, challenging each other, and hopefully filling out question forms to help make the game better!
So if any of that sounds fun, come join in the Jolt Space discord! Or you can watch as the game is made live on twitch! But either way, I hope you have a good day.
Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/joltjab
Discord: https://discord.gg/rTyHaMD