For Week 9's challenge we had to complete a first pass of a sound design document for our game. To do this, I wrote down all of the audio I thought I would need and then broke them down into three categories; Player SFX, Enemy SFX and Soundtrack.
I added these to an Excel spreadsheet and then listed how and when they would trigger, if there would be any variations and any other notes and descriptions. The initial results can be seen below:
I then went about recording the sound effects and checking them off list. As I was looking for 8 and 16-bit style sound effects and music I went back to some programs I had used previously.
To complete the sound effects I used Bfxr - a program for people looking to make sound effects for computer games. Bfxr allows the user to hit a few buttons and get randomized effects.
I made multiple copies of each sound (adjusting ADSR as well as frequency and pitch) and then tested them against the actions to make sure they had the correct feel.
For example, the gem collection sound effect being high pitched and rewarding - to encourage the player to collect more and the health pick up to sound like it was refilling the player health. Whereas, the collision and player death sounds are short, brash and negative.
To complete the music, I used Beepbox - an online tool for sketching and sharing instrumental melodies. Beepbox, can be used by anyone, as it has several levels of complexity (e.g. only pentatonic keys for beginners, all notes available for those more comfortable with writing music).
It is divided in 4 instrumental sections: the melody (blue), the accompaniment (yellow), the bass (amber) and the drums (grey).
I started with the first level's musical soundtrack first, as it is the beginning of the journey for the player character I wanted something catchy and happy. I played around with the settings and instruments to find the sound I was after and changed the note key to G. Once I was happy with the melody's over feel, I then studied the notes I had used and then worked out which most likely/natural chords they could be a part of and added more lower notes to the melody section in order to make it a succession of chords to give it a fuller sound.
Once this was sorted I began on the bass, this was more straightforward to write as there was only a choice between three different notes between each bar. I tried to make this progressive and adjusted it so it fell at a slightly different time to melody.
I then worked on the accompaniment, which was more difficult to develop, after playing around with things I used the 'celesta' sound, which sounded a bit like a a xylophone and worked as secondary melody
Finally, to complete the tune I played around with the instruments in the drum section and once I was happy with my choice, I started with putting a hit at the beginning of each bar. I felt that it worked best when the first had the deepest sound, followed by a higher one, then coming back to the deep one, etc.
Once I had completed all of the audio, I began importing them into Game Maker Studio 2. As I already had placeholders for everything, this was pretty straight forward and was just a case of changing the file names.
I just need to adjust their individual settings for priority and looping.
Overall, I'm really happy with how the audio turned out and it was worth taking the extra time to develop the music. Ideally, I would have liked to create much longer loops, but due to the time restraints I wasn't able to do this - however I feel like I managed to capture the 16-bit style I was after and believe that it adds to the overall gaming experience.
References:
Riot Games (2018). So You Wanna Make Games?? | Episode 8: Sound Design. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcorIwJscFA. [Accessed 26 March 2021].
Blipsounds. (2017). Rewarding and Punishing Feedback Sounds in Games. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHOyLvVQJa0 [Accessed 26 March 2021].
WIRED (2016). Audio Experts Break Down The Most Common Tech Sounds | WIRED. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_gBMJe9A6Q [Accessed 26 March 2021].