First of all, the judging for the Week of Awesome competition is in! I came in sixth place out of sixteen (technically seventh out of seventeen: the organiser entered, but was of course excluded from any prizes or official placing). While I'm not entirely happy with my performance there, I'm not entirely unhappy either, and it's given me somewhat to think on for future jams, I believe.
I intend to write up a post-mortem for my entry soon--I'm pretty much waiting for one judge's feedback before I do, I believe.
This week has been largely devoted to work on the sounds of A Door to the Mists, so I don't have much visual progress to show. As a result, in place of this week's screenshot, let me share a little of the game's current--very much work-in-progress--soundscape. It's not a full, uncut recording, for which I apologise: there are a few sounds that I'm not sufficiently happy with that I'm content to include them here, and there are a few sections that I chose to skip over.
I've decided to try a slightly different approach to this week's blog entry than I've been using thus far: I've felt that the simple listing of progress was perhaps a little boring, so I'm going to attempt a slightly more "narrative" style:
Last week started off a little slowly, and continued that way. This came largely, I suppose, from a combination of tiredness and being relatively unfamiliar with my main activity of the week: creating and implementing into the game various sound effects--footfalls, button-clicks, clothing noises, and so on.
I've been quite amazed at just how great a difference these sounds have made--even simple footfalls can have a significant effect on immersion. This isn't entirely news to me--I realise that sound is very important. I suppose that what's so struck me is the degree of the difference that it makes: the scene with sound is so much better than the scene without, I find.
Indeed, between that, some of the feedback given regarding my recent Week of Awesome entry, and similar feedback in at least one past Week of Awesome entry, I've concluded that I should give sound at the least a little more priority than I have in the past. For one thing, it's been my habit in past game-jams to relegate sound to somewhere near the end of development; this is something that I think that I should change.
As indicated above, I'm less familiar with sound-work than I am with other elements of the game, such as writing or 3D modelling, which has slowed me down a little, I feel. A few sounds in particular were sources of trouble: I spent a fair bit of time working on a partially-metallic "button-click" sound for certain UI-elements, and my initial attempts at recording a sound effect for paper came out sounding a little "hard", or "sharp", perhaps. Nevertheless, I'm persevering; I'm fairly happy with the sounds that I came up with for both, the "metal button" sound in particular. As a related side-note, I found that thoroughly-crumpled paper produced a somewhat more useful recording than relatively "fresh" pages.
One particular trouble might be amusing, as best I recall it: I had created a set of "footfalls in grass" sounds, and was testing them within the level. I rather liked the result--save that there was an odd noise slipping in under the intended sounds. Going back to the sound files in Audacity, I didn't hear the noise--but it was surely there, given that I'd heard it in-game! I made a few edits in an attempt to get rid of it. I returned to the game--and the noise was still there.
The sound of wind in leaves was coming from the ambient-sound elements that I had previously implemented--perhaps the odd noise was coming from there? I stood still in-game, listening--and didn't hear it. I experimented, moving a little and stopping, but the sound only seemed to appear when I moved. Oddly, however, it didn't always occur in the same place relative to the intended footfall sounds.
This was somewhat mystifying.
Until I recalled that I had, quite some time before, implemented a mechanism for playing "walking-movement" sounds--think clothing brushing as one walks, or a wooden construct creaking. What I was hearing was the old, half-forgotten, not-very-good "clothing" sounds that I had previously made for this purpose!
Suffice it to say that those clothing sounds have since been replaced; I'm rather happier with the new sounds, which I feel mesh with the footfalls rather better!
All of that said, the week wasn't entirely devoted to sound-work: I fixed a few bugs (rope-climbing had broken at some stage, for one), and made what I believe is a small improvement to the mechanism that detects valid spots to climb to.
That's all for this week--stay well, and thank you for reading! ^_^