Week 13 - Updates/planned updates based upon Testing Session

This week was the final week of development for my game!

What I’ll be discussing this final devlog:

• Continued player feedback
• Music
• Sound Effects
• Finishing touches

Progress:

Player Feedback Continued...

I covered what I worked on last weekend following the testing session in last week's devlog. That involved the creation of additional levels to the game.

This week, I continued with addressing the feedback by working on adding music and sound effects to the game, which was one of the aspects brought up during the testing.

Music:

I went out of my way and decided to try my hand at basic level music creation for the game. I have always had an interest in it and have played Piano and Guitar when I was younger so I felt I could definately make something that would suit my game.

My application of choice was FL Studio and I spent some time learning the basics and how the software works from the documentation and tutorials on their website.

I also brought out my MIDI keyboard from storage that I bought a few years back when an friend and I were interested in doing something in music creation that never actually came to fruition.

I ended up creating two songs, one that will not be shared under any circumstances and another that I used for the game.

I decided to break it up into two and use the intro section as the theme for the menus and the other for the gameplay sections.

Gameplay Music:

Menu Music:

FL Studio Timeline:

The music was made using some of the built in synths within the FLUX plugin using the Dystopian Lead and Enlightenment synths.

I made them so they would loop easily and wouldn't be too distracting during gameplay.

My next step involved getting them into Unity and using some code to make sure they behaved properly with my scenes.

The best way to do this was using a script to manage the music in specific scenes. This allowed me to have the music continue to keep playing and loop when going through the levels and overlay scenes without breaking the music and make it easy to determine which scene plays a specific track.

Sound Effects:

Using a similar method for managing the sound effects, I ventured on to add some key audio to some of the most important aspects of the game.

• Cannon's explosion 
• Cannon changing angle
• Power level changing
• UI button navigation

For the sound effects I decided to find them online and edit them to what I wanted. I used a few sources such as FreeSound.org and Pixabay.com.

The cannon's explosion sound effect was 8-bit Cannon.wav by DeVern from FreeSound.org (https://freesound.org/people/DeVern/sounds/517664/)

For the sound for changing the angle of the cannon I used Music box wind up by Pastabra from FreeSound.org (https://freesound.org/people/Pastabra/sounds/366152/). I then took it into FL Studio and heavily edited it. I pitched it down and change the speed while only using a small part of it.

For the sound effect for adjusting the Power Level and UI Buttons, I ended up using the same effects but with different pitches so differentiate them slightly. I used Video Game Sound Menu Clicks by Not_Amasingrock from Pixabay.com (https://pixabay.com/sound-effects/video-game-menu-click-sounds-148373/)

When I reflect on the sound effects I wish I had more time to create more. I wanted to make sure the collision with the bucket had some sound element and also when the ball falls off screen.

Cannon Firing Particle Effect:

The last element I added to my game before submission was adding a particle effect to each time the cannon fires so add some polish to the game. I felt this was an important addition and would make it feel much more whole, especially as the time left was dwindling.

I created two small sprites for the fire and smoke particle sprites...
 
... and spent probably more time than I should have adjusting the Particle System for each. I spent a lot of time testing and getting the shape, particle amount, timing and speed right until I had the feel right for each.

This was the final result:

References:

Image-Line Software. (2024). FL Studio (Version 2024.2) [Computer software]. https://www.image-line.com/

DeVern. 8-bit Cannon.wav from FreeSound.org [https://freesound.org/people/DeVern/sounds/517664/]

Pastabra. Music box wind up from FreeSound.org [https://freesound.org/people/Pastabra/sounds/366152/]

Not_Amasingrock. Video Game Sound Menu Clicks from Pixabay.com [https://pixabay.com/sound-effects/video-game-menu-click-sounds-148373/]