Music and Sound are important, but balance is supreme

Anyone who thinks that all it takes to put music and sfx in their game is to find the sounds. Is Sorely mistaken. I and friends spend so long on getting not only the right sounds, but also then balancing them properly together it is insane. It always takes ages, and can be frustrating if you haven't alloted the time, but it is also, soo well worth while. I can recommend spending more time on audio for every game you produce. That also includes me!

My friend and I spent a long time tonight just accumulating some basic sfx and a few scores of music. It went well, and after a mere 3 hours i have 5 sfx and 3 music tracks to use for the moment. Some may last the course, some may not. We shall see.

I am however having more issues with that crappy Xact 3.0. We made a completely new xact project and put in our sound. But as soon as i turn on compression, the xactblder just malfunctions. This is very frustrating, and will mean that i have less music. ARGH! i want more music darn it! so i guess i will waste some hours trying hard to fix this for this project.

Only down side to tonight is that i have not got anything done on the press contacts for Pellmell the rebirth, bah! However i now have 3 EOL bosses working :)

G'night

Boss Evolution

Start simple is what i think, especially when ya have so many of something to give. You can incrementally add more each time. This is a great system unless ya get people bored on the way to the exciting conclusion. So many movies and also games suffer from this.

But i am here to talk about the fact i have 'finished' my first and second level bosses. This is a proof of concept for me, to know that i can keep expanding on what this boss does, but keep it exciting and challenging enough as it develops. Yes, that is right. I aim to use the same boss for every level. This means that he needs to evolve.

Here is the boss from my first level...

When he comes on he basically just sits there shooting bullets at you. He fires a simple sequence of a trajectory fire, and then a dual-split trajectory fire. The second one causing two bullets to go either side of you. You must dodge through them to shoot him, as he will not be moving into your bullets, obviously.

Here is the second level boss...

This is the same boss i hear you cry! Well duh! But this boss once he comes on does NOT stand still. Nope siree, he starts moving in a very simple up and down pattern. while he does this he fire a nice trajectory bullet as he passes over the vertical center. Then when he changes direction at each end he fire that dual-split trajectory bullets. This means now bullets are coming from different directions at you. They are also a slight amount more up tempo (fires faster, as you can see from the pictures). This means even more dodging than the lazy dodging of the first boss. This boss is actually quite exciting, and he actually does move into you firepower (not that i am showing that!).

This bosses test graphics are probably frightening most of you readers away i am sure. Well Gameplay is king in my house. And though i love Mommys best games, and what they are achieving. Shoot1up (which i own), is not truly my kind of skillfull shooter. It is a bit messy, and relies on getting enough new ships to combat the ones you WILL lose. However this shooter should be able to be completed with no loss of life, and in fact i will be testing the difficulty to make sure that i do not even take a hit while playing properly. The extra hits your ship can take are there as a catch, or safety net. But now i am waffling about general game design philosophy. so time for bed.

G'night.

Pellmell at 80% thru Peer Review

Getting so close now. It will be nice to have this new version of the game out. Not that it is a rocket science update or anything. But a nicer product is a nicer product.

When Pellmell was released last year, we did not have these wonderful codes to get the games promoted. Now i have 50 of them, and it's time to get the promotion machine going again. So i can give lotsa codes away.

Not that it will make much difference at all. Hopefully though it might help some the sites that support the XNA and XBLIG effort. Which of course in turn will benefit me when i do something that the world actually wants to download.

Laters,

ok so 12 powerup levels, lol

Alrighty, so it wasn't 10. I couldn;t do a 24 to 10 fixup too easily. So now there are 12 powerup levels. haha

They work quite well, every time you collect a firepower upgrade token, you really see the upgrades. Which is awesome.

I am so tired tonight. I cannot do much. It was so hard to do the little work i have done. I am still glad i have done it. Maybe more wine will help, i dunno. either way, apart from a new blog post, i am done for tonight. Must be all this work i get paid for wearing me out.

So Ten firepower upgrades it is.

Yes, i have finally formalized my firepower designs, Here are the highlights...

1. 10 actual upgrades to collect
2. Those 10 upgrades actually upgrade your firepower in 24 ways
3. Extra fire coming out of the back and the sides eventually
4. Shoot a whole group of special enemies and the powerup will be released for collection
5. You will get one chance to collect the firepower upgrade per level.
6. If ya miss it, there will be an opportunity on all levels.

With this all in mind, i am going to design and balance 20 levels of actual gameplay. This will give approximately 30-35 minutes of straight play through time. Though there will be both an endless mode and an ended mode (ended mode??).

should be good , and although these levels will vary in length, they should show quite a lot of different gameplay opportunites for aliens to attack you.

laters