Devlog 5 - Music, Sound Effects, UI

    This devlog is going to be all about music, sound effects, and UI.

     I started this week's content with the UI. I made a basic main menu with a play button, a basic game over menu with a button to play again or go back to the main menu, and a basic 'you win' menu that tells you how many days you've survived so far, as well as your personal best for number of days survived. Since then, I've also started working on a tutorial level, which has been challenging, but easier than I expected. For my pong game I spent time making a settings menu, but I've decided not to include that for this one because I felt this game was more about the interesting mechanics and artwork within my game than about the polish of the UI and so I decided to spend more time in those areas. 

    The music for this game was more challenging to write than other games, because I wanted it to add to the moody muted atmosphere the artwork was setting up, but I also found that many of my ideas sounded too "epic" for the casual nature of the game. Anything orchestral (the kind of thing I'm way more comfortable with) ended up sound way too emotional, so I had to delve into different instruments I was unfamiliar with to really capture the emotions I wanted to players to feel. 

     I'm not perfectly happy with the end result, some of the instruments sound a little raw and harsh and I didn't have the experience with them to know how to remedy that. I'm particularly fond, however, of the transition to night music, as the texture I chose really has a night-atmosphere feel and reminds some people of project zomboid and others of the Jak II from the Jak and Daxter series. I was surprised with how well the bongos actually ended up sounding mixed in with all the synthesisers I was using, to the point where it became the first thing the player hears when they open the main menu. I think what it came down to was the idea that someone from the modern world (synthesisers) is getting back to their primative roots (bongos) due to the apocalypse they find themselves in. 

     I had trouble with the sound effects, especially with the foot falls, because my first idea of scrathing some rough paper was too quiet to record without having a high noise floor with a fuzzy background noise. This was due to not having the right microphone for the job and may be something I need to invest in in future. However, for now, I plan to settle for scratching carpet instead, which is a lot louder and leaves more room for the noise floor. I also had problems with not having a preamp nor a pop filter for my microphone when doing some quiet notes with my mouth, like the "thhp" sound of the arrows. It took a lot of balancing position of the microphone, gain on the audio interface, and the volume and pitch of my voice. The sound turned into a more high-pitched "thht" to avoid the bassy pop of the P at the end, and then I had to add a more mid-frequency airy sound layer to add back in the depth without the bassiness. I think the resulting sound was fairly good but it could have possibly benefited from a louder (but not bassy) impact sound at the end, to indicate the arrow hitting the zombie. With each sound I also layered in a soft "dt" sound to add consistency and cohesiveness to all the sounds together, but it's almost inaudible not because it's quiet but because the listener is distracted by the rest of the sound as a whole. 

     The final sound I made was the one for the game over screen which I think did actually land in the realm of slightly-too-dramatic. It's just a very deep synthetic flute note with three heart-beat sounds layered on top. Unfortunately, it's also a little too bassy and hard to hear within the game without good headphones. 

     Since making the previous devlog, I have also finally been able to implement the artwork and animations for the player character. It took me about three days to implement because I had to edit the boundaries of each sprite in the sprite sheet as my artist did not space them evenly throughout. The end result, however, is really stunning and I'm glad I spent all that money in the end. I also managed to work out my issues with the universal render pipeline and implement the lighting which add a whole new layer to the immersiveness of the game and I'm really happy with it. 

    Finally, I have the following little edits to make to my game before I submit it: 

                - Possible partical effects for the arrow impacts

               - Fixing the sound effects for the player walking

               - Adding a button going to the tutorial from the main menu

     If I have time after finishing the post-mortem, I may add the following

               - A closed-mouth idle frame for the zombie animations

               - The ability to set up traps during the day but I don't think I'll have time although it's a cool idea someone had in the feedback forms

               - Maybe a settings menu but I don't think I'll have time

It would take far too much effort to find away to upload my music or video of the character artwork here. You'll just have to play the latest upload of the game to hear/see it as I had to restart my computer and it's being extremely slow to boot up fully and properly.