Week 6

This week I mainly shifted my focus to Music because before this week we pretty much had nothing, however before made progress in this field I checked in with my team members to see if all was going well with the tasks they had been set.

 

 

Ethan got back to me with some amazing enemy animations, I had tasked him to make some simple enemies in the same art style as the player and what he came back with was very good.

He incorporated the lighter outline concept very well and overall I am very happy with his work and look forward to seeing what he does next.

I also checked in with the programmers where I saw Sean having difficulty with the vhs filter I tasked him with previously and so I did research into others that have tried such systems in Unity and came across one youtube video in particular that I felt captured the look best. I gave the video linked below to Sean and this is what he will be taking inspiration from to complete his task.

I also checked in with Samuele who i gave the job of movement and who is currently working on implementing the animations I have made into the project. It is going well however movement is obviously a big focus of the platformer so he may be on this for the remainder of our time on the project. I am leaving the job of lead programmer to Samuele and anyone from this point forward that should have an issue in programming should go to him, as I am already managing way too many jobs myself and will not have time to do everything.

In the world of music great progress was made this week as I completed two original tracks for the game in Logic pro. One was a very mellow and relaxing song made for the menu and the other a very vibey and upbeat type of track that I am gonna use for one of the levels.

 

For the menu track I recorded it entirely on my Yamaha Pacfica Double H electric guitar and though that may not seem like the best instrument to capture the synthy retro feel I had mentioned in previous weeks, by applying effects such a Boss Super Chorus pedal as well slapping on a bit of autotune on the guitar the guitar gives a sort robotic sound very well suited for my vision. And so with all this recorded two guitar tracks in Gmajor and layered them over each other and I am very pleased with the result.

I then recorded some simple minor chords on my Akai Midi Keyboard and used the built in session drummer system found in Logic Pro to accompany these chords 100 bpm, this helped capture the high energy I want for the game and were then made sound even more synthesized by using vulf compressor over the track which is a software I have used in the past to get vintage tones from instruments. I then used some flex and flow brass samples and came out with a track I am very pleased with. This track incapsulates the high energy, vibey, synthy, retro vibe I am going for very well.

Tasks At Hand

  1. Make more tracks and sound effects.
  2. Make more animations for the player.
  3. Maybe start making cover art for the game.

What I Learned

  1. How much fun it is to compose for video games, I can see why people would want to make a living off this.
  2. You can have no such thing as ego when pursuing creativity and if there someone more cut out for a certain tasks you must pass the torch to them.
  3. Aesthetics can be tough and something that must be researched thoroughly.
Week 7