Here is my game:https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/461185
Im not a sound geek but I have had 10 years of piano and 1 year of singing lessons. Pico 8 has limited but surprisingly nice sound. You get 4 chromatic scales and I typically make the noise I want with my mouth using a pitch monitor and a keyboard to try out pitches. Finally I used the resulting waves to map out the notes in the pico 8 sound editor.
Hey Sean!
I really liked the music, that kind of chill vibe works well for a puzzle-platformer like yours which is more about planning than execution.
I chucked a comment on your game page!
As you're a sound guy, I'd be interested what you think of the way we handled sound for our submission, Negative Nancy:
https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/462193
Trying to get the feeling of people talking without full voice acting is always an interesting challenge!
Thanks Crime dog!
I played through your game a few times and let me tell you, I LOVED IT! The story made me laugh multiple times and the back ground music was very relaxing and I think it fit the theme well!
As far as sound design goes, I’m impressed! Y’all really packed a-lot of sound in there for just two days of work! Everything scene that I encountered had ambiance that felt natural to the environment and didn’t distract me by standing out.
I’ll be honest, at first I didn’t like the voices but as I kept playing they grew on me and set a great comedic tone from the beginning! I also think that with only two days, recording each line without professional voice actors could be disastrous. So that was very clever on your part and I’m curious how you did it!???
Lastly, I loved Nancy because of the sass in her voice. I think if each character spoke their own lines with half of the emotion that Nancy had it would make the game that much better!
Haha, Thanks Sean!
I would need to chat with the sound dude for more specifics, but I believe he recorded himself making a bunch of little sounds, then we basically detected how many syllables were in whatever word the character was saying and played the same number of tiny mouth sounds at random. There might have been some pitch randomization and other post-fx as well.
Yeah, we spent AGES on getting the NO's right! I'm so glad you enjoyed it!
Definitely!
That is an interesting take on abstract vocalization (if that isn't already a term i'm coining it). I've personally never had to do it but i've reversed vocals before just to see what would happen and you can get some pretty cool/spooky results. I believe this is how the voices for "Shadow of the colossus" were done.
Those No's were splendid and are the most most important part of the game!
Thanks for sharing!
Well said Muximus!
For someone who doesn't make your own sounds, you have a good taste for them! I just died over 50 times trying to get passed those damn spikes and that record scratch kept me going back for more! It was the perfect sound for stopping abruptly and restarting the music. I loved the simplicity of the music too, it showed great restraint which i personally struggle with. Correct me if i'm wrong but did the red runner make a noise before coming on screen too?
If you are looking to make your own sounds there are LOADS of great programs out there! I personally like to use my Reaper, cubase or garageband. I'll either experiment with software synths or record raw sounds with a handheld mic and edit them later.
Also there is a free program called Bfxr that allows you to make custom 8-bit sounds!
Great job!
Thanks for checking it out and the kind words Sean! The record scratch and music stopping was almost an improvisation to fix that fact that I didn't have time to do the art and everything for a death sequence haha. Thanks a ton for the suggestions to! I'll definitely check those out, especially Bfxr, that would have been great for this haha. Also, the Red guy actually doesn't actually have a unique sound when he spawns (although he should!) he does have softer footsteps and an insane yelling sound when he dies haha. Cheers!
This is only my second jam game, but with my game, You have One Shot, I made a script that applied a pitch shift and low pass filter to all of the sound based on the time slowing down and removing it when you speed back up! Alongside that I spent a good few hours working on sound effects and music for the game with Air Hybrid 3 ;)
https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/462609
(The time slows down when you jump ;) )
I didn't make the audio myself but the creator, Subspace Audio, is credited in the game. Check out his tracks in my game, they're really good.
My game is called One Shot In The Chamber, a wave based survival game where you must fight off hordes of enemies with the catch being, you have only one bullet. Fortunately, the bullet is magic and you can summon it back to you or teleport to it. Using this unique ability, you must survive as long as possible in the chamber. Here is a screenshot of the game and the link to the game page: https://mark-auman.itch.io/one-shot-in-the-chamber
Hi there, we made rhythm game in synthwave/sci-fi style with original soundtrack, maybe you like it 🌚
Btw I play your game OP, it have rly nice music, well done :3
I did some sound design in my game: https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/461680
It is set in a large map, and I made it so everytime you entered a zone the atmosphere changes
Construction site has machinery, lobby has the chatter of people, the generator room has the sound of pistons, you get the deal.
I also softened the transition so it's not as jarring, and added some small details. Like when the phone rings the guy at the counter actually picks it up.
Thanks for the feedback!
The music:
So the funny thing about the sound the two sound tracks that I wrote for Callais is that the where supposed to be swapped. In other words, I wrote the title theme to be in game and the in game track for the title screen lol. They were also both created to be looped but the developers were working on other things so it just didn't happen in time for the deadline. Which I totally understand and they made sure to let me know that there will be updates that fix these and other issues. I'm still happy and proud of the way it turned out! If i would have known they were going to switch them, i would have made that main theme WAY shorter and spent more time on the marimba piece. That sound btw is the marimba sound that comes with Garageband! So you are correct! In fact, everything you heard in both songs either came from the stock Garageband sounds, free plugins or a mixture of both. Also for reference I listened to the "Ori and the silent forest" soundtrack on repeat for practically 48 hours.
Most of my work eventually ends up here: https://soundcloud.com/seanryanmusic4u
The sounds:
As far as the sound goes, I didn't see any art the whole time so I was working purely off of quick descriptions through a discord chat. Descriptions like: "mystic" and "rock guardian." So my brain immediately went to something big, like a rock giant that shakes the ground when he walks. To achieve this i went through some old foot steps I had and to add the weight I layered a mix of like 5 different presets on a free audio plugin: https://tal-software.com/products/tal-noisemaker. I then added a snare drum from a different free plugin: https://obxd.wordpress.com/ to give it a good punch. However it didn't really sound 'earthy' enough so thats when i added the crackling that you are talking about. I was going for the sounds of loose rocks/dust/gravel like sounds so on some of the tracks I added another free plugin: https://www.izotope.com/en/products/create-and-design/vinyl.html and cranked up the dust and detune features that it has to give them that extra detail. So sense it is vinyl crackling, I see where your concern came from and assure you your speakers are fine! For the future updates of the game i'll try a few different/more natural methods like fire crackling or actual dust and dirt!
Your game:
I really enjoyed it! I especially loved the title music! whatever synth you used for the bass gave me chills and I have to know what it is! The game theme I think was solid but I would have liked it if it went on for a bit longer (maybe a minute or so) before looping. Also, i think maybe a faster tempo or a more energized beat could be really beneficial during gameplay and perhaps even drive up the anxiety if that is what you are going for. The sounds were solid and I feel like they all stayed within the theme of the game very well! I especially like how you could hear a bullet/laser before you could see it in some cases. The only thing that threw me off was the fact that the energy bar didn't make a sound when it went down. I was pushing boxes around like crazy until i looked and saw that it drained my health. I think if you added a subtle sound that let the player know when they are draining their health it would help with this!
Over all great job, keep it up and thank you again for the feedback! You definitely gave me some things to think about!
Oh okay, that makes sense. It is possible that the reason the dust effect didn't quite work is because everything else was little quiet in the mix. Like, if you had something heftier on the low end of the jump, and the dust be a little more quiet and more on the high end, it would balance it out? I don't know, just spitballing. Also, may I suggest playing around with more of a grinding sound, maybe? Like, two large stones grinding against one another. I don't know if it'll work, but if I was supposed to create a sound effect of a stone character jumping, that'd be my first instinct, so it might be worth a try.
The bass I used for the intro was in a synth pack called Hybrid. https://www.airmusictech.com/product/hybrid-3 It's quite pricy, but I was lucky enough that my MIDI keyboard came with a download code for it. (My midi keyboard didn't even cost as much as this synth pack, hahaha). The funny thing is, the bass sound I used for the intro was actually supposed to have a voice-like quality, you know, a Living on a Prayer, wah-wah type thing, but I found the whole track to be a bit too bassy, so when I removed a bit of the low end in mastering, that voice quality totally disappeared. Except at the end of the loop, where you can hear it quite well. I found that a bit weird. But I'm still happy with how it sounds.
Yeah, I'll probably expand the main loop track to be longer. I wasn't really sure how long my levels were going to be and whether the track would restart or not, and plus, you know, making all the assets during the jam, I didn't have too much time to spend on the music. It took me about an hour to create both tracks, and I didn't want to spend longer than that, so I consciously kept the loops short. And actually, I wasn't really going for anxiety. I was going more for strategy and survival, rather than panic, but yeah, it's interesting, I found that as soon as people realize that they can't shoot their gun willy nilly, the flight instinct kicks in, and they just start running around frantically. I hadn't foreseen that. I do want to build on this game, but at this point, I'm not sure if I want to just roll with the more frantic pacing, or restructure it so that it'd be more intuitive for people to be more tactical about it.
As for the sound effect, yeah, I'm a bit conflicted about that. You're right, most people don't realize that pushing crates drains their stamina, but I really don't want to end up with something that ends up getting annoying because of how often the player hears it. Maybe I'll try for a visual queue first, and see if it's enough.
Thank you so much for your feedback! It's fun to talk music with someone. Like I said, I've only started composing recently, so it's been really fun and challenging getting into it, and it's nice to talk shop with another game composer.
Having played bass guitar a lot back in the day, I was very happy when I sold the "slap bass song" idea to the rest of the team :P Although recording everything was harder then expected, I'm pretty happy with what I ended up with. The hardest part was getting percussion right as I couldn't use actual drums (at the time there was too much background noise to use microphone for anything), so I had to do them on the keyboard which just didn't work out.
Anyways, if you want to check it out, hit the gong:
https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/463231
