For the last few weeks I’ve been hard at work on the sound design for an RPG space shooter. General idea is you build a fleet of spaceships and blow up someone else’s fleet. Realtime…not turn based. Fleet upgrades are based on ship size, weaponry, and admiral/commander experience. You get the idea. The graphics are 2d, but the battlefields are completely 3d.
Does it bother anyone when fighting units in a game like Age of Empires, or Disney Infinity can just run through each other like they’re damn ghosts? Right now when two of the ships hit each other they float through each other and it looks ridiculous.
Would a battle strategy game like this be more fun if we re-coded collision damage, even from ally ships? Or would it make tactical maneuvers way too complicated and frustrating? We already have ships that can ram enemy ships or fighter planes that can kamikaze. But the question is what do with ally ships. The other option is that they can bump into each other but allied ships in the same fleet can’t hurt each other.
As of now, we’re letting ally ships shoot through each other, which alleviates at least some of the tactical headache of not having to overly precise in spacing your ships on the x,y, and z planes because of line of fire. If we changed this could it get too frustrating to play, when you really just wanna blow shit up?
Let me email the project director and see if its ok to post some stuff. Its a pretty small indie game (but it still looks cool) so I don’t think he’ll care. But let me check just in case. I thought the space ship models looked bad-ass but I’m just the audio guy, so I think just about anything that moves would look pretty good to me.
i used to spend hours (sad i know) with a film or programme on mute and play along to it with synths etc, creating my own soundtrack. thats my dream job
Synth noises actually do quite a bit for little beeps and buzzes and blips in the backgrounds. People never realize how important they are until they watch a cutscene cue in a game without one.
I’m pretty stoked I finally get to work on a full blown sci-fi project, and not one that’s a 2d side-scroller. Most people don’t get anything like this for their first real publication.
It’s really hard to say without seeing it, but I would think the best option would be to let ally ships bounce off of each other doing little or no damage maybe depending on the difficulty setting of the game if it has one. As far as ships being able to shoot through each other, again without seeing it it is hard to say, but I imagine it might look and be kind of weird if you could simply shoot straight through your ally ships. Maybe friendly fire does no damage to ally ships, but you probably should not be able to shoot through them. Again if the game has a difficulty setting, maybe on the hardest mode friendly fire and bumping into ally ships does damage… there are a lot of possibilities.
yeah, I really wanna at minimum post some screen shots soon. The modeling artist (Marcel) would probably feel that’d be the equivalent of me posting an artists song when it was half finished lol.
On games like Age of Empires where you have a fixed 3d birdseye view, you can get away a mob of gun men shooting though an ally because you never see the bullet. And with crossbowmen, your mind automatically assumes the projectile is traveling over them. We looked at the idea of not showing the trail of the shot. So a turret mounted on a huge destroyer fires, and you only see/hear the explosion on the object where it actually hits. You never see the trajectory. The reason I think this design team MUST address this issue is twofold. First this is in outer space, so gravity doesn’t automatically make a cannon shot arch nicely over a wall then hit an unsuspecting enemy unit on the other side. Second, the camera is not a fixed 3d birdseye. You can orient the camera 360 and move it on the x, y, and z plane. So you don’t have the luxury of assuming the projectile found its way to the target on its own. We thought it would force players to build formations at staggered altitudes. Something you can’t do in most games. Its available in games like Star Wars battlefront when you’re inside a fighter jet, but that’s different because its a first person shooter, and all other aircraft in your squadron are controlled by an AI.
I’ve wondered if the smartest thing to do is simply not allow a ship to fire at an enemy ship when the ally ship prevents it from having a clear shot.
By the way, something I’m really looking forward to on this one is the ability to capsize a ship (in the zero gravity) to access weaponry on the bottom of the vessel, or maybe to protect the bridge/command portion from enemy fire, maybe just to confuse another player. According to what I’m seeing in the models, the ships are designed in modules, so like an aircraft carrier ship could take damage to its starboard hanger, and then you have 20 planes you can’t deploy, or a ship can take engine damage etc… fun stuff.
Its a pretty well established trope of the genre, so it doesn’t bother me. so if you’re going to have them get in each other’s way there should be pro’s and con’s, it should add to the strategy, otherwise its likely going to make the game feel clumsy.
Gameplay trumps realism.
I think thats a real real good point. Alex (the head guy) has got to get clear REAL soon about weather this is more about strategy or just blowing shit up lol.
No but isnt it just low bit rate basic synth stuff (90’s atari ste type thing)
Im pretty good with synths in general but never done any ‘chiptune’?
Would have to google it to find out what it is.
My guess is its basic programming of limited octave/soundwaves to be put on a chip? Like early games?
To answer your question no lol
Its a specific type of music you’d really only see in gaming. It endeavors to re-create the 90’s synth stuff using the original wave forms and coding methods. So think the first Mario game, or tetris…some guys actually contract that stuff because retro gaming is pretty ‘in’ right now.
I won’t bother with it…but if I run across anyone who already knows it, I’d gladly hand out a referral
Surely its just easyer to do stuff in a daw nowadays? I thought that style of coding was a thing of the past? Most games nowadays seem to have epic song productions. Big budget songs .
Oh absolutely. Its a small niche, but die hard retro gaming designers insist on the authenticity - even beyond efficiency or practicality. Yes, I do agree you should just use a daw and stay within the confines of the low bit, limited wave form, limited polyphony and call it a day. And chip tune was coded on what is sort of like a giant midi step sequencer. Where a value in one column +1, +2…so on, designated pitch. The the value in another column -1, +4 designated time. etc… Below is a slightly more advanced engine that uses general midi implementation, but its easier to see whats going on. @LazyE Ian, you’ll know what you’re looking at because you seem to have hands experience with old school sequencers and general midi.
I thought of a couple more things, if ships giving each other a friendly bump is difficult, what about just not letting them hit eachother? Like if it only lets you get so close to another ship before it stops you. That would keep allies from bumping each other.
Here’s a crazy idea for the line of fire problem. Probably would be too hard to do and probably just a bad idea all around, but I’m throwing it out there anyway… Assuming the projectiles are visible, these are spaceships after all so who’s to say they don’t have some kinda cool anti friendly fire technology where if you shoot at an ally ship, the projectile curves around that ally and continues off past them in the direction you fired? That might look cool and make slightly more sense than letting them shoot through each other, even if that is essentially what it lets you do.
My understanding is that the rebound from the un-arrested force was hard to implement where there’s no assumption of gravity. So that way your ships don’t get blocked in formation, because even if you’re surrounded 360, you still have your altitude (you can still climb or dive) to maneuver.
Along those lines, instead of stopping, I’m wondering if we do what every other video game seems to do and the ship detects an alternate path around the ship thats blocking it.
The other thing that hit me last night was we might be able to employ stabilizers. On a real life cruise ship or military vessel, you have dolphin like flaps that help counteract the effect of ocean waves. So maybe a ship hits another ship, bumps it a set distance and then it just stops, alleviating a lot of unnecessary headache. I’m almost certain there’s some kind of problem I’m missing, because I know Alex and Marcel have considered that. Hmmmm.
lol…the idea of a curved projectile sounds like a very easy out. Why not? Just make the space cannon or turret act like a normal one with a natural projectile arch and hope no one over-thinks it
I really like that idea of allowing allies to bump into each other with just a bit of damage. That way, when it happens accidentally, there is minimal harm, but if you’re just being sloppy or screwing around, it CAN actually affect you. Makes sense to me.
Most people don’t get anything like this for their first real publication.
cheers