Weekly Roundup 120 - 02/09/2022 - Sound Effects (SFX) Update

Hi Everyone!

It's the first weekly roundup of September and it came with a new playable build. Be sure to give it a download and play. You can download it here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/bindmancer-2nd-71442637 

1: What's New?

The entirety of this week was spent in the process of getting in sound effect placements into the game. As much as I could!

To make that happen I ended up creating a list of needed sound effect assets that I filled in as I worked = https://kangaroogames.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/KPT/pages/1335787521/SFX+-+Sound+Effect+List 

In total I got in just under 50 different sound effect assets. We have sound effects that now trigger with associated UI, sounds for damaging enemies and getting damaged by enemies and everything else in between.

Being a first pass and done over just a single week, the quality spread of the assets is quite wide though. In my personal assessment:

• 30% of the sounds are pretty good in relation to what they're visually associated with.
• Another 30% are close-to, but not quite perfect. They need further work.
• The Final 40% of sound effects are only very mildly associated with what's happening on screen. They need a more appropriate sound effect, or a custom sound effect made.

Which given it's just a single week of work on SFX I think is a pretty good result! 

The only sound effect set I had worked on this week that I ultimately had to mute was the hero attack sound effect. I couldn't find a good sound that was subtle and magical sounding enough to not sound annoying.

There will def be more weeks spent later down the line to give the SFX more passes. And I intend at a later date to hire a sound engineer to do things like EQ all the SFX to the music volume and to create some custom effects.

But overall, the game is no longer sound effect silent! We have both music and sound in the game!

2: What's Next?

For next week I spend the week working on some gameplay experimentation. I've been having thoughts on removing the beat aspect player movement and combat while keeping all the visual rhythm stuff. 

I think the second-to-second game may play better if the beat gameplay was exclusive to puzzles and encounters, such as freeing wall prisoners. But you would have no movement or attack penalties when exploring the dungeon.

Everything still moves to the beat in the dungeon visually though. :D

Let me know what you think!

Cheers.