GAME DEV: IMPLEMENTATION OF SOUND
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In last Friday we had our presentation of the Alfa prototype. It was not a success! The reason was that it was quite incomplete. As we are four graphics and two programmers in the group we had chosen to have a symmetric view of the game because it is more challenging and demanding with a graphical point of view and easier to program. That was what we thought! It showed to be vice versa concerning the program part, it´s much more difficult to program a symmetric view than a top down view. Unfortunately we discovered this very late before the presentation so we had short of time to convert to top down view. We discussed that we eventually will go back to the symmetric view later but hadn´t time to solve that for the presentation. As a result we couldn´t use a lot of the pictures our graphics had made so this was a waste of time. Luckily our group was approved to continue even if we were not satisfied with the result for the Alfa presentation. Besides this problem we have also recognized we are behind in programming because we started to late and now need to catch up. In Monday we had a meeting during the whole morning where we discussed all the tasks we must solve and finalize, and how we can do this in a structured way. Our conclusion was that we have still much work in front of us, both graphical design and programming. One decision we made was that we will continue with the top down view and not try to go back to the initial symmetric view idea. I was still not ready with the power up programming solution so I continued to work with this. I had a feeling that I was close to the solution but couldn´t find the reason why it didn´t work so I started to trace the errors. I went through every code and noticed step by step how everything should work. Finally I found the problems which basically were two. The problem was related to the countdown function, when I studied it in the console I saw this didn´t worked, the program didn’t count down. I finally found the reason; I had both the countdown and definition in the update session meaning first it counted down and then updated again, so it was a logical error. When I moved the definition in another place it worked properly. The other problem was also related to the countdown function but when it was finished. The code itself was correct but located in the wrong place, it should have been in the update so it continuously checked when duration is zero or below but I had it when you push the Q button. So after I corrected these two programming problems everything works well. The next step is to implement the sound. I have started to work with this and have prepared all sound files. I think it´s quite easy to implement the sound, the logic is already defined; only difficulty as I can see is to organize and structure the files in a good way. I will work with the implementation the whole Friday so it should be no problem to finalize this during the day. My reflections concerning sound is that it´s quite hard to find exactly the sound you want, as long as you don´t create your own sound, but when you search for sound on internet it´s not easy to find exactly the right one describing the sound or feeling you are looking for. Maybe I was to critical in my judgment and put too much time in finding the right sound, I noticed that you can look with a more broad search criteria and still find a sound which is good enough. For example, if you are looking for a sound describing digging with a spade a scratch from a cat will also do. Picture with examples of sound characteristics:
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