#dialogic2

[gamedev: part 12]

Okay, I’m very hyped to share this. I had this in mind for such a long time, and this week I was finally able to get the technical side running.

The intro music was basically the first track that I wrote. The loop I used ingame was more or less a second part after this banger of a song. I exported the song without mastering before. Now it is so much louder and the drums sound pretty thicc.

I wanted to be able to sync the camera to the beat and finally I figured that out.

func _ready(): %FmodBGM.connect("timeline_marker", Callable(self, "_opening_anim_fmod_events"), 0) func _opening_anim_fmod_events(dict: Dictionary): var marker = dict.get("name") if marker == "titlecard": References.sync_animation_title_card() var voice_line_intro = FmodServer.create_event_instance("event:/Voice/Opening/2clubmate bitte")

These are the functions I’m using. I found the documentation very difficult to get me to this point. But through trial and error, I finally made it work. I’m still unsure about the Int at the end of the Callable, but Godot demanded one, and I offered it one. At least it doesn’t break anything … for now.

The intro isn’t done—obviously. I still need the character animations. The idea is that the camera follows the protagonists while they walk to the pavillion.

I might get voice acting done for the whole game. If not, I at least wanted the intro to have some. The voices are done by me and @sixleggedboar. I have no real exp with voice acting, besides doing voices while reading VNs at home. But, I thougth it would be fun. And game jams are a good environment to try out things. I plan to do the voice acting in German, but there will be an English text version. I will either hate or like my voice more after this is done. I think I went a bit too soft and high here. But it I actually often go that high when in customer situations. Service voice was the term @sixleggedboar coined for this kind of voice. Kinda want to share how trannies sound in German—because it does sound different from English. I can attest to that, as that was a frustrating part for me during voice training.

[gamedev: part 11]

I finished setting up the floor tiles and now have a proper game world without blockout elements. Depending on the time I have left, I will populate it more. For now I want to focus on the animations, story, and getting the opening to work.

The rotating camera does look a bit like the ps1 level overviews in Thrasher or Tony Hawk’s ^_^

[gamedev:part 2]

I created this kind of interface for a two different scraped project already ^_^ It is always a hussle to get this working, because rotated text is not that easy to setup, if it should also scale. The basic programming to select the menu items works—which makes me quite happy. I like just switching through those tabs. Adding functionality to what is happening inside those tabs needs to be done still.

[gamedev: part 13]

’T was a productive week. But unfortunately not so much in the visual department. So, I can’t share much exciting screenshot content.

But here are are two screenies of the new main menu und the save function in the pause menu. I fixed a number of bugs, and saving works now properly. I also added my own function to play FMOD sounds triggered by Dialogic. The built in one is cool and all, but I wanted to place the voices in 3D space and use FMOD’s post-processing. This can now be done and I’m really happy with it. You can also turn down the volume of the voices and the ambience.

Oh, yes. There is now ambience. I was planning to do this for quite a while, and this week I finally managed to record some ambience at night. I’m determined to keep the audio recording simple-tech. Meaning: I will use only recordings done on phone. (Obviously this doesn’t extend to the music—the music will be prestine) At the start of this project I wanted to either borrow a zoom device or buy one. But, the few feeble attempts I made didn’t lead anywhere, and buying one was too exhausting (comparing and deciding on a device or combination of device and microphone) and too expensive. So, I decided at some point I’m gonna use the equipment I have at hand.

I like the outcome. I did three recordings of about 1.5mins each, looped one as a base, and added the remaining ones via a scatter instrument in FMOD. It’s a really cool tool for ambience. It basically does something similar to the multi instrument: It plays audio files at random with the ability to tweak in what intervals it fires. What the scatter instrument does differently is to randomly simulate the distance the sound is coming from. So, sometimes a sound will be close and left-panned, another time it will be far and right-panned. So it makes it really cool for creating some variation in the ambience.

I also finally got some writing done. I was struggling the whole week to get into a writing flow, but I tried to sit down for some time several times. This slowly got me somewhere. And today I kinda wrote 1.500 – 2.000 additional words—bringing me to around 3.500. Still far from @harsh-noise-scalies 46.000 words. But I’m getting somewhere. As we sometimes say: Mühsam ernährt sich das Eichhörnchen (~Laborious the squirrle feeds itself??). I think I found a nice way to end my story. And I was really enjoying writing today. It felt like an engaged conversation I had with friends. I even became a bit rant-y, and noticed a few issues I should work through. Ye, it was a lot of fun. Still a lot to do. But I want to finish the writing soon, so there is enough time for us to record voice-overs.

[gamedev: part 9]

Progress-wise this week was a bit slow. I worked on a song commission, so there was little time left for my own game. But, behold: Friday and Saturday came in clutch. I created two more assets: The pavilion and the bench. They are of larger significance – design-wise – to the game. This fence-steel-style is something to came across time and time again in German cities. They feel very late 80’s, early 90’s to me. Without any source to back this up: This style seems reminiscent of Germany’s own bubble-era. Like, there are so many public places and facilities in this post-modern style. At least on of the schools i went to had this style and these kind of benches. I also found a compny that is still selling all kinds of public furniture in this style. Even with fancy colors like this cyan. I personally never encountered this color – I saw red, blue, and yellow mostl – but I found it neat, so i included it UwU