So one of the most important parts of game development is getting the music to fit the game. In this post, I’m going to show you how to write your own music from scratch while still giving some tips for advanced composers.

This tutorial focuses mainly on Garageband users, so forgive me if some of the terms are incorrect for different programs.

Software

• You don’t need costly software to write music, some of the most default programs can do the job.
• Garageband is recommended for Mac users.
• A good alternative is Noteflight.com, which can write music the… professional… way. You can save it to a wav. file.

WARNING TO GARAGEBAND USERS – DO NOT USE MUSICAL TYPING FOR RECORDING, use the SCORE EDITOR
A – Region Name field: Type a new name for the selected region in the field.

B – Region Pitch slider and field: Drag the slider to transpose the selected Software Instrument region up or down by up to 36 semitones.
You can also type the number of semitones in the field.

C – Velocity slider and field: Drag the slider to change the velocity of selected notes.
You can also type the velocity value in the field.
A note’s velocity reflects how hard the key is pressed when you play the note.

D – Zoom slider: Drag to zoom in for a closer view or to zoom out to see more of the track.

E – Graphic/Notation View buttons: Click to change the editor to graphic view or notation view.

F – Note Value button: Click to choose the note value for notes you add.

G – Fix Timing button: Click to fix the timing of notes in the selected region, or notes selected in the editor, so that notes move to the nearest grid position.

H – Beat ruler: Shows beats and measures for the area visible in the editor.

I – Playhead: Shows the point in the project currently playing.

J – Notation display: Shows the musical events of Software Instrument regions in standard music notation.
You can move notes to adjust their pitch and where they start playing, and change how long they play.

K – Scroll bar: Drag the scroller to move to a different part of a track.

Chord Progression

• To start off writing your piece, you need a good chord progression.
• Pick a tune you think can be repeated for the entire song.
• If stuck, choose four whole notes that descend or ascend.
• Place the rest of notes in the chord.
• Try placing a note that’s two steps away to complete the chord.

Adding Other Instruments

• If you want your song to slowly gain instruments over time:

1. pick a short tune that can be played to the measures of your chosen chord progression.
2. One by one, add the instruments with their short tunes until the climax of the song.
3. This is where the lead comes in.

• If not, add all the instruments at once at the beginning of the song.
• There should be only one or two instruments playing the lead in a simple song.

Writing The Lead

• The lead should have its own instrument(s).
• Pick a tune that fits the chord.
• The lead will not have a repeatable tune.

Increasing your song’s intensity with EQ

• In Garageband, you can edit the instrument’s EQ levels under “Edit Instrument”.
• EQ levels are the different frequencies of normal sound.
• Each instrument should have a different EQ frequency.
• Bass instruments should have a higher base and lower treble.
• Lead instruments should have a higher treble and lower bass.
• Feel free to mix these last two up for variation.
• An example of the lead instrument’s EQ
• Notice how the lead instrument’s EQ is not that extreme. For background instruments, extreme EQ can be a good thing.

Variations

• Note that all songs don’t follow the same pattern, this is just one way of writing a song.
• To make your song sound different or catchy, think of it like making a movie, or a level.
• Introduce the background instruments first, then show the listener your lead instrument.
• During a change from loud to soft in music, have a common tune play before the change.
• If it happens several times, the audience knows that whenever you play that tune, the sound level will drop.
• Let the audience expect what is going to happen next, so that it becomes catchy.

Obviously I didn’t go into the more advanced note placement tips, or note timing instructions, but this is just a general tutorial.

Good luck writing music in the future, and hope to see more music in Ludum Dare games!

If you want to see an example of a Garageband project, see my Isolated Assault Piece (from Ludum Dare 22).

And if you crack open the Isolated Assault Source Files, you can see the same song under Assets/Sound/LD22Track.mp3

One final note: You learn best from experience, so out there and make a song!

Okay, it’s been a while since Ludlum dare and I thought I may as well do one of these as I have some time on my hands.

So here is what I think of my game :

Graphics
I thought graphics were the strongest part of the game as they were the parts I spent most time perfecting (to my style). It may be really common to have that style of tiles or whatever but I really wanted to have a go at creating a low-res game and I thought they were okay at the end.

If I had more time though, I would of spent even more time on the graphics. I would of probably made the tiles 16×16 so I could add more detail in and maybe add more effects.

Gameplay
The gameplay was bearable in my mind, it wasn’t too complex(well I don’t think so), and I didn’t try and make it really hard for the player either. But I have a long way to go with gameplay ideas, as this is my first ever game, so it won’t be great.

I had this idea in mind a few hours into the competition and just sort of went with it, and I hope people liked it as I did. But I do think over time, I will understand more about game design and level design so they will get better in the future.

Sound
The sounds in the game were pretty much rushed because I wanted them in the game, but didn’t have enough time to perfect them. This also goes with the music, if I done it again I would of spent maybe an hour longer on this to make sure it suited the mood.

Cross Compatibility
I thought I had this under control, as I knew LOVE2D would work on Mac, Windows and Linux. But for some reason when I was compiling some windows users were having trouble playing. As far as I could tell from researching the problems it was to do with old integrated graphics and some could be probably fixed by updating the drivers. But oh well, maybe next time I’ll properly test an engine before I do another 48hour competition.

Overall
Mainly, I think the game went well because as I said it is my first game and to me any good comment makes it worthwhile. I did it to try and help me learn LOVE2D better and it did! The idea of Ludum Dare is very effective and helped me more in them 2 days more than my whole time with the engine.

So that’s what I think of my game,and maybe if you haven’t checked it out yourself you can do a quick play now?

Play Here.

We are happy to announce that our little LD 22 game - Alone in the Crane – was published to Android Market and App Store!
So now you can try:
- Android version
- iOS version (for iPhone, iPod and iPad)
- Windows version
- Mac version
and Online version

And here we have some iTunes promocodes for iOS version for you:
KHR9P4PX3RFY
K9MWRLLMXKRH
LTKJM46T3E4X
XXH3A3YJAXLT
KPXWAYNLPMTP
NA4XKYLH376T
FFMWKPM6LJTN
KK96AHAPXW9A
3ETLFW37RJRE
3PPF7HX9YFXA
F4NTMMEPLXXP
FR7T4E49J44M
XLY9F766ARTK
J7TAPMYNT6NT
3KAR3TPJFNN7
EAWF6KN9YA3A
XN3M6JA7JNWF
APMP79EL9XWM
YKKMHPT7XYTF
ATHM7F7AMHF6
NL364AH6MPAY
JLLKLYNXWHMT
L7W7N9LKXA3R
EXKATMLPFLER
NN4K6MTL3YY7

Have fun!

I made a post-compo version of my entry, with modifications suggested by commenters:

• added sound effects
• added music (ambient sounds, actually)
• small fixes in walking animation
• small fixes in gfx: exit doors became orange/red, also you see part of the room when the door is open
• gameplay fixes: player health was replenished at the start of a level, now it is maintained through the game

You can play it here. If you want to rate it, here is the original compo entry. Enjoy!

Thanks to  CplMustard,  merthsoft,  jfroco, dr_soda, Thomas, Benjamin for their insightful suggestions!

I have successfully finished my very first LD game, The Last Man on Earth.

You play as the last survivor of an alien invasion, your goal is to avenge your species by clearing out an alien spaceship.
It is a pretty hard game, but please don’t get mad at me – I had no time to balance the gameplay.
The game has two endings… and a kitten.

It has been great fun, I would love to participate in the future, too.

Screenshots:

Tools:

• Visual Studio 2010
• XNA Game Studio 4.0
• Paint.NET
• Inkscape
• Bfxr

Download: http://attilahorvath.me/TheLastManOnEarth.zip
Source: http://attilahorvath.me/TheLastManOnEarth-source.zip
Game Page: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=8403

My game is done and submitted!  The last hours were hectic, both in terms of trying to finish the game and because I had some stuff going on in “real life” of great urgency… so unfortunately I wasn’t able to do a lot of updating.  Ah well… I’m here now!  Here’s the entry link!

Brief summary and screen shots are included with the entry, of course, so I’ll use this space to mention some other things:

First, what went right:  Most everything!  I made a lot of lovely art, got most-all of my intended game mechanics implemented within the time limit, and got a playable game out of an already otherwise very busy weekend!  I learned some new useful programming tricks and now have a MUCH better understanding of how to effectively use SpriteGroups in pygame, which helps greatly with streamlining code.  Hooray for me!  Also it’s my damn birthday, so double-hooray!

What didn’t go as planned?  Well… I didn’t have any time for sfx/music, which would have been nice.  I also wasn’t able to add all the text screens I wanted for a narrative, but that’s actually less than 10 minutes additional work there, so I’ll have it for a post-judging version.  A few other little details: Cars on the road, maybe some time/score mechanism, possibly even predators?  Hadn’t put any thought into that last one really… just an idea that existed.  There’s also still some awkwardness with people’s movements that wasn’t fully polished and makes the games slower and more frustrated than it’s meant to be… I really want to redo some of their pathing logic when I get more time.  I also didn’t have time to add a few little in-game decorations I was considering adding… wouldn’t have really made much of a difference except visually… and without the improved navigation it would have made things slower, so maybe it’s for the better.

OH YEAH!  I also need to mention!  Did you notice?!  All the maps in the game are procedurally generated!  Isn’t that awesome?  Yeah.  I’m bad-ass like that.  Random roads, trees, buildings, ponds… people navigating between them… it’s pretty dang awesome.  Sometimes you start out right next to Mommy… sometimes insanely far away; I would like to make that less random and perhaps make it something like a difficulty setting?  Changing the map size and the number of each thing in it is trivially easy, so I could easy adjust for desired complexity.

Anyways,  yeah.  Please play my game if you haven’t yet!  And vote on it!  And more importantly, give me some feedback!  I want to make the best games possible, so comments and constructive criticism are incredibly helpful for me.  Thanks

Yep Ive bombed out. Got to the point at 4am last night where I realised I more than likely wouldnt have a game worth submitting by todays deadline.

So thats a bit dissapointing. But it was still a good experience. Im determined to work on everything that let me down for this LD (ie time managment, planning and doing things which are too complex) in preparation for the next LD.

Slight malfunction with the space station

So yeh, I at least have a brand new game concept developed, with a great story I want to tell, so Ill more than likely get serious about these leftovers from my LD attempt of a game and make it into something better and an actual game.

I look forward to playing a bunch of games over the next week or so however, to see what all of you successful LD guys have come up with, let the voting commence and Ill be seeing you all again for LD23 in a couple of months

-ADEdge

I have finished it ON TIME!

WOW! I did it!

Here is my entry:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=rate&uid=7418

Hooray! It’s finally finished, and you can check it out here. I did put a kitten in there, but it’s hidden very well, and I don’t expect you to find it. Overall, I somewhat satisfied with it, but think I should have worked on some things a little more, especially the “plot”.

Al Own is Alone with A Loan

I have the game mechanics down but there are still a lot of things I need to get implemented before I submit. Hope I make it in time.

I think i have finished with almost all the gameplay elements. Now I’m planning the rest of the graphics and starting with the sounds.  So now the status is:

• Player –  Gameplay done – Graphics pending - Sounds pending.
• Columns - done!
• Floor - pending. (fix border tiles)
• Barrel – done! - Sounds pending.
• Spikes Hole – done!
• Spikes Hole filling with Barrels – done! – Effect pending. 
• Lava Hole – done!
• Arrow Shooters – Gameplay done! - Graphics pending. Sounds pending.
• Arrows – Gameplay done! - Graphics pending. 
• Boulder Dropper – Canceled.
• Boulder – Canceled.
• Save Points – done! - Graphics pending. Sounds pending.
• Exit Point – done! – Graphics pending. Sounds pending.
• Menu - pending.
• Intro screen – pending.
• Game Over screen – pending.
• Ending Screen – pending.

I have put the Alpha1 for testing purposes here:

Timelapse for day 1. Time for sleep now. A day of music and polish tomorrow. It’s nearly done!

Yay for videos!

http://youtu.be/yiDR6b7_N0k

Tell me what you think!

Just a small town boy. Livin' in a LONELY world.

This is my first Ludum Dare attempt ever. Before I didn’t have the time, courage, or I straight-up forgot. Anyways, account is made here and I’m in the process of making a neat little game for the theme. I hope to do well and get something out in time!

Not only does an uber low-res art style give me “indie cred”, it also cleverly distracts you from the fact that I couldn’t draw anything to save my life!

I’m using a few premade behaviors from StencylForge. I asked on IRC if that was okay with the rules, and he said it was because they’re publicly available. I’m going to believe him for now because that makes things a lot easier for me.

Still not sure what exactly I’m going for here. I’ve got a nice atmosphere in mind, but that won’t matter if I don’t have any actual gameplay to go with it.

Also, I’m ridiculously tired and need rest, so I’m gonna sleep on it. Good night everyone!

I’m starting to see posts about people waking up.  This is probably a god sign that I should go to sleep, huh?  I’ve got a lot of the code base put together now… but I still don’t have a solid idea of what my game will be!  I do, however, have a solid idea for a project to morph whatever this is into after LD is over and I have more time?  Go figure.  Sleep usually helps clear up my thoughts, though, so… good night!  And good luck!

I think I’m moving more quickly than I ever have before!  I have a lovely screenshot!

The thing is… I don’t actually know what my game is about yet.  That’s also not a real title… probably.  Need something catchier.  The real thing I’m trying to show here is that I not only have graphics up, but I have those little dudes!  Who move around by themselves, and deal with colliding with one-another!  It’s pretty sweet…

I’m getting started a bit late… got caught up in an important meeting at Occupy Tallahassee.  Alone is the theme, eh?  …I kind of hate it.  We had “It’s dangerous to go alone…” only 2 LDs ago!  Ah well, I’ll work with it regardless!

Just realized I forgot to state what tools I’m working with here!  This LD, like my previous two, will be completed with Python, using PyGame, for all programming.  For sfx I’ll probably use bfxr, though last time I also used a cheap mic and made some crude noises of my own.  Music will probably not exist.  Art is MS Paint, with the possibility of some minor Gimp work of I want to get fancy.  That should be about it!  I did ABSOLUTELY NO PREP for this, so I have almost no food or drink in my house, and many other inconveniences.  GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!  Brute force game design!

Good luck everybody!

AAAAAAH!~  Why is LD always on the most weirdly-timed weekend?  The first time I participated I was in the middle of moving!  Last time I was just about to start a new job!  This time… Sunday is my birthday!  Yet…. I’M IN!  That’s right, folks – I’m spending my birthday making an LD entry!~

So… Like many people, my life tends to be pretty busy, and I don’t much keep up with the LD community between compos.  I wasn’t even able to participate in voting this time, except for the final round… and there’s some kind of [joke?] drama about kittens?  Fill me in, eh?  Or not.  Just give me a theme, and I’ll give you a game!  ‘Cause that’s how I roll!  See you in the IRC room… if my client ever loads?

Since i’m going to enter the Ludum Dare, i thought it would be a good idea to tell people what i use

Image editing:Paint.net-PNGS

Sounds:Audacity/SFXR

Language(I know some people may not like this)GML

Also first time entering this, hope its a good theme