Would you sing for your game? Leave a comment below!

Going by the comments, it seems a lot of people like the music in The Sentient Cube, so I decided to post them online.

Enjoy!

Introducing “a.void”, a Jam game created by five Microsoft software developers.

It is a musical spatial memory game. Collect colored orbs to collect points while avoiding the obstacles that align with the music.

Choose your movements carefully, as the obstacles appear at your previous positions.

Play it here (Unity Web Player)

Ludum Dare page

Continuing from http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2013/04/26/had-to-meditate-but-got-an-awesome-idea/

The game is called “You, are a Shadow” and will use this post for updates

All time in IST zone:

April 29th, 2013

0753 hrs – LOL I just noticed that there was an hour of submission time too.. didn’t know that. Submitted before that.
I dont feel like booting up my machine again and adding that missing credits line… too tired, eyes shutting down and I know once I start editing something..  meticulous me is going to find more stuff to fix.. and the finally compression and host again on my server… dah No can do; sorry

0714 hrs – Trying to pull myself up from all the exhaustion.. and randomly look at some entries from other Indie devs posting on IRC.
I also remember that my over stressed brain forgot to add one last source of sound credits… Jamendo.com .. my bad.
Don’t think its a good idea to now edit the compo entry.. it’d probably make it invalid.. so I’m just mentioning here for good karma.

Also pic of my desk now, trying to clean up

The 5 energy drinks and food (not visible in pic.. burp) that kept me going

0707 hrs –  Damn  23 minutes left and I just made it in time.. Submitted the entry.  Yippie Yahoooooo!!!
Here it is folks - http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=rate&uid=21211

Meanwhile, updating log since last timestamp…  I banged my head on a spiky wall to get the music right .. and its still not there to my taste.. a lot of sounds I couldn’t get them right.. so had to use “Coin” sound effect ..   But hey! atleast it is complete.
I took a ton of time to find the right music that can set the mood and go well with the graphics.

Also decided to add a credits page at the last moment (not for self appreciation, but to credit the sound sources) .. oh well.. added my name too.

Hoping you guys have fun playing my game

Btw, facebook page is here for the Likes  - https://www.facebook.com/YouAreAShadow

Hugs to everyone who participated.
0306 hrs – About 3+ hrs left.. I made a list of all sounds I need… it looks like I need about 16 tracks YIKES!
Streaming Live again - http://www.twitch.tv/toonheartgames .. watch me pull my hair creating game sounds. Will I be able to do it?

0204 hrs – Sorry guys, long pending update.
In the last couple of hours I fixed fonts issues,
a ton of math on ‘probabilities’,
reworking some backend calculation and level difficulties,
designed more graphic sprites,
added a tutorial ,
added the final score screens and that’s about it on the game.
I also took a little rest in between.

So, what’s pending?  Sounds and music .. YIKES! .. I’m so noob at that… and just ~5hrs left for the compo to end… I gotta hurry.
Also, I am not sure if I will find time to do some animations
Let’s race for it.

Meanwhile, yet another teaser for you .. I hope I am keeping you guys interested

Life of a shadow?

April 28th, 2013

1418 hrs – Title screen is done. Back to graphics. A game logo is done

Having trouble with CSS stylings using custom fonts.. Trying to fix it.  Meanwhile, here’s another teaser to keep you interested

half cut logo to keep it suspense

1218 hrs – Finished coding 13 levels… some seriously difficult decisions for the gamers to make in the game. I’d advise not playing the game in front of your girlfriend or boyfriend. Disclaimer: I am not responsible for any break-ups that might happen

0513 hrs – Taking a small nap. Unable to hold my head up. Will resume coding level generation after the nap.

0453 hrs – Decision algo has been moved from paper to Code. Here’s another sneak peek of how ‘You, are a shadow’ will play with your brain.

You, are a shadow.. with a ton of troubles

0319 hrs – Finished scribbling level brainfuck mapping for 13 Levels… that’s right.. 13 levels
Now to put them in code
Damn in last 41 hrs, I slept for 3.25 hrs. Too tired to work on #LD48 … AND then someone reminds me of my superenergy music playlist .Hell Yeah!
Listening 2 music tracks of Naruto, DragonBallZ, TheSocialNetwork, Rocky, TopGun, @battlefield3_ & supercharging myself.
My #LD48 is still ON

0230 hrs – Put in graphics in the game. Wrote some nice effects. Took care of player movements and collisions.
Currently scribbling level challenges on paper.
Meanwhile, 3 energy drinks, 2 dark chocolates and 1 paya gulped down.

April 27th, 2013

2237 hrs – Almost all the graphics is done.. except tiny bits I guess.. which I will do later. Honestly, tired of drawing now.. since last 12hrs.
Let’s start off on the code now. Will fill in missing stuff later.

More teaser

Some sprites of the game

1858 hrs – Major part of the art is done.. except a couple of characters and items.  Taking a small break as of now.. wrists paining.
Here’s another teaser for you guys

Ooo la la
What was the theme again?
Minimalism

1140 hrs –  Planned rough layout of game graphics on paper. Now live again at http://www.twitch.tv/toonheartgames doing game art on inkscape.

1020 hrs  - Rough gameplay mechanics done on paper. Now to start art. Ok looks like I need my first energy drink of the day.

0910 hrs - I name the game “You’re a Shadow”

0900 hrs - Huaaaaaaaaa….. Just hit a super cool kick ass idea for the theme

0840 hrs - ok now, time to get serious. Lights off.. shirt off.. Seiza posture meditation.

0830 hrs - 1 hr gone. No solid ideas yet … arghh.

0800 hrs - Right of the bat @ludumdare 26 theme is making me cry Who Dafaq voted for that theme

0708 hrs - Just woke up, brush in mouth.. thought I woke up 40mins late for #LD48 Sigh W00T, @ludumdare website says 20 mins to start! Yippie!

Yeah.  That’s right.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8332206/Temporary%20Links/MinimalistMayhem.swf

Not the finalized version, but you get the idea.

5 hours later it does do sound! And there’s some kind of story *erm*

You can smash pots! what do you want more?!??

…I should probably start putting some level design in there…

oh and enemies, weeeell…

New Update: Check It Out

Great Idea !!11!
Lets Play
ZELDA

Since I’m a lazy bastard I don’t want to search for samples and glue them together using anything more demanding than iNudge.

aaaand well iNudge sucks. Some poking around in google found me this: http://www.audiotool.com

very nice! It even allows you to download what you created, crazy, right?

so my super anoying minimalistic soundtrack for now is this: http://www.audiotool.com/track/minimalism-wp9pOFK/

I sure do hope I find the time to create something better than this before the deadline…

Well if you google you will find it but still sharing
http://tones.wolfram.com/generate/

Pretty cool one, still will need some editing at least to make it loop.

Not sure I will be using this but can be a great thing to add some music at the last moment

Don’t worry, I do have SOME code (including a very minimalistic .tga loader which is NOT for my interpretation of the theme dammit!).

So anyways, after spending suprisingly less time in sunvox making samples than in schismtracker making the actual music, here’s some music:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/32094129/ld26/gm-ld26a-dem02.it

Another post with an amazing revelation (for me)!!!

There is a program out there called autotracker.py.  This code file, when run in python, will automatically generate a piece of background music for you to use in your games – I have just downloaded it, got it to run, and have exported a few background tracks that sound great.  I just discovered this tool today, and am supremely happy I did.  Music (and all art in general) is something sorely lacking in my games – that is no longer the case!

How to use (for Windows):

1. Download Python 2.x (if you don’t have it already).  Using 2.x is important, as I tried this on 3.x and got errors.  Use 2.x!  Python 2.x can be downloaded here: http://www.python.org/getit/.  Make sure to use the 2.x link.
   
2. Install Python.  Simply run the file you downloaded and let the program install.  I installed Python to the standard directory, C:\Python27.
3. Copy the autotracker.py script file to C:\Python27.  Script file is available here: https://github.com/wibblymat/ld24/blob/master/autotracker.py.
4. Open up a command prompt window (his Windows Key – R, and type ‘cmd’).
5. Navigate to where you installed Python.  Use cd to change directory, and use .. to move to the parent directory.  To get to the C drive, type C:.
6. Run this command: python autotracker.py.  The script will output many lines of text, and will end when the file is saved.
7. Open the file output in VLC.  Sample the greatness.
8. Convert the .it file to a readable format – in the case, .OGG.  To convert, go to Media -> Convert/Save.  Follow the dialog there.
9. Your converted file is ready to be used!

I hope these directions are helpful – I already enjoy the output from this autotracker.py script, hope you do too!

Note: I am in no way affiliated with the creator of autotracker.

Hey folks,

This is Gregg O’Donnell, an audio engineer and producer for Insurmountable Sounds.  I just wanted to introduce myself to everyone, Hello World!

I would like to officially like to state my intent to participate in the game jam for LD #26.  I will be working with Nurbs on this particular project.

This weekend I shall be speed composing on my home computer.  It’s going to be approximately for 8 hours.  The way it’s going to work is the stream will be piano tracks written from scratch, on the computer via mouse and piano roll.

The best fitting pieces of music will be picked after the initial stream and be produced/mixed to the best possible quality given the time limit.  If you don’t know much about music, I think it would be really fun to watch as you get to watch the thought process behind composing music behind a computer.

My livestream is going to be hosted at www.twitch.tv/theshawz

I really hope people will tune in and see how much raw music I can churn out in 8 hours.  Hopefully I can create about 5-7 rough songs.

If you want to see some of my past material, here are a couple of links.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86Qh4aU4ias  -  I did the music and audio edit for this short

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AJMujiJ-UQ  -  A fun little video I shot a long time ago, just to show my love for video games

Since it’s soon time to start working on the real entry, I’ve decided to take the time to grab a few pictures and links before I start work.

First off, a picture of the battlestation I will be manning during the upcoming event:

I will be using the C++ code skeleton I’m currently writing a bit on, located on my github here. This code skeleton is built on my own entity system library that’s called Kunlaboro, and I’m hoping to have enough features in it to be able to create any type of 2D game by the time LD26 starts.

I’ve tried a few music generators and found Sound Helix, one that gives pretty upbeat piano music with the example preset. To simplify everything a bit for myself, I’ll be taking those midi files and running them through timidity and ffmpeg to get some ogg vorbis files instead, since SFML comes with built-in support for playing such things.

All in all, I’m hoping to be more prepared for this event than I was for the last three, maybe even get a basic Ubuntu system running so I have something mainstream to compile Linux builds on.

Here’s hoping for an awesome weekend, and lots of comradery on the IRC.
(Anan)Ace out.

Hello everybody! This is the fourth of a series of four postmortems for our LD25 game “President vs Eevol“. Every article will cover a different aspect and point of view on the game’s development. The following post-mortem is on the game’s music and is written by composer Matteo Gagliardi.

President vs Eevol

Postmortem #4 of 4: Music

Hello, I’m Matteo Gagliardi, the composer of the President vs Eevol soundtrack and one of the original founders of the OmniàRing Project.

1. The OmniàRing Project: An introduction

This post-mortem will be mainly focused on music, but Sun asked me to write something about OmniàRing itself so I will start with that.

In early 2006 I was a lot younger and I used to spend most of my free time playing and talking about videogames. I was involved as admin in a Nintendo fan community, we were quite small and I decided to create a webring of Nintendo communities to help us grow: Nintendoring was born.

Shortly thereafter all the communities of the webring merged and we realized that we were mostly more interested in our various artistic projects than talking about videogames: I was composing my first EP (called Tetraktys), Sun Shiranui was making his first videogame (a Zelda ALTTP clone as he recalled in his post-mortem) so at the end we changed our name to OmniàRing, from the latin word “Omnia” (Everything).

The OmniàRing Logo

2. Making music for flash games

I worked a lot of times with Sun Shiranui but we never made a complete game together.

When he gathered this incarnation of the OR Team for this Ludum Dare, initially I wasn’t supposed to join as a composer, since I was busy working on the final mix of my latest album. So what happened is that he wrote a song on his own, and when he sent it to me I started arranging it for fun. In the end, he asked me to join the team and the song became something completely different and new.

Since we were working on a flash game, I had two important goals in mind:

1) Make something easily loopable

2) Make something short and lightweight

One of my main concerns were loading times

3. President vs Eevol: The main theme

The main theme is thirteen seconds long. I used some drones and a sparse beat to give a subtle rhythm.

I wanted this to be hypnotic and mesmerizing.

Usually, working on a soundtrack for a videogame I prefer it to be interactive and bounded to the action on-screen, but since the team was working very hard on the core of the game they coudn’t give a lot of feedback on my work, so I had to keep it simple.

The use of drones makes the track easily loopable

4. President vs Eevol: The boss theme

The boss theme was more of a problem because Sun suggested using electric guitars. I worked on it during the second day while nothing of the boss battle was ready, so I had no idea of the precise scene I was supposed to make music for.

So, using only the general description Sun gave me, which consisted in a room where you have to kill the president using your bombs while he runs around, I started working on the piece.

I’m a keyboardist, so I don’t have any real guitars. I tried some synths, but in my mind the sudden change of style from drone ambience to something like Doom’s OST wasn’t good at all.

So during the third day I decided to try something else.

The track is mainly based on some huge percussions played on a Korg Wavedrum, but I used also the same drone of the main track to have a feeling of coherence. It was finished way before the team even started working on the boss battle, so I was really clueless, but listening to it now I think I made the right decisions.

The drone loop is synched with the wavedrum

5. Last thoughts about developing the game

So, did I accomplish my goals?

In a way, yes, I did.

The team had some difficulties dealing with the looping of the tracks. They tried mp3 and they later found out that for some reason mp3s don’t loop well, so to make the loops work they had to use uncompressed wav, compressing it only later using the flash IDE.

The main track of the game is only 580 kb and the boss track + all the SFX is 380kb.

I wanted them to be even lighter, but time constraints forced the team to work on more important things.

I think it’s really important, working on a web game, to have really short loading times and it’s even more important on a Ludum Dare, where you can try thousand different games in a short period of time and maybe you can even drop one just because the loading time is too long.

At the end it was a really interesting and compelling experience and I want to thank all the people who enjoyed (or will enjoy) the soundtrack of President vs Eevol.

Thanks again for joining me in this review of the composing process.

My home studio at the time of President vs Eevol development

Thank you kindly for joining us during our series of four postmortems for our game President vs Eevol. You can read the other postmortems here: design, code, art. See you in the next Ludum Dare!

Hi everyone!
We would like to thank you for playing and rating our game!
For those who did not and would like to, here you go!

During the last night, CAPSLOCK and I put together a little clip from our livestream archives…
We dedicate this minute of sillyness to Juliette, the 3-days-old daughter of Mewine and Fleacontent, who was with us in a way during this LD!
Have a good time you three!

Enjoy! (and sorry for the webcam quality, that’s all we had to work with…)

Random music composition tools. Better music means more polished games. Random generators are fantastic for inspiration, even to hardcore composers. Compiled with the help of Zeik and ChainedLupine in the LD chatroom.

These are all free except Easy Music Composer, and ACS which is shareware and in my opinion is amazingly useful even without a pro license. For me at least, ACS has an almost 1:1 ratio of success; it prompts immediate inspiration. I’ve personally found Wolframtones to produce quite meaningful ideas as well

http://codeminion.com/blogs/maciek/2008/05/cgmusic-computers-create-music/
Kindly suggested by AdventureIslands in the comments below. This is quite mind-blowing in fact.

Wolframtones     <- algorithmic, very interesting pattern. Has preset genres like jazz, world, rock, etc.

 http://www.soundhelix.com/  <- Sound Helix  cool pattern-based compositions

( http://www.soundhelix.com/audio-examples )

Circuli   http://www.earslap.com/projectslab/circuli <- ambient generator

Easy Music Composer http://www5f.biglobe.ne.jp/~mcs/emc.html

http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA014815/music/English/autocomp.html< very very useful musical ideas. This is a must

*

Greasemonkey’s Autotracker-Bu <- Run “python autotracker.py”, you will get an .it file, then use your favorite tracker ( like http://schismtracker.org/wiki/Schism%20Tracker ) to export it to .wav or .mp3. ( link and description provided by jarnik )

*

http://www.bemmu.com/music/index.html <- music driven by a simple math formula. interesting convoluted results

*

http://www.earslap.com/projectslab/otomata <- freeware online version, paid iOS app

Please signal boost this post and if possible get it on the official site. What is a community without communal spirit!

Also be sure to suggest more of these

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These are the tunes for my game Trina of the Depths . Only the first two made it into the game. The encounter theme was to be played when you met the crab seller.

Here they are in .ogg format

1. Trina of the Depths – exploration theme

2. Battle theme

3. the Encounter

Made with FLstudio and lots of free soundfonts and my own samples of a gameboy bass

Thank you for a fantastic 3 days! I’m just beginning to scratch the surface of what all you people created. A definite improvement in content, I feel

This is my second Ludum Dare, and this time I have managed to actually finish a game, not just abandon one. The game is called Pineapple Dreams—it is my first fast-paced action game. The theme was “You Are the Villain,” so I made something as a tribute to the good old ultra-violence. That said, malchiki and devochki, I give you Pineapple Dreams—go kill yourself some humans now!

I have also discovered that (at least for me) the key to a successful LD48 is no level design and/or artwork/animation, because those things take all the time. Having those time-consuming things out of the way, I managed to compose a tune for this game that I’m rather happy with. I even recorded a couple of sounds and integrated them properly. And I slept two full nights during this LD, which is completely unthinkable.

For those of you without a lick of musical talent, there is hope for getting something music-like in your game.

First, see this LD post. The link in that post is dead but there appears to be a version up on github. Note that the Ludum Dare tools page links to an earlier version of autotracker, but that link is dead too. See my LD23 entry for a sample of the music generated, though it creates a variety of tempos and moods that all sound very 8-bit. The general approach is to generate a ton of songs and pick the one that best fits. You can load the output into a tracker to mess with it if you have more talent than I.

Next up, for a little more control, there’s Lemon’s Procedural Music Generator. You control the number of tracks, instruments used, and algorithm+seed for each track. It uses your default midi device, so it will probably sound very 8-bit. Record is supposed to export to midi, but it wasn’t working for me, so manually recording the audio is probably the only other thing to do.

Lastly, Otomata creates music with a very particular feel to it. Here’s an example of something that I put together when I should have been working. You have control of how many automata there are and what their starting orientation and position are. After that, they follow some simple rules to make sounds.

It’s probably worth mentioning WolframTones. It can produce a variety of music, but the license excludes it from any real use. This post has a discussion on it.

Hopefully one of these resources will help someone out. If anyone has any other resources, please reply!

Good luck!

[Edit to add direct link to autotracker-bu]

Ready up! The Hack-a-Jam is back, and starting tomorrow!!

To join, you must create an account in the Posting section of the website, and then start posting! Note: All posts have been deleted since the last Hack-a-Jam, so that is why only I have posts there. However, I do encourage you to become social in the forums and ask questions.

The Hack-a-Jam is a regular game development competition/jam where you must create a game within a set amount of time. However, it is not like any other gaming competition/jam. In the Hack-a-Jam, there is an infinite amount of winning categories, and no overall winner. While winners still must have superb games to win, there are no set winning categories, and there will always be multiple winners. Also, the theme will be voted on by the community, after they are submitted in the forums (Posting section) under the topic Theme Posting, in the Rules and Announcements forum.

To prove how unique the winning categories are, these are previous winning categories and other possible categories:

Most Psychedelic Visuals
Most Deaf People After Hearing The Game
Most Angry Bongos Involved
Most Rage-free
Most rage-induced
Most Suggestive Content Without Crossing The Line
Shortest Functional Game
Most Random and/or Annoying Sound When Picking Things Up
Most Things On Screen Without Lag or Crash

Like most game development competitions, there are rules, however, the rules here are more laid back and simple:

1. All game content must be created within the set time. Note: You can use other music, placeholder graphics, etc. as long as you are allowed to!
2. Your game is not required to follow the theme, but would greatly improve your chances of winning. Unless almost every other game is not following the theme, it is almost guaranteed that your game won’t win anything.
3. You must work alone, and you must create everything included in the game.
4. All game creation tools are permitted, such as GameMaker, Photoshop, Flash, Paint, etc.
5. All game extensions/DLLs are permitted. If you want to make it multiplayer (if you are using GameMaker), go ahead and use 39dll.

What do the winners get?

The winners will have the opportunity to post a message on the Hack-a-Jam website itself, whether it be something random and funny, like “I LOVE banana chicken pancakes”, or an advertisement such as “Play my new game TODAY!”. The winners will also get badges to show off to their friends and the gaming community.

The official 4th Hack-a-Jam starts tomorrow (Friday), so ready up for a double game jam week (if you are joining to Ludum Dare too next week)!

Hey guys!

Looking for established high-profile music? Don’t want to search websites for that one awesome track?

Then go check out Matthew’s Big List of Public Domain Songs!

Features several dozen folk-songs and classical pieces, used in such games as

• Flotilla
• Vampire II: Bloodlines: The Masquerade (at one point in the background)
• Tetris
• Peggle
• Unstoppaball DX (shameless plug) (sorry)

Go check it out. Also features some pointers to locate more awesome usable tracks.

-Matthew