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!

Poker macabre by Felipe Budinich

previous progress:  Phares, WIP 001

So, my setup for LD22 involves using my Laptop as my windows build testbed, and my main PC with a triple monitor setup for development, running Arch Linux with KDE4 and PyCharm as my IDE.

I’m going to be listening to my normal String Quartet playlist (link for spotify users) which is a variety of tracks (mainly Rock, given my taste in music) done by a string quartet. It’s enjoyable, but also doesn’t distract you too much while coding.

That doesn’t necessarily mean I won’t use jMonkeyEngine for 2D though. Its integration with external libraries on the scene graph is phenomenal and I’d like to find a way to utilize, say, Bullet nodes/controllers in a 2D environment. Plus, I find wrangling with LibGDX to be un-fun and rewriting boilerplate code for Slick again is not in my sights. I spent way too much time on simple crap like entity management on the Discovery game from LD19.

I’m guessing using jMonkeyEngine for 2D stuff the hacky way would be switching the camera to Orthographic view and just using objects with lots of volume in the Z axis, since I am terrible with physics.

In addition, there are a few new tools I may use:

• Tile Studio
• The Games Factory/Multimedia Fusion (total last resort, if I’m just not feeling up to speed)
• PXTone definitely, though I mentioned FamiTracker earlier I absolutely loath tracker interfaces and PXTone is like a really, really simple FL Studio to me.

There was some talk between my friends and I about doing the Jam instead, but one of them may be having travel conflicts that’ll prevent them from participating. Oh well. Dare it is.

Check it out. There is an iPhone app version as well as the desktop builds. I think it should be on the Tools page!

As you may or may not remember Urth scored less than desirably( in LD21) in graphics with an overall 2.65. Needless to say that was given priority. Next up was audio, as that wasn’t great either. After I’ve narrowed down the priorities I’ve naturally decided to start working on something entirely different: the level editor. And what a glorious level editor it is! is it? it may be, it’s like asking a chef how good the food he spent all day cooking is. And by chef I mean amateur cook. And by amateur cook I mean someone who poured himself a bowl of cereal. Now I feel like eating cereal, but I must finish this post first.

The music… well I’ve taken the liberty of outsourcing the music to this chap right here so go and listen to his stuff (and like it!). I’m not posting the music here, you’ll have to wait till I submit the game tomorrow, or the day after. If it’s not done in the last few hours it’s not a proper jam at all.

So what have I got to show other than talk of cereal and a link to a music man? Well what’s left? The graphics! Good answer, shows you were paying attention. And what better way to show off graphics than by showing them! No, not a video, but close enough… screenshots!

Let’s begin:

The updated main menu

The pretty-fied level selection menu

The awesome-ized escape mode settings menu

Gameplay screenshot with 100% more magnets

More gameplay

This may not seem it, but it's from escape mode

There are numerous fixes optimizations and tweaks, but nobody can see them so nobody really cares. Next I’ll finish up the win-linux-osx ports and off to markets they go.

That’s it for now, until next time!

There were two soundtrack ideas, I went with the second as the first sounded too annoying, I’d like to hear opinions on that if there are any. Good choice, bad choice, that sort of thing.

Sound effects and first draft music

What became the music

These then became audacity-ed. The impact sound for example is most of the impact noises above overlayed. And yes, all of these originate in one way or another from an old dusty mandolin.

Play the Game

Well actually, everything went pretty alright. There isn’t much that went “completely wrong”. Ah well, I’ll talk about it anyway.

What went (somewhat) wrong

The theme – Because “escape” is such a non-theme. You can put virtually everything in it. In that regard it is even worse than “it’s dangerous to go alone.”

The color-scheme – The main charater needs to contrast with the environment he’s in too create tension. If the main character just blends in, he’s not in jeopardy, he’s at home. So I was a little miffed when I figured out with 12 hours to go that the environment was mostly blue, and I didn’t want to create a red ball again.

I went for a glowy green (which I nailed this time), which nicely contrast with the level. The color-combination is still a bit weird.

What went right

Tile-based level – Having everything in clean tiles made putting this together much easier. This further creates a nice little gag when you leave the tile-set at the end.

Timelapse – I love timelapses. Everything seems ultra-efficient.

The Story – This is the largest amount of story I ever put in a game. Until now I’ve worked under the premise that good games-design has to be the basis, while story is optional. That still holds true, but now I see how an engaging story can pull you into the game.

The end – I love it. Too bad I couldn’t extend it a bit. First you see your friends, an assortment of balls similar to you, but with different colors, core-structures and sizes. You free them, they say a random, possibly funny line, and roll to freedom. You join them, and while joining them leave the rigid, tile-based confines of the main level and enter a free terrain.

I need to expand upon the “friendly ball”-theme more. It’s fun.

The ball-design – Compared to one of my previous games, Unstoppaball, the ball-design is much better. The glowing core is warmer, the outging light shows the strength of the character, and the brightness contrasts nicely witht he relatively dark surrounding.

The Soundtrack – I experimented with my guitar until I found something that was both interesting and fitting to the gameplay. So far it is only good, but nothing special. Also, the loop is off by half-a-second. Need to remember that next time.

What I would have liked to add/improve

Better character-fragments – So far the “remains” of the hero or the enemies are just four to five relatively uniform fragments. With more time I could have created something more complex and organic.

Better score – The score that is now measured is the time you spend being seen. The highscore-list is reversed, which means that people with the least amounts go on top places. This is far from optimal, as there is a “finite” highscore, and after attaining it doesn’t create an incentive to keep playing.

More complex enemies – The original plan of having patrolling enemies fell through due to time-contraints, but I still managed to make something interesting with only stationary guards.

Conclusion

Well, pretty much every aspect came out positive – The game is emotionally engaging, throwing enemies in spikes is fun, the sneaking mechanic is relatively rare, so far I’ve gotten a pretty good amount of votes, critiques are positive, and a good number of people have played it.

Also, I got a review. Which is always nice.

I call this a success. Now let’s see how you will judge this .

Play here | Entry-page

-Matthew

About an hour in I got a basic gameplay and mousebased onebutton control, that probably will be okayish when I go fullscreen.

I’m developing for iOS in Xcode 4. I’ll be using the terminal screenshot script that was posted today. I actually used it in the last Mini LD; and it works reasonably well, especially considering you don’t need to install any extra software, which is nice.

I have my own small library for iOS games, which is the accumulation of what I’ve learned until now. There are still some glaring holes, like that fact that I have no idea how to build/import any kind of map haha! But I’m sure I’ll figure something out. Last Mini LD, I figured out collision detection on my own.

Hmmm, since a lot of entries include photos and stuff, maybe I should do the same. I’m at work, so I won’t be taking pictures of my messy house, however, I started dicking around on some music last night, warming up for this weekend’s challenge (don’t worry! I won’t actually use it. And my “song” really sucks anyway, haha). So I included a few screenshots of that.

Wee!

Just a quick line to say that already 385 people have played Energy Island Conquest (the enhanced beta of my LD mini 28 entry) on Kongregate.

I was just thinking of what Music I should line up for my Ludum Dare Weekend?

I recall a scientific article that said classical music is supposed to be good for your brain.  I know I’m a BG (before Google) nerd, my introduction to my first computer was the ZX81 and they did not have a internet search bar, or browser or internet!

So are you a BG (before Google) or an AG (after Google)?

LD Tip: Play Ludum Dare like a fighter pilot!

Fighter pilots train themselves so they instantly forget any mistakes they make, as even a split second worrying about something that went wrong could take you down in flames.

So for Ludum Dare expect failures, mistakes, errors, dead ends but prepare to forget them fast and fix/drop/work around them faster.

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL229744C56A9E0F7A

Regardless, the music gripped me instantly and tossed me back to what I consider the epitome of W*A*R – Vietnam. The satire of Cannon Fodder and the udder foolishness expressed by both Edwin Starr and Credence Clearwater Revival (henseforth CCR) easily sets the stage for war gone wrong. Beyond this, I’ve had a notion of fiddling with games that work heavily with music. Trying to merge the two has given me three options:

1. Guitar Hero Vietnam (meh)
2. ReZ vietnam (still meh)
3. Compose-a-war (yeh!)

I’m going with the final one. In principle, I’m aiming for an RTS-puzzle hybrid that relies heavily on the rhythm of the music as queues to the player on how to react to enemy movements. This requires some intriguing features not innately accessible in the engine of choice, most notably a run-time dynamic music tracker. Fun fun!

Anyway, to summarize my tools du jour:

Language: AS3

Engine: Flashpunk (custom version integrating RichardMarks’ sound mixer and a few custom fixes)

Sound: sfxr

Music: Pure code (rhythms tested in Musagi and MODPlug Tracker, samples created with sfxr or my vocal cords)

Graphics: Paint.NET

Others: tellusLibsAS, a modest helper library publicly available on Github.

Break a leg, everyone!

What went wrong

The Theme - “It’s dangerous to go alone” was the one on the bottom of my list. Why would anyone vote for it, I thought, when there are so many interesting alternatives, like nihilism, or climbing? Why, indeed. I had nothing prepared whatsoever for this theme, and spent the first 2 hours panicking over what to do.

The Level – It occured to me only later that I could have made this in 2D, or using tile-based movement, either of which would have made creating this stuff considerably easier. Oh well.

Textures – As in “I don’t have any”. Adapting UVs is a grueling and time-consuming task,which I would rather avoid, and spend the time otherwise. Using the toon-shader for all 3d-objects was a great choice, but it would have been prettier with added textures. The terrain clashed with this. I couldn’t use the toon-shader on it (so far I know), and creating extra textures for it alone was not efficient.

Preparation – Slept too little the first day. Woke up at start-time (4am), but forgot to check the theme. Felt unmotivated and guilty for first 36 hours, bevofre I finally kicked into non-stop game-making mode.

What went right/not-so-wrong

Timelapse – It felt weird, at first, knowing that my every move was being recorded. But the video makes everything seem ultra-efficient

Music – this one actually surprised me. I never really composed anything bigger, and I just aimed for something unobstrusive. I ended up with a sweet theme which fits the game awseomely, complements it, and people actually like.

The Title – No matter how good or bad this was going to turn out, “Steampunk Axebots” sounds awesome.

The Scoring system – Your profit is determined by several systems, which are based on enemies killed, health of the robots, extra fuel left, and over-healing. Each robot has an own pattern and unity set of enemies at different times, so it is quite challenging to figure out the best combination. I still haven’t.

The fuel gauge – The rockets can travel only for a limited time, before they crash. I intented this to stop players from hovering over the playing  field or leaving it, but the time-constraint added another tactical layer. The rocket takes some time to reach its target, but once it passed a certain point, reaching the other targets would be impossible. It was however possible, that the robot you tried to heal died while you were on your way, meaning you had to carefully decide where to shoot. But since all robots converge on a central point later in the game, it became at that point possible to switch targets should something happen.

3D-models – My first though was a little knight, which I would have need to animate. Unfortunately, there was no time to either animate one or learn how to include animations in Unity (note to self: learn how to include animations in unity).

Biff-Particles  – They are quite a good substitute for fighting-animations.

Healing-Particles – They look much better than I planned.

What I would have liked to add

More stages – which become increasingly complex and tell a story

A menu – Which I already had  around, but no time, and no good reason (with only one level) to implement

No introduction screen – I’ve always hated these. Dammit, I want to play the game, not read a novel! There are ways to start the game at once, and teach the player on the fly.

Destroyed robots and rockets – Which I would have added were it not for a game-stopping bug I encountered with only 40 minutes to spare

Having the title of the game appear somewhere in the first level – Like I did in Unstoppaball. I love that gag.

-Matthew

-Matthew

Eunaborb

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/26937089/LD20-TakeThis.mp3

Ah and usually I dont sing, so this kind of the first song I recorded, well it’ Ludumdare, anything is possible.

Wanted a break from code, so here we go!

Will get around to more  later. Only about 11 hours down for me.

Listen on sound cloud :

http://soundcloud.com/fuzzyspoon/menuambience
Edit, this goes with the menu :

Untitled Discovery Menu