Music Sounds Better With You

Hi again, dear reader!

I'm back with another mid-week update. I was supposed to write last Friday as well to sort of tie the knot on the full week, but I was down with a fever after last Wednesday and nothing fun to write about my work on the project. Luckily, I recovered fully during the weekend and have been back in full action since this Monday!.

Sound design is a strange one. Music, grunts and ambience have occupied my mind between 9-17 this week. While I am the feature owner of level design, I have rarely touched upon that area to a larger extent for a while now. I finished writing the level design philosophy last week in the GDD and another designer has been doing mockups based upon that philosophy. This has allowed me to help out in other areas instead. This week it has been sound design.

I haven been looking in the depths of my mind (and youtube) to find solid references for the intended sound effects and soundtrack. Sometimes it's really tricky to find a nice reference. Let's say you want a sound effect for when the protagonist charges her weapon in order to make a stronger attack. You have an idea for the sound; you can hear it clearly in your head.

Finding a good source or writing a good description of the sound can be immensively, since it's likely an artificial one. Yet you hear it so clearly in your head. It has definitely been more time-consuming than I expected the monday morning.

Today I finally got myself a proper headset with a functioning mic! Up until that moment, I didn't have a mic so talking to others who were at home was problematic and sometimes a little annoying. Strangely enough, I sometimes found myself excluded, even though I was the one who was in school since I could barely hear people with my previous headphones and couldn't really talk back either. Now that problem is solved and load has been lifted off of my shoulders.

Another new thing that happened today was a quick meeting with another designer (the one who has been doing level mockups) regarding the demo level that will be shown this Friday when we have our alpha presentation. The designer showed me a level and I gave some feedback and suggestions regarding how it could be updated.

It was a pretty brief conversation, but it felt great to just do a little bit of level design-related work again. I believe that the following week is when level design starts for real, so I will soon actually begin working within that area again. I can't wait!

Title song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQlAEiCb8m0&list=LLRtZAVdhQ6XZ3GccYjmjzwQ&index=7