Week 7 (Making A Soundtrack For The Game Over Screen)

Hello. I am Martin Månsson. I am the sound director for the game ”Potato Pirates”. For this last blogpost I will not talk about sound effects like the last few weeks, and I will also not talk about graphical assets like the weeks before that. For this very last week I will talk about one of the soundtracks in the game. That soundtrack will be heard during the “Game Over” screen. We (or I to be more precise) never had the time to make our own musical work. So we used a melody which does not have any copyright, or else we might get sued. The melody is called “Amazing Grace”. That melody is commonly used at funerals, so I thought that it would fit very well as a “Game Over” soundtrack. It also fit the fact that “Amazing Grace” is very popular in the United States, where our game takes place by the way. Our version of “Amazing Grace” is supposed to be played with a trumpet like during funerals.

I did not want to download a soundtrack from the internet. Instead I wanted to record this melody myself. I have for a very long time been playing the trumpet, so I pretty much have the skills to play “Amazing Grace”. There was however a huge problem. I haven’t been playing the trumpet for about six months, and I also don’t have the time to practice before our game will reach “Deadline”. I tried to play “Amazing Grace” and I must say that I cried a lot when hearing my version of the melody. Not because it was beautiful like other versions but because of the reason that my version sounds terrible. It didn’t sound nice at all. I had to take a lot of takes before it sounded decent. I used my “Blue Snowball” to collect the sound and “Audacity” to record it. If you want to know more about them, then you can read about them in my past blogpost from a few weeks ago that is called “WEEK 4 (Making a canon out of a plastic bottle?)”. You can find the link to that blogpost here: https://martinmanssonblog.wordpress.com/2016/03/03/404/

I felt very ashamed of my recording of “Amazing Grace”, and the shame would rise within me when I decided to edit the melody in “Audacity”. It was necessary to do that. When playing I could not play very high, so in “Audacity” I gave it a very high pitch to make it sound somewhat better. I also cut out the worst parts of the recording and replaced them with re-recordings that I did later, and made them match each other by “copy pasting”.

This is how my version of “Amazing Grace” sounds:

The picture is used as a “Game Over” screen in the game and is made by a fellow group member called Sakarias Ståhl.

I am not proud of this soundtrack, but it somewhat fits the moment. I think it sounds like the one who is playing the trumpet has a hard time holding the tears back. I can’t show how the recording sounded before editing, because that soundtrack got lost in the process. But maybe it’s for the best that no one will hear that soundtrack ever again

That was all that I could talk about “Potato Pirates”. I hope that my posts have been interesting to read and that you hopefully have learned something from them. Have a great time until next time I will upload something.

Martin Månsson

Week 5 (How To Make A Propeller Plane Out Of An Electric Shaver)

Hello! My name is Martin Månsson. I am the sound director of the game “Potato Pirates”. Last week I talked about how to make a sound effect for the “Potato Canon”, and this week I will talk about how to make a sound that sounds like a propeller on a plane. The game will take place during the 1920’s , so we will be using propeller planes as both the player avatar and as enemies (like the “Fighter Plane” which I was talking about a couple of weeks ago). So basically we needed a sound that would make the player feel like he or she was flying in a propeller plane. From the very second when I found out that we would make this game, I got this idea on how to make the wanted propeller sound.

But as what I’ve always been saying for the last couple of weeks: “We never prioritized sounds over the graphical assets”. The only thing I could do was to kindly wait until we had the needed graphical assets. So when the time came, I brought forward my microphone (The “Blue Snowball” which I talked about last week) and my electric shaver and went to work. Why would I use an electric shaver? That’s because it makes a vibrating sound. And even if the tune is very high, I have the power to pitch it and give it more bass with the help of the computer program “Audacity” (which I also talked about last week). I don’t know which kind of shavers that makes better sounds than others, but I believe that any electric shaver that makes some kind of vibrating sound will be of good use. But if you however feel that you someday will record sound with the help of an electric shaver, then remember this very important detail: Never forget to recharge the shaver before going to work.

When I finally got to record the sound that the electric shaver makes, I hold the shaver to the microphone (while recording of course). I didn’t move the shaver around at all, since I didn’t want to make the sound which I recorded to change in volume. No, I had to hold the shaver very still during a couple of seconds to make the sound as stable as possible. If there would be anything in the recording that’s irregular it would mean a disaster. If that irregularity would be implemented into the game it would be looped and played every 7-9 seconds. The player would notice that irregularity and that might drive him or her crazy. So the shaver needs to be hold still.

This is how the recording sounds like:

 

When the sound is recorded, I also had to edit it in “Audacity”. There I lowered the pitch to around the same tune as how I imagine a propeller plane has. I also raised the bass to make it sound a little more powerful. Furthermore, I lowered the tempo. That is because the speed of the razors sounds a lot faster than a propeller.  The last thing I would ever do with this sound was to make the sound loopable (If that’s a word). I did that by cutting the sound in the beginning and in the end where it sounds exactly the same. Then I played the looped version and listened carefully if there was any irregularity at all. There wasn’t any irregularity, but it could as well have been like that since that is a common occurrence while trying to make a sound loopable. Technically, my job is done. But the sound itself is not done. The sound will now be transported to the programmers who will give the most fitting volume for the sound. As the sound is now, it is probably a little too loud for its own good and it is nothing anyone would like to listen to all the time while playing. But all we have to do is to lower the volume.

This is how the edited recording sounds like:

 

Next week will be the last blog post, so I hope I will have a last great piece of work to talk about.

Martin Månsson

Week 4 (Making A Canon Out Of A Plastic Bottle?)

Hello! My name is Martin Månsson. I am the sound director for the game ”Potato Pirates”. As I promised last week I will talk about sound for the first time on this blog. Yes, sound is important, but that is something that never had a high priority in comparison to the graphics and codes for the game. We had to be sure that we had a decent working game in the first place.

I finally get to talk about sound and this week I made a bunch of sound effects. I can however just talk about one of them in detail. The majority of the sound effects I recorded and edited myself. And I had a lot of fun making them. The best of them all (according to me), and also the most fun of them to make (also according to me) was the sound that is supposed to be heard whenever the player shoots away a potato with his/her “potato canon”.

The canon is supposed to seem very harmless, even if it does quite some damage on the enemies. So I didn’t want any explosion sounds, nor did I want any big bang sounds. Instead I wanted a “poof” sound. To be more precise I wanted that special kind of “poof” which appears whenever pressure is released from a closed pipe, which is exactly how this “potato cannon” works.

It is really easy to make this sound. I just had to get the materials to make it, and that material would be a plastic bottle. To be more specific I used a 1.5 liter plastic bottle for this task, since it makes a lower tone compared to a smaller plastic bottle and wanted that lower tone. What I did to make the desired sound was to put the opening of the bottle to my lips. There should be no gap between the opening and the lips. What I did was to add some pressure inside the bottle, so then I would have to blow air through the opening of it. While I keep blowing air into the bottle, I would then quickly pull away the bottle from my mouth to release the pressure. The sound will then appear.

I do have a video showing how I made the sound, but I don’t want to show my face here because of reasons. So it will be hard to show you since I use a part of my face to make this sound. But I believe that I have given proper instructions for how to make this sound. So I will just give you the result. This is how it sounds:

 

What I want to do is to record that sound, or else this would serve no purpose at all. To collect the sound I used a microphone called “Blue Snowball”. It is very affordable for having such high quality. So if you want to record a lot of sound for a longer time, then this microphone is what I recommend. But a microphone is not everything that is needed. Microphones will only collect the surrounding sounds. I also need something that records my sound. I use the program “Audacity” which is great for both recording and editing. You can by the way download “Audacity” for free from this website: http://www.audacityteam.org/download/

As I said, I recorded my sound with the help of “Audacity”, but I also had to do some editing. I gave the sound some bass to make it sound a little more powerful. I also changed the pitch somewhat, but it is not necessary to do that. I just did what I felt was fitting for our game.

Here is the outcome of the editing:

1. That plane is by the way the player in ”Potato Pirates” and it is designed by Gustav Larsson (Awho is a member in our group) and also a little bit by me. The animations are made by Gustav alone. Next week I will hopefully get to talk more about sound effects. Because there is so much stuff that I want to talk about making the sounds. But there might also appear other tasks that I feel would be more important and valuable to talk about.

Martin

Week 3 (Making spritesheets)

Hello! I’m the sound director for the game ”Potato Pirates”. My name is Martin Månsson. Instead of sound I will once again talk about graphical matters. That is because sound still does not have very high priority comparing to the graphics. Last week every single sprite for the “Fighter Plane” (which will be one kind of enemy in our game) was complete. To make this “Fighter Plane” animate in the game I will also have to make a “sprite sheet”, which is a picture with every single sprite of the graphical asset lined up beside each other. The first thing that usually comes to mind when trying to make sprite sheets would probably be to line up every sprite beside each other in “Photoshop”, since “Photoshop” is very famous as an image editor program. That is a very time consuming idea. The reason behind that is that if one would make a sprite sheet in “Photoshop” one would have to expand the canvas. Then one would have to move every single sprite and place them beside each other with flawless precision. That is reasonable, if you just have 2 or 3 sprites to work with. The number of sprites for this “Fighter Plane” that I have been working with is 62. Try to make all that work in “Photoshop” in a week while doing other important tasks. It is possible to do it with “Photoshop” though. I am just saying that there is a much quicker way to get the same or even better results. To do that, one will have to use the program “Glueit” that is free to download from this site: http://www.varcade.com/blog/glueit-sprite-sheet-maker-download/

What “Glueit” does is that I give it all of the sprites that I want to use for our game (in order of course). Then “Glueit” will line up all of the sprites and make a flawless sprite sheet (depending on that the sprites are not complete shit).

So that is what I did. However, I believe I must have lied when I said that every single sprite is complete. Sure, the images for the sprites are complete and it is possible for them to be lined up in a sprite sheet. But to make it easier for our game to process the sprite sheet I will have to take away all of the empty space in some of my sprites.

 

present Sprite

 

 

 

 

 

Recent Sprite

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Reason why.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That was on purpose though. There is a bunch of stuff that will happen behind the plane and that’s why I put a lot of empty space.  I made all of the sprites  the same size because I did not know that “Glueit” could manage sprites in different sizes, but it turns out that “Glueit” is just that amazing, or maybe I were stupid to think that low of a sprite sheet program. But I did make a little sprite sheet that works in the meantime.

It can move forward, turn and turn while damaged. There is still some work to do before I can actually say that the sprites are complete. The good news is that next week the sprite sheet will be complete. But I won’t talk about next week. Instead I will for the first time talk about sound.

Martin

 

 

Week 2 (The sprites for the fighter plane are completed)

Hello! My name is Martin Månsson, the sound director for the game ”Potato Pirates” who is helping out with the graphics for the time being. I can report that all of the animations for the fighter plane I talked about last week are done. But it was somewhat challenging, to the point that I had to stay up all night to complete the rest of the sprites. The animations that were left to do for the fighter plane this week were the turning sprites. Turning sprites for a plane is not really that hard to do. All you have to do is to make the wings shorter by using a combination between cropping out with the ”lasso tool” and moving with the ”move tool” in ”Photoshop”. Followed by painting some shadow where the light has a harder time to reach. Just to add a little more depth in the fighter plane I moved the upper wings a bit to the left and the lower wings a bit to the right when the plane is supposed to turn left. Then I had to redraw and move a few accessories like the cockpit, the machine gun and the lower wing to make it look good from this new angle.

Before                                                               After

Then I was going to make a sprite where it turned right. I’m not stupid. I don’t want to redo what I just did. Instead i copied it, pasted it and flipped the image to make a mirror version.

Making those sprites took some time, but it was still manageable. However, this task had just begun. Last week I showed all of the sprites except the turning sprites. Out of those sprites there is a part where the plane is broken, dirty and on flames. That is a lot of sprites. The thing is that the broken plane will still be able to fly in the air, which means that it can still turn. If it’s able to turn in that state would mean that there have to be sprites for those turns. Each and every frame where the plane was on fire needed to have a turning sprite. That is what would take time.

Since the broken and dirty fighter plane that is on fire isn’t as symmetric as when it is intact would mean that I’m not able to copy, paste and make a mirror version of the plane like I did before. So I have to make both turns from scratch. Making these sprites requires however the same kind of work as when I made the first turning sprite. It’s just more advanced, and I was basically used to the working process by this point. When these turning sprites were completed and being put in a sequence (which I made with ”timeline” in ”Photoshop”) this was the outcome:

The red flash in the sequence is there to show you that the plane is being hit. That flash isn’t anything that we have decided to put in the game. Next week I will line up all of the fighter plane sprites in a ”sprite sheet”.

Martin Månsson

Week 1 (Build a fighter plane and destroy it)

My name is Martin Månsson. I am the sound director of Group 7. As the title describe I’m in charge of the sound for the game ”Potato Pirates”. But sound isn’t anything that we prioritize right now. I have therefore been helping out with the artistic part of the game such as making game sprites which is way more important for the moment. A while ago I made this fighter plane in Photoshop which would be our most common enemy in the game.

The plane is made up by simple shapes, since it will become very small later on when it’s on the game screen. So It helps if the player can see what it fights against. That plane was done in a couple of moments. I didn’t color the plane though. Our group has a member who specializes in doing that work. But this plane was about to be a little harder to work with. Because it shall have an animation in which the plane will be severly damaged so that the player will know when the enemy is about to die. That was a little tougher to do, but it was completed on schedule. I would just have to break off a little piece of the wing, and add some fire and smoke. This time I did color the parts I edited. Then it was about time to kill it. Meaning that I would have to make it disappear. That wouldn’t take much effort. All I had to do was make it explode. And it somewhat worked.

Now here is the most fun and frustrating part. I didn’t feel that this animation was enough. The death of this fighter plane needed to make more sense (even if it didn’t make much sense from the start since the player shoots down these enemies with potatoes). Instead of just exploding on the spot, the plane will shred and fall to the ground… and then it would explode. Which meant that I had to make some more editing. This fighter plane was however originally made in one layer because I didn’t plan to do very much with it at the moment. So I had to break apart this plane in several pieces. The upper wings would be teared of and explode, followed by the lower wings which would face the same fate. Tearing off the upper wing would mean that I would have to add a cockpit and and a pilot to make this work. The plane -or what’s left of it- would then fall helplessly to the ground and explode. The explosion would be the same animation that I made before but with a smaller scale to save me some time.

 

 

So there it is. This looks way better than having the ”plain” explosion that I origianally made. We will however use that animation anyways whenever this fighter plane flies into a mountain or another plane by accident.

The yellow flashes is there just to to show that the plane was shot, and it’s nothing that will be added in the game.

Next week all of the sprites for this plane will be done.

 

Martin Månsson