Saturday Update!

Hello again, the weekend is here!

Last week was still a bit rough for me so I didn't get in as many hours as I hoped ^^; I had some pretty bad panic attacks and insomnia on Monday night so I was out of commission and couldn't work on Tuesday. I did recover pretty well though and was back in action on Wednesday. Then I lost half of Thursday because workers came and replaced my windows [ FINALLY!!! ] and it was just too loud to work [ okay, and I was also super anxious that someone in the building would knock on my door and fight with me about it, but luck was with me this time and no one bothered me 🙏 and you can't even tell they were changed from the outside so I think I got away with it haha ]

Still, even with all that, I feel like I'm doing okay now and that I got a reasonable amount of work done.

I've been plowing ahead mostly with new tracks to fill purposes on my list of things I need. I think it's best if I make SOMETHING for each role first before I start going back and trying to improve tracks, I don't want to drag this out forever so I need to prioritize getting the basic audio built.

I'm remembering all the ideas and critiques you guys have been giving me in the comments though! I'm gonna keep it all in mind for if I have time to go back to make improvements and for making future stuff. I really REALLY appreciate all the critiques I've gotten. You guys are always so sweet about it, and legit everything I've read made total sense. I'm very grateful to have your help with this! I think the music is going to turn out better than I hoped for and a big part of that is the advice and ideas you guys are giving me- so BIG THANK YOU!

Okay! Let's get on to the actual tracks! As usual, it's mostly gameplay loops [ these don't have intros/outros or as much variance as full songs, because they're made to play on repeat in the background seamlessly for gameplay ]

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basement_night_loop.mp3:

This one is really more 'background vibes' than 'music', since it's made for when MC is sitting alone in the basement at night. I wanted a very slight 'puzzle game' sort of vibe to it though, since this game has more gameplay for these sections than the BTD1 Strade route did.

I'm actually pretty satisfied with this one! The one foley scrape near the end might be a bit much though LMAO

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struggle_loop.mp3:

This one is very short and very simple 😂 It's for a really specific gameplay screen that comes up a few times in the game [ the STRUGGLE! bar ] which, in normal gameplay, isn't going to be on screen for longer than 5-10 seconds. I mean you can sit there fiddling with the struggle bar to make it stay up longer but I don't think it needs a long loop at all.

Here's a gif of what I mean:

I can go into the code later and adjust the pulsing of the bar to hopefully match the BPM of the loop too :D

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saw_loop.mp3:

There's a audio term 'SAW' that stands for 'Surface Acoustic Wave'. This isn't named after that 😏

It's fairly long for a loop as well since it will probably be in the background for a fair amount of time. There's a substantial enough amount of gameplay surrounding the saw that I felt it needed its own background track.

I think I'm actually pretty happy with this one too. I might still change it later, but I'm proud of how I worked with chopped up samples. Definitely good practice in stuff that I wasn't working with much before this.

[ fun fact, the 'buzzing sound' that makes up the melody IS actually a SAW in the audio sense LMAO ]

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ren_loop.mp3 and ren_loop_attack.mp3:

I agonized a bit over these ones. I've talked about it a lot before, but Ren is quite different in this new game compared to his portrayal in BTD1. That's one of the things I wanted to change the most.

I wanted his normal loop to be slow, mysterious, and a mix of hopeful and hopeless sounds. Something that isn't quite 'good' or 'bad', and sounds a bit 'warped'.

He also needed an 'attack' loop for if things go wrong. It has some remnants of the original loop, but the mood is obviously more aggressive.

I think these are at least close to what I want. Like everything else, they might get tweaked though.

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WordsAreSuchGrossMachineryv3.mp3:

This was mostly just a reward for myself on Friday evening 😂 'Words are such gross machinery' is a song I built way back a few months ago when I first started playing with the program. I wanted to open it back up and make some adjustments again to hopefully make it better [ hence it being 'v3' or version 3 ].

Some of you long time followers might remember the phrase from the title of the Tumblr blog I used to have. It's a quote I love from the Dune books, specifically the third book 'God Emperor of Dune'. The titular 'God Emperor', a man who fused with a sandworm and lived for 3500 years and ruled over the known universe as a bloody Tyrant says the line. "Words are such gross machinery, so primitive and ambiguous". I interpreted it as this character knowing so much vastly more than a regular human can know, and still feeling frustrated with the limitations of language, still feeling unable to express himself fully. That spoke to me, as I've always felt like I just can't quite ever express what I really mean, no matter how many words I use. Words themselves are boxes, drowning in connotation and the varied personal experiences of whoever hears them...

ANYWAYYY

This song is just more like a little pet project of mine LMAO I may end up using it on the Credits page of the game though, if I can make it as good as I want. Or if I can't find anything better to use 🤣

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My time is running out! I need to do my Etsy shop work!

Stay safe, stay connected, and know we're in this together. See you next week!