Devlog: Sound and All the Obstacles That Have Come With It

So we're back today to talk about one of the core additions to the Straight!? remake and the one that I've ironically been the quietest about:  Sound. So let's jump in and get everybody up-to-date on what's been going on and where things are.

Again, long post here but I like transparency. I'll do some bullet comments at the bottom for those of you who have zero patience with my ramblings.

Licenses and Legality

One of the biggest things you'll see in indie adult games is the use of unlicensed sound and music. The primary reason for this is cost. Music and sound can get very expensive very quickly. However, it's always impressive when someone uses a track that you've heard-- kinda like you'd see in a movie soundtrack-- but they probably didn't pay the $100k to get permission to do that. Obviously, long-term that can create legal issues and ultimately stop production of the game. I'm also not ok taking donations for this project while secretly stealing the music content from other sources. It's one thing to not complete the paperwork correctly but it's completely different to just take stuff.

The goal for Straight!? is to create an adult game that's actually legal. When I use sounds or music within the game, I will have an actual license from the artist or distributor granting the game permission to do that. I've had zero experience in this and during the original rough draft of the game, I never wanted to suddenly have noise halfway through the game. As a result, I was never able to actually practice using sound in the way that I did with some visual techniques like depth of field and the lighting changes. So the revamp will be the first time that we hear the world of Zack and Braden and that couldn't be more intimidating to actually create.

When I decided to add sound, I didn't realize how much of a time sink it is. I spent an entire week going through websites and had nothing by the end of it. The process was infuriating but it was a learning experience. Since then, I've continued to jump around on multiple pages, one of which I now have an annual membership and I'm pleased to say that I've purchased music rights from another website for the main menu theme.

Another problem that some may not realize is the actual permissions that some artists will allow you to use the sound/music for. For example, early on I found a track that I fell in love with for Straight!? and I spent a pretty significant amount of time tracking down the name of it, only to find that the artist would not allow it to be used for anything related to adult content. So even if I was willing to pay for rights to the song, I wouldn't be allowed to use it in the game due to the mature content. Other artists will only allow their content to be used on certain platforms like YouTube or Twitch-- but not in software or games. Just dumb stuff like that that really adds to the hassle of it all. Which is probably also why a lot of people pirate shit because it's way harder to actually do it legally and they intentionally make it very difficult to do.

The solution right now appears to be that I'll be using several sources and websites to pool music and sounds together. One website is just simply not going to have everything that I'm looking for. That's fine. Using multiple sources will just make things more diverse anyway.

Right now, I have 3 tracks that will appear in the demo as well as a handful of subtle sound effects like doors closing, boxes shuffling, chatter in the cafeteria, showers running in the lockers-- stuff like that. They're already coded into my demo and I'm generally happy with the ambiance for being a complete noob at this.

Adding Sound/Music and Some of the Obstacles to that

There's a lot of editing that goes with sound such as looping the content and trying to make that seamless in areas where it needs to be seamless.

There's also an obstacle with timing when working with a medium where we're dependent on the reader. If you're watching a movie, the pace of the movie can control when a sound or the way music can be heard. Think of a horror movie using some dissonant sound then making a loud bang when a certain event happens. When you're dependent on reading speed, you have a lot less control over things like that. So there's going to be a learning curve there and I'm sorta playing it by ear. I will fully admit that we could see some slow modifications of sounds or music editing as the revamp progresses, much in the same way that we saw that with image quality, as I learn the ropes. However, Jordyn has some good sound editing experience and he's going to be probably bailing me out of most of these problems so we'll see.

When you're working on game development, it's insane how long very petty things can take to fix. Jordyn and I had a long conversation last night about showers and sounds. Turning the water on, having a static shower sound and turning the water off. All three of those may require overlaps or additional edits, splicing; the workload can balloon very quickly. Sure, I can ignore things like that but people notice it and they will message me-- a lot. I joked awhile back about another game that had a character playing a guitar in it and I laughed because in my head, I could hear that developer's inbox filling up if the fingers of that character were not on actual chords. Some people lose their minds about things like that. You could work months on a game update and someone will send you an angry letter over a guitar chord, lol.   So I have to be careful and try and strike that balance and it does command attention to fixing those issues, even if they take extra time.

The good news is that many of these sounds will be reusable. So every time they go to the shower, we can use the same sound. Same with the cafeteria. Stuff like that. So initially looking for sounds and editing them is taking some time but that investment should pay off for the future when we reuse them.

Main Menu Coming Soon

So in terms of music, I'm hopefully going to have something to share very soon. I've purchased rights to a song that will play during the main menu video when the game boots. We need some edits done on this right now but I do want to give you a taste of just hearing something from this world so stay tuned. I'm probably going to just post the opening video with the music on top in it's own post here on the page.

Demo Coming Soon

We'll also have the first demo coming very soon hopefully. I will warn you that it's pretty short. Much shorter than what you've come to expect from past updates around here. Basically, I'm just going to do the first day of meet-and-greet, the cafeteria, shower, and bed. The actual plan I have right now is to try and recreate the way the original game was released, stopping at the exact same times episodically that long-term followers will remember. This will simulate the old school release while still allowing me more time near the beginning of the game (where the updates were shorter) to do more work and edits. 

These new sets took a little longer at the beginning but it's good setup for future development in terms of lighting and stuff like that. But the demo would showcase a few environments you've seen before and hopefully justify what my vision is for this thing. Right now, I'm polishing up some writing and we gotta finish up with the sound edits than hopefully I can get the demo out for people to see. It's bootable now and I've already played through it a few times and I'll say that regardless of the visual expectations you have for it, it's probably going to meet those, if not exceed them.

Summary

-We've purchased music rights to keep the game legal and are currently editing sound effects and 3 music tracks to appear in the next release and a handful of subtle sound effects

-Outlined some of the obstacles to sound and what I've learned from it moving forward

- Main Menu with Soundtrack coming soon to the Patreon Page hopefully and will likely have it's own post devoted to it.

- First Demo of Straight!? v0.01 is coming very soon as well once sound edits are complete but is very short and will likely only include the first day of the game as a test.