Week 64: more sounds
Added 2024-01-26 18:44:09 +0000 UTCThis week I worked on sounds. I started by looking into the software libraries that I am using to manage sounds in my engine: SDL and SDL_mixer. After inspecting the source code of SDL_mixer, I concluded that I’ll need more functionality than what this library provides. In particular, I’d like sounds to be played slower (with pitch distortion, similar to the game Braid) when objects move and experience time dilation. This means that every sound could be played at a different speed depending on how fast its emitter moves. That shouldn’t be too difficult.
What could be tricky is having sounds working correctly when transforming from one reference frame to another one. Anyway, for this week my goal was to only explore this area, look for potential software libraries to adopt and assess how much work I’ll have to do.
I also wanted to start adding some sounds. As a first step, I decided to stick with SDL and SDL_mixer and keep it super simple. I spent quite a bit of time searching for sounds at https://freesound.org/ and elsewhere. I attach a video that shows where I got. I think that’s OK as a first step, but I’ll need to do more work on this front. Also apologies for the broken lighting.
I spent the second half of the week fixing an engine bug that emerged while playing the game on an older Android smartphone. I think the engine is now more robust. My aim is to release a development build soon. This won’t be a proper demo release (which should happen later in February.). It’s just to let patrons try out the game with the new sounds enabled.
