Music Complete! Next Challenge, Sound

That's right, I've gone through the entire game and added music where I want it. It was painstaking sometimes, but I gotta say: it is satisfying how it changes seamlessly to match the scenes in a lot of cases.

This also means I'm done composing music for now. I don't know if the entire rest of the game will be able to ride on the back of just 4 music tracks, so I'm willing to compose more if it gets too repetitive, but for now I think it stays varied and interesting enough overall. I'll be listening to feedback on that front once this update is released.

But BEFORE that, I have one more task: Sound effects. This refers to sensual vocals and creaking beds.

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I have two main obstacles to deal with here. The first is wrangling and doctoring satisfying audio. The second is figuring out how I want to program it.

Currently, the plan is this: Have an ambient male voice track, an ambient female voice track, and an ambient sound effect track (bed creaking, blanket friction, etc.). Layered on top of that, I'd like an "active" male voice track and an active female one. I'm not sure if I want an active sound effects track, but let's assume I do.

This means potentially 6 different tracks. And I'd have 3 separate volume controls (male voice, female voice, SFX), so the ambient male and active male would be on one volume slider, for example.

I'll confess, right off the bat this introduces a potential problem. The music is split up into different tracks, and sometimes, especially when skipping, I find the music can get out of sync with itself. This is horrible when it happens, and adding additional CPU load by throwing in multiple voice tracks will likely exacerbate the problem.

I would like to keep the ambient tracks very simple. Either soft moaning or soft kissing. The active tracks would be more tied to the dynamics of the scene, so when it gets more passionate and frantic, the active tracks step up while the ambient tracks remain the same. This isn't based on nothing; AAA Japanese VN's often do it this way, and it's surprisingly effective, though they admittedly don't do the male voice, and the female "active voice" is also voicing everything she's saying and stuff, which I'm not gonna do.
Personally, I don't like the hardcore self-insert philosophy these VN's so often have, hiding the guy's face and voice as much as possible, so I don't mind going against the grain there. Obviously, I'm not shy about showing Flin's face, and I'm not gonna be shy about giving him a moaning voice during sex as well (though you can mute him).

Wrangling and Doctoring Satisfying Audio

It helps that this work is softcore. That means soft sounds, and nothing too crazy. Honestly, even just a gently creaking bed sound and nothing else would go a long way for me. But add in some soft moans, some soft kissing, and that could be a pretty awesome little soundscape. Very breath-heavy type of stuff.

I don't think satisfying, soft audio loops will be very difficult, but when it comes to matching the dynamics and intensity of the more passionate moments, it's hard to say if heavy sighs will deliver. And more intense stuff will be harder to make sound good. I'm gonna have to experiment. Do I want gentle skin-slapping? That's a tough one for me 😂. I'll tell you right now though, no "squelching" lol.

Programming challenges

I am playing with two ideas in my head right now. The first would be the normal option: go through every single sex scene in the game and say, "play this sound here, and this sound here," etc. This is what I did with the music. This is standard.

The second option would be to go over EVERY SINGLE FUCKING SEX IMAGE IN THE GAME and tell it, "When you get shown, play X sound track." This would be tedious, but it would mean that every sex scene in the game would basically just work as-written, and all I'd have to do is go through each one and silence things at the end.

The second option would probably actually be the easier option, but it poses a problem: What if I want to show a sexy image but NOT have it play a sound effect? For example, when Flin flashes back to scenes he's guilty about? There are also cases during sex scenes where an image is being shown on top of another image and I fade it out but don't hide it. It could lead to the wrong sound effect taking precedence. This method also has less control in general, like if I want to fade in the sounds on certain times.

I'm trying to figure out the best course of action. I like my code to be as clean and efficient as I can manage.

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I'm gonna be honest with you - while I strongly believe good sound design could greatly augment the experience, I haven't proven to myself yet that I'll be able to deliver adequately on that front. If I reach a point where I feel like the sound stuff just isn't coming together or isn't worth the effort, I may abandon it and just stick with music being the only audio in LLRR.

I'm not saying I expect that to happen, just...be prepared, is all.

Once I nail some things down, I'll be back with more to say on the matter.
I can confirm that what I got sick with was in fact covid (two tests, positive), but I'm very nearly recovered. As always, thank you all for your support!! You make a bigger difference than you'll ever know.

Later! ~🎶❤