Anyway, this is going to be another general development blog rather than something about specific progress. This time, I’d like to talk a little bit about sound effects. For the most part, retro sound effects are a pretty simple affair so even a novice like me can produce them pretty easily. They are generally comprised of simple waveforms such as square and noise, manipulated in various ways to create different sounds. Below is a small sample of a few sound effects:

To create these sounds I use a web-based application called Bfxr: http://www.bfxr.net

There are similar applications but I find Bfxr the most accessible with many modulation and mixing options. If you aren’t comfortable with what all the sliders do, there are even randomized presets on the left that can be clicked multiple times until it outputs something reasonable, though once you’ve used the tool for a bit you’ll probably skip the presets altogether.

I’m not going to write some kind of in-depth tutorial, but I do have a few tips. The most important step is to select the basic waveform at the top. For anything that’ll have a sort of melodic tone, I like to go with the square wave. Square wave is also useful for adding some oomph or bass to a sound. For sounds that I want to pop or swoosh, noise works best. The attack, sustain, and decay sliders basically determine the amplitude envelope of the sound effect. By that, I mean how long it takes the volume to ramp up, how long it stays at that volume, and then how quickly it fades out.

Frequency sets the general tone of the sound. Frequency sliding is critical. Sliding downwards can give a sound some thump while sliding upwards can give it some spring. For a square wave, that can mean a big bass drum or a jumping sound. For noise, it might be a punch in the gut or a sword slash. If you mix in delta sliding, it can add another layer of complexity to this.

Some other sliders that are fun to play with are related to frequency jumping, or pitch jumping as the tool labels them. Rather than smoothly sliding between a spectrum of frequencies, you are instructing the sound to instantaneously hop from one pitch to another. You can select how large the jump will be–low or high–and also instruct how long it should wait before making that jump. If you incorporate the pitch jump repeat slider, you can approximate something like a siren or chime. One thing to keep in mind is that your pitch jump onset and repeat speeds are absolute rather than relative to the duration of the sound effect, so if your sustain/decay aren’t long enough you won’t hear it, so you’ll usually have to adjust those sliders accordingly.

The tool also has an invaluable mixer tab, which you can use to combine different sounds into one, complex sound effect. This is important if there are multiple stages to the sound or if you want to combine different basic waveforms together.

There are many other useful features but I consider those to be the most important to get most things accomplished. Bfxr is a popular application and I recommend it to anybody looking to create their own sound effects rather than relying on mismatched samples floating around the web.

• RPG romp through an undead infested castle
• Turn-based combat devised around a system of combo attacks and finishers
• Specialize your abilities in one of three combat styles, or hybridize for versitility
• Retro NES video and audio

Story:

The game follows an old goat named Marcus on his adventures through the sinister Necropolis, a towering citadel inhabited by all manner of zombies and vampires. There’s only one little hiccup to this plan: Marcus himself is a member of the undead! The circumstances that led him to this state aren’t understood, but Marcus is determined to destroy the forces of evil, the Count which commands them, and to unravel the mystery of his own rotting flesh.

Gameplay:

If you’re familiar console-style roleplaying games then you probably already have a good idea what this will play like. Explore dungeons, increase your character’s power over time, find and equip powerful weaponry, and defeat your enemies in turn-based combat.

Necropolis was actually conceived around its battle system–everything else sort of sprung up around this central idea. It’s an interpretation of old-school, turn-based combat in games like Dragon Quest, but with my own twist. Instead of having a standard “Attack” command, the hero has a dozen of them. The catch is that these abilities are intended to be combo’d together in specific orders to trigger even more powerful “finisher” attacks. The details are difficult to describe in a short paragraph but will be blogged about at some point in the future, probably with video.

Anyway, as you become more powerful from defeating foes, you can specialize the hero’s abilities at each level up. Marcus has three development paths that are labeled Basic, Finesse, and Power. Basic tends to offer sustainability, Finesse is about capitalizing on the situation at hand, while Power focuses on raw damage dealing. Each “mastery,” as I call them, has an assortment of attacks, spells, and passive traits associated with it–granting you something new to play with every level up.

Aesthetic:

Anyway, the era of video games I grew up with is the best era (this is an objective fact, obviously), so everything from the graphics to the audio will emulate the NES style–with 8-bit graphics like this:

Low-fi sound effects like this:

And retro music like this:

I think the style has a sort of timeless charm about it and it’s been fun trying to recreate that appeal.

So, next weekend I’ll probably blog about… I don’t know yet, but it will be something.

So, I’d like to share a little bit about what goes into creating this music. First, check out the sample below:

This track is the theme for Marcus, who is the protagonist of Necropolis. The general theme I was going for was one of cool-headed determination and I think it turned out pretty nicely. I also mixed in snippets from Noelle’s theme (which you can probably find a work-in-progression version of under the title “Manor” if you browse my Soundcloud) at the 45 second mark–a melody that has sort of become the unofficial theme of the game.

Like everything in Necropolis, I’m trying to simulate the NES, so the instrumentation is comprised of simple waveforms. It uses one square wave for the melody. During portions of the melody I apply a small low frequency oscillator to the pitch to give it a vibrato effect. The guitar is a square wave with a 25% duty cycle, giving it a little twang, but with rapid decay/release to make it sound like a plucked instrument. The bass pattern is a simple triangle wave. For percussion, the snare, hat, and crash are noise waves, while the kick drum is a square waveform which undergoes a rapid frequency slide. The NES actually had a very low quality PCM channel which was used for more complex waveforms in percussion and sound effects, but I like working with the square/triangle/noise restrictions more.

I create the music using software called FL Studio, which I’ve found both intuitive and fun to learn. You basically create individual patterns (or loops), arranging notes in a piano roll interface. You then assemble these patterns into a complete song. For this song, the finished playlist looks like this (click to enlarge):

At some point I’ll blog more about my creative process rather than the more technical details of music composition. I plan on writing a new blog post every week about some facet of Necropolis. Next week’s will probably be a general overview of my design goals and the basic features that are planned, which is probably what I should’ve done this week, but whatever.

Anyway, I’ve also finished some of the other layout functionality and I’m assuming it’s 100% done until I encounter something broken.  Next week I will start adding content to the media pages at the top, or maybe sooner.