More animation for the bee player characters.

#pico8 #gamedev

I’m working on the SFX and music. For this project I’ve planned ahead by choosing a key for the entire game (A minor pentatonic), so I can deliberately make each sound either harmonious or discordant.

I started by making the bees each hum a tune while they are flooding the board with their colour. The tunes combine to form different rhythms and harmonies during the game because the bees start and stop flooding at different times. It sounds somewhat like Terry Riley’s “In C”. So much so that I’m going to explore the effect further, add more tunes, and tweak how the bees change the tune they hum.

For maximum pun value, I should transpose the audio into B minor.

Hmmm… I should have realised this from the start, but writing procedural music involves twice as much work… writing music, and writing algorithms for generating music.

Diverted into writing tools to edit the sfx to make it easier to write the procedural music...

#gamedev #pico8

The procedural music system now comes up with quite catchy tunes. Each play through starts with the same phrase, but soon forms its own rhythms created by the interplay of the phrases playing on each channels and whether the variations of the main riff are played as treble or shifted to the bass. #pico8 #gamedev #chiptunes #music

Another play through from the same algorithm (because I cannot attach two audio files to the same mastodon post).

#pico8 #gamedev #chiptunes #music

During gameplay, the choice of
musical phrases for each channel is affected by the actions of a player, and the collisions between the players, adding more variation to the music. The more conflict, the more the music becomes staccato and atonal.

#pico8 #gamedev #chiptunes #music

It turns out to be quite tricky to synchronise #pico8’s update/draw loop with its audio sequencer and mixer. After quite a bit of experimentation I’ve found a method for controlling procedural music that doesn’t drift unpleasantly out of sync with the audio.

I’ve found some unexpected (and undocumented) behaviour of #pico8’s sfx and stat APIs. I hope I’m not relying on a bug that will be fixed in the future and break my code.

Now I need to write audio loops that the algorithm combines into interesting tunes (and not just interesting for fans of Stockhausen and early ‘70s German rock).

Although that suits me fine!

The title screen and music for Color Clash. The music always starts with the same simple tune, but evolves differently every time it is played, getting more complex as the phrases shift and interact with one another, and are repeated in different timbres and registers. #Pico8 #GameDev

A play-through of a quick one-player game against three bots. I mange to beat them! The music is affected by the gameplay. The more aggressive the game, the more disjointed the music sounds. #Pico8 #GameDev

Commit message of the latest bug fix: "Stop winners swearing on the podium"

#GameDev #Pico8

An improved algorithm for the "hex" map style, that creates more variation, more branching, and more intertwined areas. And so more opportunity for barging other players. #GameDev #Pico8