Soundfonts!

In my ongoing 'share the knowledge' series, here's one about Soundfonts. If you not interesting in writing music, this probably won't interest you. There. You have been warned.

I didn't know about Soundfonts until recently, so there's a good chance other composers won't either. This one's for you!

Soundfonts can be used by audio applications such as Cubase and FL Studio. They're usually a collection of samples from one instrument. Soundfonts are easy to create, which explains why there are so many free soundfonts to be found lying around the Net.

Here are some of my favourite free soundfont sites (sorted on usefullness, best one at the top):

• DarkSword (all great, but especially grab Squidfont Orchestral)
• Nando Florestan (This guy made some very high quality soundfonts, just get them all)
• HammerSound (loads of 'em, though with lots of broken links)
  
• SoundFonts.it (Quality differs a lot, but also check out their free VST's if you have Cubase / Fruity Loops)
• HomeMusician (very nice site overall, there are some diamonds between the coal)
  

Soundfonts have the extension .SF2 - if you encounter .sfArk, that's a compressed file. You can open it with sfArk.

Last advice:
If you're looking for a specific instrument, try googling "soundfont instrument". It's how a found a tin whistle (which I used in the score for Damsel).

Games, seriously...

Something's been bugging me for a long time:

[rant modus on]

Why is it so difficult to make an adventure game about real people & their problems?

I know games are meant to be escapism, but why does it have to be pirates and science fiction all the time? Surely someone must care enough about the world to have something to say about that world?
Now, before you say "Well, who are you then?", yes, I'm no better than the rest. I've made a game which uses a fantasy setting and am working on a comedy game right now. But that's where this is coming from actually: I like literature, and am very annoyed that I'm not writing a better story.
The fantasy settings are probably used so much because they're easier: lots of examples to inspire you and no research necessary.

To be honest, I have no clue how to make what I want.

Adventure Games have one serious limitation: there must be puzzles to solve. In my opinion that limits my serious game to an investigation.
Why? Let's say you'd make "Cast away - the adventure game". So you're stranded. Puzzles are about making a shelter, getting food, etc. But then the meaningfull human part ("Oh, I'm so sad I'm stranded here") is no part of the game, since you'll have to deal with that in cutscenes.
The puzzles are no part of the story.

Only in an investigation you could that: as you solve puzzles you learn more about the story, and the player will pay attention to the story because it might contain clues. So why don't we see any of those?

Good question. Come to think of it, what I'm describing seems to be a computer game version of Citizen Kane.

This post has been an attempt to put my thoughts into writing. I didn't post this immediately, and now suspect Diamonds in the Rough might be the kind of game I'd want to make (but I'm not sure, since I haven't played it).

3D & Me

Normally on the Grey Zone, my comments are neither black or white; hence 'The Grey Zone'. In this post however, I'll display total and uncompromised optimism.

When drawing in 2d (and we all know that's the only amount of 'd' you need for Adventures) it can really help you to make a 3d model first.
Now, I'm not very good with numbers. I still have nightmares where I have to make sense of all those x,y and z co-ordinates. Spiders, giants, falling... it's all a walk in the park compared to that.

So I braced myself, made some coffee, cleared my agenda for the day and decided to find me a 3d model of a greyhound bus.

And it's freaking easy!

Just google 'free 3d models' and you'll be bombarded with 'em!
I tried archive3d.net and got my screen full of 3d objects, links to pages 1-300 and a link saying: next 300 pages. I said I'm not good with numbers, but even I know that's really a lot of fucking images.

Only problem: I don't have a 3d editing program. Hm.
It seems googling for '3ds viewer' didn't give me a lot, but two freeware viewers did a good job:

LynX 3d Viewer. You can get Lynx 3d Viewer Lite at the ozone3d website, but you'll have to register, so better get it here.

Viewer3ds. Didn't try it. The only reason I mention this is because these guys are weird: their unique selling point is that their program uses animated buttons. Ok ok, so those buttons are cool, but what do I care when (in their own words) "[Viewer3ds] does not use the latest 3ds reading engine." ? All their other products do!

Frog 3d. Not only a cool name, but also a pretty darn good program: you can open any 3ds file, rotate it with the left mouse button and zoom with the right button. Easy peasy.
It doesn't show any textures though, but if you're using it just to get some reference images, it's all you'd need.

Visitors are among us!

A few weeks back I put up a counter, and you know what? The whole world is reading this! Only place that doesn't visit my blog is the antarctic. Here's the top 11:

17.27%	Australia	5.45%	Austria
13.64%	Netherlands	4.55%	Cuba
13.64%	United States	3.64%	Romania
7.27%	Germany	3.64%	South Africa
6.36%	United Kingdom	3.64%	Greece
6.36%	Canada

As you can see, Australia is definitely in the lead. No worries, mate!
They're closely followed by the Netherlands and the US. Und wir grussen unsere Deutsche gaste!

The funniest thing was seeing that someone visited my site through a translation proxy. Not having any trouble with English myself, I never knew you could do that, and it was interesting to read my own site in Portugese. I wonder if I translate well?

Anyway, back to working on Adam utiliza el transporte público. And if anyone has played Diseño poco inteligente, don't forget to leave a comment at the AGS database ;-)

The Nearly-There-Blues

Yep. I'm at that step of development. I've done all the easy work, and losing interest. That's probably the upside of being a team; you can motivate each other. I'm just me, and frankly, I'm not a very motivational guy.
That's probably why Ben There, Dan That is so much fun, you can just picture those two guys making up joke after joke, the one competing with the other.

There no real cure for the nearly-there-blues, but one thing that really helps me make progress at the moment is having a to-do list.
You can work on one problem at a time - it's great to delete things from the list and see the release date getting closer.

Well, that's what's up at the moment and here's something tangible:

Lip service

Anyone else struggling with talking animations?
Here's a small tutorial from an (now) experienced noob:

This is my finished animation.
The guy has an almost square jaw and a neck as big as his head, to give him a tough guy look. (The big brushy eyebrows and stubble also help ;))


It's comprised of 4 images. Of the strip below, the first image is his normal face. I'll show you how I drew the other three animation frames:

(Funny how the second image makes him look really fat - those 5/6 pixels can really alter a picture)

This guy talks as angular as his jaw is: the mouth became the upper lip, so I drew the opening of his mouth under the mouth in the original first pic. There's enough room on his chin to make it still look natural.

In the second one I made his head go up one pixel:





I started by moving half his head one pixel up. In the last pic I added one black line to the top of his mouth, because it looked better.

The third is where he pouts his lips:





I just started by removing the mouth all together, then drew in a little O-shape.

The animation sequence is: 1. original - 2. open mouth - 3. original - 4. open mouth with head higher - 5. lips pouted.


There ya go. Three simple talking pictures drawn, but it looks a lot better than just opening and closing his mouth.

The long overdue update

My progress with Ken&Adam is pretty good - in fact, so good I forgot to post here. I've finally gotten some flow going with drawing backgrounds, so no major hurdles to tackle anymore.

The only thing still left to really think about is the bus interface: in Part 1, you're using the bus to go from one place to another.
My idea is that there's this map in the bus station where you can look up places and then find the place where that bus stops. You'll have to constantly go back to the station, and I'm a little worried this will look like a cheap way to make the game longer.
So the station will be a minor puzzle where you'll have to find the right bus stop and dodge busses when crossing the station.

It's always dangerous to make predictions, but it won't be long now before the first part is finished. All the descriptions are scripted, a few funny responses written and I've even snuck in an easter egg, which I'm sure no one will get ;-)