Porter's World

Audacity

Anyone who works with audio needs a good program. When it comes to game design, audio is incredibly important, and there is always a bit of editing that must be done. Many people are under the impression that they need to pay for expensive audio software, or even hire someone to do their audio work, this isn’t true. Audacity is a free audio program that will cover all the basic needs of a game develop, and with ease. I won’t cover the entire program, but I will go over the basics that a game developer doing sound work will want to know.

Adjusting Volume Levels

An annoying issue that many games suffer, is the lack of unbalanced volumes for sounds. Having headphones on and suddenly hearing an ear piercing sound effect is the last thing your players want, and believe me it happens. To keep your players pleased with the audio of your game, and to allow them to hear all of your sound effects properly, it’s important to balance the volume of your sounds. Doing so in Audacity is incredibly easy; simply open your audio file, highlight the entire sound (or specific parts if you feel like getting fancy for whatever reason), go to Effect, then Amplify. Here you can drag the bar left and right to alter the volume change. Remember that going negative will decrease the volume of your sounds. Test your sound after each adjustment to see if you have the desired volume. I suggest having your music done first, this way you can run the swf and listen to your sound over the music as well. You should also keep your computer volume at a constant volume as go through all your sounds adjusting their volume, this will ensure that in the end, you’ll have a library of sounds that will work well together, and stand out over your music just the right amount.

Cleaning Up A Music Loop

First off, and most importantly, you need quality music to work with. If you’re looking for sources, check out my article on music for games. If you’re taking the free approach, and using music such as that which can be found in the Newgrounds Audio Portal, you’ll likely need to do some editing to the tracks before they’re ready to use. If you download a song from the net, even a loop, you’ll still generally have some work to do, depending on the source. Once you’ve selected a music loop, go ahead and open it up in Audacity. You’ll see no issues at first glance, in fact, testing the loop will sound as if it will loop perfectly; in reality, it will be alright, but nowhere near perfect. If you click on the magnifying glass tool, found on the top left in Audacity, you can zoom in on the sound waves to get a closer look. Take a look at the very beginning and end of your audio, you’ll find that there’s a straight line of absolute silence; even if this is 1/5 of a second, it’s going to show (You may have to zoom in multiple times to see this). Zoom in as much as needed and remove the silence as best as possible be selecting it with the mouse, and pressing delete. Do this to the end of the loop as well, removing any silence found at the end of the track. Now for the testing phase. Highlight the entire track, then press Ctrl + C to copy it. Now click on the two arrows pointing to the right in your playback toolbar, this will take your current selection tool to the end of your track. Paste the entire track by pressing Ctrl+V. You should now have a file with your loop copied twice, the copy starting immediately at the end of the original loop. If you successfully removed the silence at the beginning and end of your loop, you should be able to play the sound file and hear absolutely no hiccups in the middle where the repeat is taking place. If the loop still doesn’t sound right, and you’re certain you removed all the silence and copied the track correctly, it’s safe to say that the “loop” you downloaded wasn’t the greatest loop after all. If all went well, press Ctrl + Z until the copy of the loop is removed (this was only needed to test that it does indeed loop). You now have an excellent loop and are good to go, be sure to save the file as a .WAV as well as .mp3, having both is always a great idea. If you’re using flash, you’ll want to use the .WAV file, this will ensure a perfect loop after flash compresses your file to an mp3. If you’re using something else, such as FlashDevelop and Flex to compile, you’ll be forced to use a .mp3 file since .WAV’s aren’t supported. There is a work around for this, however that’s a bit complicated and will be a different post for a different day. All in all, if you’re using flash, use the .WAV file and you should be good to go.

Creating A Loop From A Non-Looping, Full Length Track

If you’re not finding an existing loop with the feel you’re looking for, worry not. Many non looping songs will have portions of the song that can be taken out and turned into a loop, doing this is actually a common task for me, and I find it rather effective. This is where the true power of an audio editing program comes in, you can get some quality loops in a short time, without spending a cent. Take a look at the song Cobalt Blue Sphere, notice how long the song is, and the fact that it isn’t a loop. Now take a look at one of our past games, Gravibounce, created by Andrew and myself of Epic Shadow Entertainment. Go back to Cobalt Blue Sphere on Newgrounds, and listen to the song from 3:58 – 4:25. As you’ll see, this is the portion of the song that you hear in Gravibounce; it was cut out using audacity. Another example of me doing this is in my first solely developed game, Dominus Void. The song “Lost”, by Ryan Stevens, or Reasoner as he’s often referred to as, was edited by myself to be a title screen loop, it came out rather well. With a good ear, some patience, and a free program like audacity, you too can create great loops such as this. This is far more complicated then simply removing the silence before an already created loop, but it gives you a track that nobody else has ever used, and one of great quality. The trick is to listen to the song closely, and use your ear to find a portion of the song that can loop into itself. When you’ve located the proper position, roughly cut out everything before and after the portion of the song you’ll be using. Be sure to give yourself some extra wave length, this is a good idea seeing as you can remove whatever you want, but you can’t add to the file once you’ve removed too much. Zooming in during the editing process will also give you much more accuracy over what you delete, and you can often see where the new measures starts due to the visual increases in wave length. Use your ear and closely narrow the intro down to the first beat of a measure, this is usually pretty easy to determine in a song, unless it’s something with a tremendous amount of percussion. Once you’ve got the intro down, edit the end of the file so that it ends at the end of a measure, this is usually after 4 major beats as most music is in 4/4 time. Be sure to slice only a little off at a time, then use the testing method as mentioned earlier. Count the beats as the loop plays, if it hiccups before the 4th beat plays, you’ve cut too much off, if it plays a little bit passed the 4th beat, you’ve still got a little more cutting to do. This is an advanced technique, and takes some practice, but it can produce some pretty awesome loops, ones that only your game will have at that. As a rule of thumb, always ask the artist if you can edit their work to create a loop, and always give them credit for their original piece.

Cutting Down A Sound Effect’s File Size

Audio is by far the biggest contributor to flash game file size. Although there are a number of compression options to reduce file sizes for audio, there are also a number of techniques that can be done before the files are even imported into your game’s library. One of the most simple, and effective, is to cut the length of your sound effects. If you open up many of your sound effects in audacity, you’ll notice that the sound waves die out, and trickle for some time, often times doubling the wave length of a sound. Although there is indeed sound going on here, you often times can’t hear it, especially over music. To greatly reduce the file size of effects, simply cut off these trickling endings bit by bit. Each time you cut, listen to the sound to ensure that quality isn’t lost, if it isn’t, cut some more. You’ll be surprised at how much of a sound wave can be cut off before any audible changes occur. Using this method on your entire library of sound effects will greatly reduce your file size, making for quicker load times, and in the end, happier players.

Correcting Audio Files

Ever had an mp3 file that flash just wouldn’t accept? The reason for this is most likely that your mp3 file has a bit rate that flash doesn’t support. You can check the bit rate by right clicking on your sound file, going to properties, then to summary. If the bit rate is not one that is shown on chart below, you’ll likely encounter problems. The good news is, you can simply import your audio file into Audacity, then export it as an mp3 again; this will change the bit rate to 112 kbps, the default bit rate for mp3’s in Audacity.

Bit Rate Chart, Source: Articulate Blog

Conclusion

That’s a lot of power for a free audio program, respect to the authors for such an awesome program. Aside from the above, you can do plenty of other complex variations to your audio files. Some of these include pitch changes, tempo changes, adding echo, adding reverberation, bass amplification, and more. Audacity may not be a full fledged audio program, but it definitely has what’s needed to take care of your basic audio editing needs, and that should be enough for any flash game developer.

Becoming A Game Developer

Becoming a game developer is hard work, really hard work. There are however a few advantages to becoming a game developer that other careers in the world just can’t offer. In order to become a lawyer, you have to go to school, lots of school. In order to become a doctor, you have to do the same. To become a game developer however, you just have to be passionate, have an internet connection, and have the occasional motivation boost.

In the previous chapters of becoming a game developer, I spoke of what abilities will help you excel as a game designer, as well as gave some tips on how to analyze games to further yourself as a game developer. By now you may be wondering what it takes to actually get the job, to actually enter the industry and get a paycheck for your hard work. Sure you can make games, but how do you sell them? How do you get hired? When it comes to flash games, you’re good to go from the start. Unlike other careers, you don’t need credentials, you simply need to know how to make games, and do it well. Anyone in the world can start creating games in flash, selling them, and earning some very nice cash. It takes a lot of work, and I mean a lot, but it is within every single person’s grasp to do so if they choose. I started by making games for fun, but I soon found out that I could get paid for what I was doing. Bottom line is this, you don’t need a college degree, you don’t need to find a boss to hire you, you can self teach yourself and become your own boss overnight.

As I said, I began creating and selling games when I was 18 years old, back in the days of living in my first apartment away from home. One of the greatest things about entering the flash game industry is that you can do it at any age. You can be 13 years old, have a passion for games, take the time out to teach yourself, and instantly hop into making games. You won’t succeed with your first game, at least not on the level you would like to, but practice really does make perfect, especially in the flash gaming industry. I really do wish I had been into this when I was younger, I can’t imagine how evolved my skills would be had I started doing this at the age of 14 or so. Granted I was messing around with flash 4, getting an understanding of the time line and flash IDE, but I never actually touched code until much later. If you’re a younger reader and interested, don’t get discouraged, keep trying and I assure you time and patience will bring you to a very nice place once you get things down. In fact, if you’re a younger reader, I encourage you to start your career early, even if just as a hobby. One of the hardest things I find in trying to make this a full time job, is the inconsistency of pay. Start while you’re living at home, or at the very least get a few thousand dollars to sit on before you go and pour yourself into the job, it may take longer to pay off than you anticipate.

Alright, so you don’t need credentials, your age doesn’t really matter, so how do you actually get started? Adobe Flash is a rather expensive product itself, a great tool, but a bit expensive. I suggest using FlashDevelop if the price of Flash it too high, it’s an amazing program that is better suited for your programming needs than flash itself, not meant for animating, but that can be done in other programs. If you read up on the FlashDevelop page, you’ll find instructions for downloading Flex and other programs in order to compile your projects, in the end, creating a completely free set up. Once compiled, you can either play the swf in the browser, or you can download the flash debug player. All in all, that’s about all you’ll need to get started.

There you have it, you’re ready to start programming games. You don’t need to be any specific age, you don’t need a $600 program, and you don’t need to go to school and earn a fancy degree in order to secure your position. You will need determination, more common sense than the average human seems to carry these days, and a lot of free time, but if you’re reading this I have confidence that you can pass the above prerequisites. Enjoying your job and becoming financially stable doesn’t come easy in this world, and most of the time your caught within the system of going to college and following the rest of the cycle. In the flash industry the opportunity is up to you, you choose how far to go. If you really want this to be your future, get to work and make it a reality, it really is entirely up to you.

Part 1 || Part 2 || Part 3

Becoming A Game Developer

As we’re all aware, or should be aware of, the path to becoming a game developer is not one that can be completed over night. Not only must you have certain mental abilities, but the skills that you must posses can not only exist, but must be refined. For example, I myself have a good eye for what elements in a game make the game more fun, and the elements that just make a game annoying. Despite my keen eye for this, I have a lot to learn, as all developers do. Certain activities should be done on a regular basis to refine the skills needed to be a successful developer, whether you’re a professional or just starting out. Playing games of all types on a regular basis is one of them.

It’s no mystery that playing games is something that all game developers should do. If you don’t play games that are successful, as well as unsuccessful, how can you possibly make a game that will come close to doing great itself? This may be common sense, but it goes a bit deeper. A common misconception floating around game developers and game testers is that when we play games, we’re just playing games. It’s not exactly like that, and if you think it is, I urge you to read on. When a developer or tester is playing games, they’re doing far more than laying back and enjoying some awesome games. As a developer, you must constantly analyze various aspects of games while playing them. Some of these include the length of the game, the fun factor, bugs, pacing, what’s annoying, difficulty, how easy is it to understand, and so on. Each of these aspects is just a main category as well, all can contain sub categories making the list larger than you would expect. It’s these game aspects that you need to pay attention to when playing a game.

Let’s take a deeper look into a specific game genre. Let’s go with any generic “Beat em up” game, Streets of rage, Captain Commando, Turtles in Time, take your pick. When thinking of these games, what important characteristics of the genre come to mind? First off, I would look into the move speed of the character. If the character is moving too slow, then those scrolling backgrounds better be damn pretty or the player is going to get bored fast. Second off, the amount of enemies the game throws at you per each area needs to be carefully thought out. If a game has too many enemies per small checkpoint, it may do one of two things. First off, it may be too hard. These games often aren’t too hard, that is, until one or more enemies decides to attack you at once like the little punks they usually are. Second off, it may make the pacing of the game drag, so it’s important that the number of enemies is too few rather than too many. Next, what makes this game stand out from the others? Almost every game out there has another game like it, if not many, so it’s important to have a few original features. In these games, that usually consisted of special moves (such as the cop car in streets of rage, or the different abilities for the 4 characters in Captain Commando). Although walking around and beating guys up is fun, the occasional destructible terrain such as boxes or phone booths is a very welcome addition. Looking back to difficulty, it’s important that there are enough items laying around to replenish your health (such as the infamous piece of meat on a place), but it’s also important not to have too many as this would decrease the difficulty dramatically. As far as level design goes, it’s important to keep the visuals new, and the way the level progresses interesting. For instance, most levels move left to right, the end resulting in a boss fight. It’s important that this isn’t the case in all levels. Elevators leading to new floors, holes in the floor to drop down into, getting on trains, hopping onto moving trucks, and many other forms of level navigation add to level design greatly and help mix things up. As you can see, I’ve gone into some pretty deep detail as to what should be examined in a “Beat em up” game. That said, there’s plenty more that could be examined; this is only a start, a nice start, but a start none the less.

Playing games doesn’t sound so fun now does it? Well it is, so don’t let the above get you down. Playing games as a developer is definitely hard work, but it’s one of the best activities you can do to get yourself to become a better game developer. In addition, a true game developer can analyze a game while enjoying it simultaneously. That said, if you’re a game developer in the works, or someone who’s just forgotten about how important it is to analyze games, make sure you really tear what makes a game what is apart next time you play.

Part 1 || Part 2 || Part 3

Becoming A Game Developer

There’s a lot of work needed in order to become a game developer. People often feel that if they have an artist who can animate, and a programmer who knows the language, that they’ve got a team ready to produce quality  games. In reality, those skills are just the tip of the iceberg. A team ready to produce games may be true, but nothing at all says those games are going to be of quality. It takes a lot more than knowing the coding language you’re using, or being an excellent artist; game design itself should be thought of as the third skill required along side programming and art.

I myself excel in my ability in game design. I admittedly lack in programming skills greatly in comparison to what I wish I knew, but I make up for that with my ability to both detect what makes a great game, and how to build one. I find it odd that most teams don’t feel they need a project manager of sorts, someone who understands how games work, what games are good, and what it takes to make them. The team doesn’t necessarily need someone dedicated specifically to this, but one of the artists or preferably programmers should have this skill.

The reason I give this position so much credit, other than the fact that it’s my strong point and I’m proud of it, is that it truly is a concept that I hope more teams embrace. We’ve all come to accept that average art won’t do, if you get higher quality art you’ll see your game value multiply by at least two-three times, if not significantly more. That being the artist’s job, we can look at the programmer now. The programmer is supposed to know what the game needs, then program it. They simply look at a set of instructions and bring the game to life. The last position, again in my opinion usually the secondary skill of the programmer, if not both members, is to know what it takes to make a great game. This however does not mean that the artist cannot have the mind set of a programmer and contain these skills as well, I simply imply that I believe them to be more common among programmers. They need to get over the hype of the game idea and analyze if the game will actually be quality fun; far too many games work as far as functionality, but when it comes to fun they’re simply a bore.

You may be wondering why I suggest that the programmer is the one who holds the magic of the third skill, the answer is simple. The programmer generally knows how the game works from the ground up. They must know how the ideas suggested will co-exist with ideas currently out there, and leave room for ideas to come. That being said, the programmer really shouldn’t be some guy reading an instruction manual on how to build the game, he should be deciding how the game itself is built. This can be done with a firm knowledge of programming, however it’s significantly easier if you possess the skill of understanding how games are built, as well as what makes them fun.

If you’ve already got these skills present within your team, you’re in great condition. If you lack these skills however, I highly suggest you look into partnering with somebody who has experience and understands the above concepts. They may seem like common sense at first, but it’s things like this that make the difference between the average games on the net and the big hits. I’ll continue on these thoughts with follow-up articles elaborating on how you can gain such skills yourself or refine what skills already exist. In the mean time, check out some other useful articles such as, The Importance of Plot and Game Inspiration, to help get yourself prepared for becoming a better game developer.

Part 1 || Part 2 || Part 3

Raider Episode 1

They just don’t make games like they used to, or do they? Some developers do indeed make them like they used to and Raider Episode 1 is proof. Raider Episode 1 looks and feels like an incredibly refined NES game. It offers incredible challenge, simple controls and tons of platforming goodness. In my opinion, Raider Episode 1 has definitely come the closest any flash game has ever come to delivering the challenge and feel of a a great classic NES game.

As I mentioned, Raider Episode 1 offers an incredibly challenging experience. It is by far too challenging for any casual flash gamer, but it delivers an experience unlike any other flash game on the net today. The level design is fantastic, the enemies simple, yet fun, and the distance between check points far enough to nearly drive you crazy, but close enough to keep you addicted and trying over and over when you die and start at the last one. The art is very retro, but refined to appeal to those who dislike pure 8-bit graphics, which is a smart move since I’ve found that points are often taken away in the public’s eye if you go too retro. The music is awesome and the sound effects incredibly retro and fitting. There are 3 difficulty modes for players to select, the easiest still being a bit too hard for casual flash gamers, and the hardest challenging the most hardcore NES veterans. For those who really desire a challenge, the game awards you a rank after completion which ranges from E to S, S being the best. This rank will be saved to your computer and read in when playing future installments of the game as well. Regardless of the difficulty selected, there is enough difficulty in this game to satisfy anyone with a thirst for challenge.

Unlike most NES games, Raider Episode 1 does in fact have a story. It’s going to be slowly introduced throughout five episodes. You play as Arkus Zei, a space pirate in need of some currency. Arkus is told of a rumor regarding a great ship filled with relics from a civilization that long ago destroyed themselves. Out of curiosity you pursue the coordinates you were told and indeed arrive upon a large ship. You must navigate this ship in search for relics and escape with the loot. You are armed with a close range sword and a long ranged blaster to defeat any threats you encounter. In addition to the default story, players will be able to see a slightly altered version of the story in the final installment, if their rank throughout all five episodes meets the requirements. The story is interesting enough and most will enjoy the additional content, and those who don’t can simply skip it. All in all it’s a nice addition that helps wrap up the package for this great game.

Overall there can’t be enough said to do this game justice. The game did suffer some rather low ratings on the net, but that’s unfortunately the result of developers holding the hands of players and making things too easy in modern day games. In the end, Raider Episode 1 is perfect for anyone looking to go back to the NES days or a great challenge, definitely give this game a fair play, you won’t regret it.

What NOT to do

One of the most important things developers need to keep in mind when creating a game, is that you need to avoid annoying the player at all costs. Whether this be avoiding tedious level design, making sure your player doesn’t have to grind in your latest RPG, or simply making menu items contrast well so they don’t have to squint for navigation, you really need to make sure they don’t get bothered by anything. A very popular mistake many developers make is to combine mouse support with keyboard support, but make both mandatory on the same screen.

Out of all things a quality game can do wrong, this is probably the biggest. There’s nothing more annoying then dying in a keyboard controlled game, and having a menu pop up in which you must grab the mouse and press retry, rather than pressing enter or space to continue. There’s really no excuse for this, it’s simply poor design. It may sound minor, but small aggravations such as this really drive players away. Not only will players stop playing your game, they may even be so angered at the moment of quitting, that they’ll drop you a zero vote as they mutter how much the game sucks before leaving the page. This is clearly something you really don’t want happening with games under your name, it lowers it’s success and builds you a bad reputation.

We’ve now gone over what not to do, so how do we stay away from an issue as gargantuan as forcing the player to use both the mouse and keyboard in places where it’s entirely unnecessary? I have a few ideas, but I’ll share just one of them, don’t. When you design a game that uses either mouse or keyboard (but not both) for gameplay, stick to that throughout the whole game. If you play the game with the keyboard and you die, make it so you can retry with the keyboard, there’s no reason to have your user reach for the mouse only to press a button so they can start over. It’s highly recommended that you always add mouse support to increase sponsor click-throughs, but don’t force it, always permit the player to use what the gameplay uses, as well as the mouse.

It really isn’t hard to avoid, but far too many developers forget how annoying this can be to the player, which is a big mistake. I’ve seen some popular artists do this in some rather large titles, and although these games did great, I find it perplexing that such a great artist made such a novice mistake. That’s about all there is to know regarding this matter, pick a control scheme and stick to it, and always allow the mouse in addition to keep your sponsors happy.