Dev Diary - 8 May

5 May 2021

Audio is being way more of a chore than I had anticipated. When I first started dumping in placeholders, they all sounded really good and fit really well. I figured with how easy it was to find those, finding ones I intended to keep in the game that were royalty-free would be a synch! I just have such a picky taste for how they should come out, each explosion or gunshot or noise at all doesn't seem to satisfy me. They are either too hyper-realistic and sound wildly out of place, or they are so 8-bit that it feels more appropriate in an old arcade than in this. Sure, this game isn't gorgeous, but it's certainly no 3x3 pixel block game. I'm finding a few things that I'm happy enough with, but it's a lot more uphill than I thought.

6 May 2021

I lucked out really well with the aliens! Both of them had plenty of clips to use for varying circumstances, and they sound incredibly unique while still fitting within the universe. I'm excited to shoot them each time! Some things are still a bit of a struggle, like finding a "I've been rescued" cheer that doesn't sound too excited but not too indifferent. I tried sighs, grunts, laughs, affirmative "mhm"s and just can't quite seem to fall in love with anything. The male crew members I just decided to do myself, but the females took hours of looking through different audio sources and websites to find one I was happy with.

7 May 2021

Time is definitely helping with the audio. The more I play through the game while experimenting with the latest sounds, the more I can live with the older ones. I was really hoping to get an androgynous voice for the protagonist so that males and females could feel represented, but I couldn't find anything and settled on a pitched-up version of my own voice. It's not great, and I'm worried it will just blatantly come across as a male, but I wasn't able to find anything else. I definitely didn't want to make it robotic, even with the helm, because that would make you feel too much like the aliens.