Creating the sounds of Future City part 2

Part Two (two two two two)

To create some blips and bloops for FutureCity3000 I used a little app called SFXR by a genius guy called Dr Petter

Witness the majesty.

You can play around with the sliders and use the presets to generate different kinds of random sounds. It's heaps of fun!

I wanted to create a little Be-borp! type of sound so I generated a bunch of stuff saving each sound out. After I had some different retro boops saved out as *wav files I imported one into Ableton Live.

Bip!!!

You can use sounds out of SFXR as is for placeholder game sounds which is really badass, but sometimes you might want to throw a few FX on them to make them sound a bit cooler.

Bewwp!!

 Frequency shifter is can re-pitch the sound then mix it back in with the dry/wet control. I couldn't help adding a tiny bit of bitcrushing on before it :) I think this made it even more crackly which you may or may not want depending on how silly you're feeling,

Plate reverb preset I've saved.

A little reverb could be used to soften the sound if it's too harsh.

 SXFR (and bitcrushing) seem to add a lot of high frequency sounds that you might not want. I've rolled them off fairly high at 10K and cut out most of the stuff under 400Hz. I think this gives it a bit more of a speaker sound and helps it to fit better if there's music playing in the background. It's sometimes a good idea to roll off the extreme lows in a sample anyways in case there's some rumbley junk you don't want, but can't quite hear.

BipppBORP!

Finally to make more complicated sounds you could try exporting multiple sounds from SFXR (or your synth) and splicing them together to create something more original.

Try some stuff and see what works for you!

Creating the sounds of FutureCity3000

Obligatory black and white instrument collection photo (not relevant)

I thought I might do a little article on creating the sounds for FutureCity3000.

I don't really have any set method for creating sounds I just do what feels silliest (or the most fun). Something like putting an amp effect on drums.

Here's how I created the dream sounds using Ableton Live:

 Mangle a brassy sample and reverse it!

Add a touch of noise and bit crushing to glitch the sound up a bit.

Then I wanted it to evolve a bit or be a bit more ominous or crazy, so I threw on heaps of Ableton preset delay type effects. The crystal reverb works pretty well.

 

 Finally for a retro feel some detuning. (I read about this on AfroDJMacs site)

There you go! Some weird evolving ominous sound loop!

Soundtrack 3000

If you liked FutureCity3000, check out the FutureCity3000 OST!

Soundtrack features extended versions of some songs, concept art and bonus tracks not found in the game.

	1.	City Slicker 02:56
	2.	Static Streets 01:22
	3.	Dim Stairs 01:53
	4.	Unemployed 00:52
	5.	Dream Sequence 03:00
	6.	Out Of Phase 01:41
	7.	Obscure Security 01:06
	8.	Too Late 02:14
	9.	Log Doorway (Bonus Track) 02:14
	10.	Future Tape (Bonus Track) 01:52
	11.	All Good Things Must Come To An End (Bonus Track) 04:34

Game release 3000!

"A future hacker in a future city! What does the future hold in FuuuuuuutureCity3000? A short and sweet clicking adventure."

FutureCity3000 is available for free at:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/Games.aspx/Detail/1625

Get it! -wwiew!!

Unfortunately it only runs on PC, but perhaps someone will make a mac AGS exporter in the future :)

Wall Paper 3000

I've just created a FutureCity3000 wallpaper it's 1680x1050

Bloom in AGS

When working on the game I had an idea for how to do a fake 2D "bloom" type effect in Adventure Game Studio

It's not really bloom, but I wanted to create the same sort of light-between-two-buildings-effect that you sometimes see in real life.

You can see the light scattering more when you're directly in line with it.

I used a simple glow overlay sprite that would go more or less transparent depending on how close to the glow object is to the center of the viewport.

The effect in game is quite subtle, but I think it adds a lot to the atmosphere.

Unfortunately I didn't have the skills to be able to code this up my self, so I asked my friend Dave "Duzz" Lloyd to help. He created a glow module which I could use to easily add more glows.

I love fake 2D effects so I hope this inspires people to get creative :)

Future screenshots 3000

Another FutureCity3000 screenshot! I don't want to give too much away as the game is quite short (and hopefully sweet) :)