Jar Of Eyeballs

Most indie game developers don’t create their own sound effects. This requires either a recording studio or a synthesizer (and the skills to use it). I have tried to make sound effects with a synth program once and unless your name is Jean-Michel Jarre, don’t expect anything too impressive. The best way to obtain sound effects or music for your games is to buy or download them.

A few things to keep in mind when you do this. First of all, never use sound effects or music that are ripped from existing games. Ever! This violates copyrights and can get you in serious trouble. It doesn’t matter if your game is freeware. Just don’t use copyrighted stuff without permission. The good news is, you don’t have to, even if you don’t want to pay!

If you don’t want to spend money, you should look for Creative Commons-licensed content. Creative Commons means you can use it freely, without paying, if you follow the rules of the license. What those are depends on what sort of license is applied. What all licenses have in common is that the user has to give proper credit to the original artist. The most basic license, the so-called Attribution license, gives you the most freedom. You can use this content for any purpose, even commercial, as long as you give credit. Other licenses prohibit commercial use, modifications of the original or the publication of the finished product under any other license. For a complete list of licenses, see the Creative Commons website.

The best source for Creative Commons sound effects is the Freesound Project. This is a gigantic library of free user-submitted sound effects. Although not all of them are good quality and you’ll probably have to do some searching before you find something good, this is probably the best place to start looking. Of course, a quick Google search will reveal other libraries, but this is definitely the biggest one.

For music, a good place to start is Jamendo, a Creative Commons music sharing website. It’s not really aimed at game developers, but if you search in the correct genres (techno, industrial, instrumental, …) you’ll probably find something useful. Keep a good eye on the license, though. If it’s a “no derivatives” license you’re not allowed to modify the song and you can only use the complete, original song. You won’t be allowed to cut a segment from it and loop it, for example. And speaking of Creative Commons music, Nine Inch Nails has released the entire Ghosts collection and The Slip as Creative Commons!

If you can’t find the sound effects you’re looking for for free, you’ll have to buy them. Individual sound files aren’t very expensive, but you can also buy disks with entire collections wich cost quite a lot. I would never buy an expensive sound effects collection unless I’m sure I’ll use most sounds from them. These collections are of more use to professional developers and movie studios. A selection of sound effect stores:

• Sound Dogs; Gigantic collection, accepts Paypal
• Sound Rangers; Sound effects and music loops
  
• Sound Snap; Allows you to download 5 free sounds per month

All these sites have previews of the sound effects. These are either low-quality or have an audio watermark. When buying sound effects, keep an eye on the license. In some cases, you’ll have to select the license yourself (for example, a license for games, movies, radio shows, …) wich will affect the price.

And finally, you can have sound effects or music custom made. The forums at Gamedev and Indie Gamer, for example, have sections where musicians and sound effect designer advertise their portfolio and you can ask for custom work. Keep in mind that this won’t be cheap!

Yesterday I went to The Efteling, a theme park in Holland. It has been years since the last time I visited one (I think I was 14 the last time). The Efteling is the biggest theme park in Holland, and one of the oldest in the world. It started in 1952 as a fairytale forest. Basically, it was just a park that contained scenes from all sorts of fairytales. For years, it was aimed mainly at children, but in the 1980’s the park started expanding into other age categories.

Probably still one of the most famous rides in the entire park is the Python, wich was one of the first steel rollercoasters in Europe. It’s not very big, and the entire ride lasts only about 20 seconds (not counting the initial climb uphill), but it’s pretty intense, and it does four loops in ten seconds (two vertical loops followed by a double corkscrew). Another famous - or rather infamous - ride is the Half Moon, a swinging ship. Until recently, it was the biggest ever built (the biggest one now is somewhere in Japan). It’s infamous because from time to time, people vomit on the person who’s unlucky enough to sit in front of them. I didn’t get on it this time (not enough time), but last time I did, I decided to sit all the way in the back because I didn’t want someone else’s stomach contents to hit me. Big mistake! At the ends of the ship, you swing much higher, and this one swung very, very high. I felt sick as hell when I got out of it.

The most recent addition to the park is the Flying Dutchman. A very long waiting line, but definitely worth it! It starts out as a boat ride in a tunnel. First, you go through a dark hall filled with fog, ending up near the bow of a ship. There, the boats come out of the water and it turns into a rollercoaster! You make a first descent into darkness, after wich you climb again and come to a stop. Then, you hear a ghostly voice say: “You shall sail into eternity”! Google the legend of the Flying Dutchman for an explanation of this, because I’m too lazy to do so. Next, a door in front of you swings open and you shoot outside. Although it doesn’t do any loops, it’s still an exciting ride. It goes through a tunnel, does a few bunny hops and takes a very sharp turn. At the end, the tracks go back into the water with a big splash. Technicians can adjust the barges to make the splash bigger or smaller. Since it wasn’t very hot yesterday, it wasn’t a very big splash and we all stayed dry for the most part.

There was also a wooden rollercoaster, but unfortunately we didn’t have time to ride it. The park was incredibly crowded. What we did do, though, was the Piranha, a rapid river ride with round rafts. We made a big mistake to save that ride for end, though, because I got soaked! Rides like that are more something for very hot days, but it was quite exctiting. Good thing I had a towel in my car, so I didn’t soak my seats too much on the way home!

A very exciting day, but too bad it was so crowded and we got there an hour after it opened (at 11 am). Good thing it was kept open a bit longer, until 7 pm (usual closing time is 6 pm). During the summer, it’s open from 10am until midnight one some days! Perhaps I’ll visit it again, so I can do all rollercoasters.

Efteling website

A few days ago I asked everyone to mark June 1st on your calendar on Twitter. What’s so special about that day? It’s the release date of Wasabi Defense! Yes, the game is finally about to be finished! It’s also my birthday, but I guess none of you really gives a fuck about that. It’s also the birthday of Alanis Morisette, Morgan Freeman, Heidi Klum, Justine Henin and Sarah Wayne Callies. But since this has nothing to do with game development, I’m gonna shut up about that.

I finished my work on the last boss today. It took me a long time to come up with something that I’m satisfied with but I’m pleased as hell with the result. Here are a few screenshots:

Here he’s firing the laser cannon. This will kill you in a single hit no matter what, so stay out of its range! And to make escape a bit trickier, he fires two streams of plasma balls down in 45° angles.

A fiery barrage of burning plasma! Here you’re getting targeted by a heavy cannon and two rapid-fire guns. The only way to avoid them is to keep moving and take them out as fast as possible.

And finally, bombs! The final boss is equipped with two bomb dispensers that rain destruction on your base. The automatic defense can’t possible stop them all, so you have to take out the bombs as they come falling down.

The entire ship rotates from time to time, exposing different weapons. You’ll either be targeted by the laser cannon, or the plasma cannons and the bombs. The bomb dispensers, rapid fire cannons and plasma cannon can all be destroyed individually and have to be taken out before the core becomes vulnerable.

The original idea for the boss was a row of connected spheres that moves like a snake. This turned out to be much harder than I thought. The problem was making them follow a smooth path and keeping them at exactly the same distance away from each other. Also, they had to rotate in the exact direction they were headed and there I faced a very though problem. Let’s say, the heading of the a segment is 340 degrees, wich is to the right, pointed slightly downward. Let’s say the heading changes counterclockwise to 30 degrees. Instead of the segment rotating counterclockwise to 30 degrees, it rotated clockwise, all the way around back to 30 degrees. No matter what I tried, I plain and simply couldn’t solve this problem! That’s when I decided to ditch the idea and start from scratch.

So all enemies are finished. What’s left now? Building the final level, wich should take only one evening. The game ending, high score screen, credits, tweaking the gameplay a bit and writing some documentation. This all shouldn’t be too hard, so I expect to have the game finished and published in two weeks.

Here’s another fun zombie shooting game. You’re a survivor in a zombie outbreak and have barricaded yourself. The undead are coming and you’ll have to defend yourself with nothing more than a handgun.

After each attack wave, you’ll have twelve hours to repair your barricade and search houses in your village. You can find other survivors (who can help you defend your barricade), weapons, traps and supplies.

The supplies you find can be used to travel to other nearby villages. Once you have searched every house, there’s no point in staying and you should move on. You should try to get to Union City in 40 days after the start of the outbreak.

At first, the game is very easy, but once you have left your hometown things get much more difficult. When I first moved to the next village, I got my ass kicked bigtime! I had two other survivors with me, and as soon as one of them is dead, you’re screwed. The game is controlled with the keyboard and mouse. You move with the classic WSAD-combination, wich was a pain in the butt for me since for some reason, here in Belgium we use the azerty keyboard layout instead of qwerty, wich seems to be the choice of the rest of the world.

Play The Last Stand II