#134 - Approaching the End of the To-Do List
Hello everybody! Last night, I reached a big milestone for my triangle game. All story level music tracks have been completed. Party potato! No, this isn't Discord so I don't have the image. Unless...
Anyway, the last music track that needs to be finished is the music for the test level. I've outsourced Soybean_56 for that, partly because of how tiring it is to create all these unique tunes, but also because, since it is a bonus level, it does not need to be consistent with the rest of the music utilized. I've listened to the two demos he created so far, and oh boy, it is complex when compared to the rest of the music.
I gave him the format that the song needed to be in five distinct layers so that there is proper playback with the in-game music system I created. He said five was too limiting and I didn't want to argue with him about keeping things simple. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ We'll see what the reception is once the game releases, in terms of people's opinions on the track being vastly different.
Other than waiting for him to finish the track, there's not much left to do other than record a bunch of developer commentaries. I feel like there's going to be a bunch, but what will probably end up happening is there aren't that many, but each one ends up being super long. I don't know yet how they will turn out since I plan on them being unscripted. The only commentary I know well is the first one, right next to option to enable commentaries. It tells people about commentary nodes appearing throughout the levels and that the volume can be adjusted using the SFX slider (even though there aren't any sound effects in the game).
Because of my procrastination on working on the last two story tracks, I ended up getting a lot of the tedious and minor stuff done, which I have been putting off for weeks or even months. The game is in a much more polished state now compared to two weeks ago. However, after I finish The Living Threeangle's 0.0.9 update, I might do the bad developer decision and upgrade from Unreal 5.5 to 5.6, which currently has the first preview available.
Unreal 5.6 had some Metasounds improvements that might show to be useful in the future, in addition to other features I might take advantage of. Also, by using a newer engine version, the level editor will be less dated, slightly. Because Unreal can only load maps in the same minor version, I would not be able to use 5.5 maps in 5.6 or 5.6 maps in 5.5. I don't want to end up like Pavlov VR, which had an engine upgrade several years after release. All previous community maps were no longer playable in the latest version. If the developer wasn't around to port their old maps to the new version, then we were fresh outta luck in playing them.
In one scenario, there were a couple of Backrooms/Liminal maps that I liked, but the maps' creator didn't feel like upgrading them. Thankfully, I got in touch with him and he was willing to send the project files to me, and I did the upgrade myself. Not much needed to be redone other than compiling them in order to get them to work in the new engine version, however, they were designed very poorly. The maps themselves needed a lot of cleaning up with z-fighting, lighting, and unnecessary geometry. The first Backrooms map now looks far better than the old version that I used to play.
As a final thought, I was gifted Crab Champions recently. I played it with Marcato during his Monday variety stream. It's pretty fun, but I would probably enjoy it more if I had other folks to play with. Playing solo can start becoming stale. I've also been playing less Phasmophobia, and part of that is the spring event ended but also because the good buddy of mine has been busy with life stuff.
We shall see what the next blog topic becomes, as I slowly catch up on the past year. Thank you all for reading. Bye!
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