Posted September 11, 2023 by Zeke Lionhart
#update #development #changelog
Finally a new update! Due to other priorities, BfE's development has been going very slow, which is why it took me so long to finish this update. But without further ado, let's get into it.
Update 0.8 is focused on sound. The original plan was to create all sounds by myself, music included, just so I had a taste of what it was like. Unfortunately, with my ever-decreasing free time, I decided to back away from that idea since I lacked the knowledge to create sounds, so I opted to find free sounds online to use. I was off to a long session of research to find good sounds and music.
There were a few challenges on the way. First, it was finding a reliable source of SFX. I tried a number of websites, but most pieces were either bad quality or weren't free to use and edit. The Unity Asset Store had some good SFX and BMG packs, but I soon found it wasn't worth using the UAS as a main source of them. Since they always come in packs, I often had to download an entire pack to use one or two sounds - it wasn't very practical. But I eventually found Pixabay, a great website full of free sounds that can be used and edited freely, and it turned out to become my main source.
Then, the next challenge was getting sounds that fit BfE. A lot of free SFX are recorded on low-quality equipment or they just don't fit the tone I'm trying to achieve, making the search for a good one much harder. But since I do have some basic knowledge of how to use Audacity, I could at least get the ones that approach the best of what I wanted and edit them a little to fit better. Even though I wouldn't say that most of the ones I've found are perfectly in line with my vision, I'm quite happy with the result, save for a very few exceptions.
And there was one interesting occurrence that pushed in one feature I wanted sooner than I expected. When the Arrow Volley was used, the same arrow-loosing SFX played for all 10 arrows, making a huge deafening sound boom. Instead of trying to fix this problem directly, I decided to make something I was planning for the future that would solve this problem easily: I randomized the arrows from the volley, loosing one after another instead of all 10 at once. Not only did it solve the SFX problem, but made this skill feel much, much better (despite needing a buff).
Now, for version 0.9 I want to pause a little the addition of new things and focus on improving what's already in the game. Right now the game already feels solid enough to expand upon, but I think it would do some good getting done some of the things from my lists of QoL improvements and optimizations/bugfixes before they get too long. Oh, of course, some balancing right now would be great as well, before I add upgrades to the powers. Anyway, off to this update's changes!
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