Hopworld

machine generated dystopia · By supernapie

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music is gone? older versions?

A topic by briand created 9 days ago Views: 19 Replies: 4

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briand9 days ago

It's been some time since I played Hopworld. Your recent post reminded me about it, so I tried it to check the new world generation. Right away I noticed there was no music. The different music for each room is one of the things I remembered most about my previous playthrough, but now I don't hear that. Sound still works, so it's not just an audio issue. To make sure, I tried with multiple different browsers (Firefox, Chromium, Safari), but none played music. Did you remove that?

Is it possible to play older versions of the game? Quite a while ago I made an effort to map the entire world of seed 0. I still have that map, but after the world generation was overhauled (probably the changes you described in the January 2023 blog post), I can no longer play that world.

supernapieDeveloper9 days ago

There have been very mixed reactions about the music. Glad to hear you like the music. Truth is some players can't stand the music and some players like to listen to their own music while gaming.

You can toggle both the sound effects and the music from the main menu. The way these settings are saved is as follows:

The sound effects are ON by default when you load the game for the first time. When you change the setting it will be remembered when you come back.
The music is OFF by default when you load the game. You can toggle it on, but it won't be saved. So when you reload the page, the music is OFF again.

Maybe this implementation is confusing you. But it is sort of my own preference for this game.

For every game I made recently I tried out different UI/UX patterns for sound settings and I hope to find one that feels right for everyone. Unfortunately there a lot of factors for browser games and not to mention mobile browser games.

Talking about mobile, I reduced the number of glyphs in the seed menu to fit smaller screens. So playing 0 (zero) isn't possible anymore, unless it is still in your browser storage.

I also made some first changes to reduce the impact of updates to the world generator.

In the future I might setup a page online, which has different versions of the game to revisit. That would be cool.

I would like to see the screenshot of the map, if you want to share it, that would be great.

briand9 days ago

Thanks for the reply. I hadn't thought to check the options. Music off by default does make sense, and having to re-enable it each time isn't too big a burden.

I got so familiar with the music in the starting room of seed 0 when working on my mapping project. While the music is part of the game's charm, it can be grating in some rooms. If you want to try some different methods of creating the music, check this script: https://github.com/bob-the-hamster/autoautotracker (or the original at https://github.com/wibblymat/ld24/blob/master/autotracker.py). (VLC can play the resulting files, if you don't have a tracker file player.). While you wouldn't be able to use the code directly, how that script generates tunes might give you ideas.

Another aspect of the music system that can be jarring is the music for a room restarting every time I enter it. Have you considered a global music timer, with the music in each room starting according to that timer rather than from the beginning? That would give a smoother experience when moving between rooms. As an example, Night in the Woods uses this method. The exterior world has its music, and the interior of each location has its own different music. When I enter a location the exterior music fades and the interior music starts, but when I go back outside the exterior music resumes as if it had been playing silently in the background and was just being turned back up.

I do still have "0a" as the seed in one browser, so I'll leave that one as is. If I try another mapping project, to see how the newer world generation compares, I'll use seed "a".

Assuming this works, I've added two images: the first is the entire map, and the second is the same map with labels. "V" is vendors, "C" is map coin, and powerups are named. (I think I missed a couple map coins, but I can't check that now.) I had started tracing the progression path but didn't get past the first few powerups, so I left that out. The numbers are the order in which I took the screenshots, which roughly shows the path.

supernapieDeveloper8 days ago

Thanks, I think these are very old maps. The mazes were still 32 by 32 cels. I changed them to 24 by 16. And now they are 24 by 24 again.

supernapieDeveloper8 days ago

Also if you find a nice tune in a room, feel free to record it, just like a screenshot. Maybe share it on soundcloud and mention the game. Would be good promotion for the game... It's just an idea, do with it what you want.

Overhauling the music generation is on the roadmap somewhere and your tips will come in handy.

I played through Night in the woods many years ago. Can't remember the music, but it is in my library somewhere :)

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Hopworld

music is gone? older versions?