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[Kyzrati]

I loved BBS's myself, but must agree that the old ASCII art style isn't as cool as this one (not like I'm biased or anything ).

You're in luck, images are somewhat animated when they appear, though all using the same method/style. It's a monochrome green scan (of course it's green!) followed by a second color scan. Looks pretty neat. I've shown a gif of the animation before, but it was kinda tucked away in another gif a long time ago and not much in the spotlight. I'll do another one tomorrow focused on the images, now that there are plenty to play with.

I have also considered doing more complex animations with the art. The engine does support breaking art into layers and interfacing with / animating each separately, so it's possible, but that particular feature is extremely low priority because it would probably take a lot of work to get right. If anything I'm thinking of adding another type of cooler more involved animation that modifies the art somewhat when scrolling through component schematics, which is normally just a list of item names. (Right now art only appears in the item info window.) That's still pretty low priority though, since you wouldn't reference that list very often. Mostly just an excuse to add more animation

[Kyzrati]

Here's how items are currently animated in game, showing a few images/types that I've already released elsewhere:

Spoiler: Scrolling through weapons (click to show/hide)

[Kyzrati]

Having finished most of the ASCII art for Cogmind, I've written up a little overview of the process, including examples and more art.

Spoiler: Exhibit Z (click to show/hide)

[Kyzrati]

Just recently finished adding a couple hundred particle effects for Cogmind weapons: New blog post with some screenshots/gifs.



Now I'm on to adding sound effects for all these things...

[sambojin]

Once you've finally finished up on Cogmind, with the amount of scripts and effects you've already got together, it should be far easier to make strides in the next project. The versatility of the Cogmind engine never ceases to astound me. Looking forward to all the pretty pixels being backed with sound as well.

It might be worthwhile throwing together a youTube video and linking into a few roguelike and games sites to raise the profile of the project once you're at the point.

[Kyzrati]

Yep, videos are coming (I've had the Cogmind YT channel reserved for 6 months now...). They're on the marketing timeline, but we're not there yet. I'm actually doing zero marketing to players so far, mostly because there isn't enough material for a good video yet--the only exposure right now is through dev communities, though I keep this thread running in Bay 12 because we have a history of Cogmind here Heck, without Bay 12 I probably wouldn't even be making this into a full game!

Having all these particle effects will speed up the next project, for sure. Lots of reusability here. The growing number of sound effects, too, though it's kinda funny how you start to attach sounds to specific weapons. As I work on the sounds and come across material I used when putting together the test set for X@COM, it's really apparent which ones were used before for those "classic" weapons.

It'll be nice to get away from content and back to coding the game once I'm done with these. Haven't touched the source for over a month.

[FlynnHarley]

I've been watching Cogmind progress for a while, and it's really impressive! I'm looking forward to it. Will you be covering your process for making sounds as well? I'm interested in seeing how you do it, and perhaps learning how to do it myself.

[Kyzrati]

Thanks! I generally post about whatever I've been working on, so there will be at least one or two posts about sound before long. One will definitely be a more high-level discussion about the inclusion of sound in a roguelike, and other probable topics I've got listed include the mechanics of integrating sound effects with the game engine as well as a more detailed look at processing individual sounds, and organizing those sounds before they go into the game. So I guess there's lots of potential to talk about here!

Before that I was planning to do at least one other post, probably on particle effects, because I forgot to cover some stuff last time. Might as well keep those grouped together.

[sambojin]

What programs are you planning on using for sounds and/or music. ? I muck around with Audacity, Reaper and Fruity Loops 4 (it's old, but it's quick and it works. It also has a suprisingly good engine for modifying base sound effects).

Also, are you planning anything more sophisticated than "play sound on event" with the engine? Stereo panning, distance volume fading, possible status effect global sound changers (dropping a phasor or light wah effect over the lot as systems get destroyed, volume damping as sensors go down, etc)?

Actually, if you do want a bit of user submitted content, sound is one of the things I genuinely can do quickly and finish (but not necessarily well). Would you like a big bunch of lazer, cannon and beam sounds thrown at you? They're an absolute doddle to make with the above programs, and quite fun to do.

(finally found the power cord for my old laptop I used to make my tunes on, and my mike, so I've been looking for an excuse to fire it back up and feel creative. The sprite work is progressing very slowly, whereas sound is quick and easy).

[Kyzrati]

Oh? Sound is quick and easy, eh? I am genuinely curious what you can do in terms of synthetic weapon sounds.

I can't say that I'd actually use any of them since I haven't heard your stuff, or know how it might fit in with what I've got now. I pretty much only use Audacity myself, and actually don't do anything from scratch--not enough experience/time for that. I start with sound samples available online and do my own tweaking/modification in Audacity to get what I want.

Send a few my way if you like, just so I can hear them. I'm already close to finishing a big chunk of the weapon sounds after spending a week on them. Did ballistics, then energy and electromagnetic; finished launchers yesterday, and about to finish up explosions today. That said, I will most likely be adding more in the future if/when new weapons are created, or replacing some that don't sound good enough after some playtesting. So there will be a need for more samples in the future.

In any case, if good-quality synthetic sounds are easy for you then I'm sure it will be a boon to the future X@COM, since that game attracts modders who will want sounds for their own weapons as well.

[sambojin]

I'll chuck a sample pack together and pm you my dropbox (or email them to you). Some will be standard altered samples, some synth based, some edited real media. It's amazing what you can end up with from FL4, a few vst plugins with Reaper and a possible quick edit/normalize in Audacity. How well they'll mesh together (and I doubt they'll sound any good alongside yours) I don't know. Still, it'll be my thing-to-do for the day

[Kyzrati]

How well they'll mesh together (and I doubt they'll sound any good alongside yours)

Oh, I don't know about that. I'm not exactly a professional here, either Wish I had more time to spend learning/creating better sound! I have Reaper but wouldn't know where to start.

Aside: What do you think about the sfx currently in X@COM? No one with any experience in sound work (from what I know) has ever commented on them. I ask because while I'm spending a bit longer on the Cogmind sounds, the overall quality is probably similar to somewhat better. I've considered paying a professional, but that would no doubt get pretty expensive with the huge quantity of sounds in question. Without a KS or other external source of funding I'd rather put the money towards a composer, which is something I definitely cannot do.

[puke]

How hard is it to do sounds procedurally?  For example:

fireing a projectile weapon might be composed from several voices.  The start time, tone, amplitude, and repetition cycle of each might be determined by the weapon being fired.

This might be combined with an impact report, which is a sound made from a set of voices, in turn modified by the weapon type and what is being shot. 

for example, shooting a metal target with a projectile weapon might produce a report with the voice "ping" which could be modified in tone by the size or type of metal target being shot (larger=lower, smaller=higher) and in amplitude or even reverberation by the size of the projectile being fired.

This sort of thing might be more complicated up front, but would allow for a massive variety in weapon type and sound effects.

[sambojin]

It's been a while since I fired up x@com, or looked through the files. From memory they were pretty good and added a lot to the atmosphere and feeling (it's amazing how much sound adds to any game). It might have also been the emotional attachment to the effect of some weapons with the particle system providing the visual feedback (RL purists be damned. My rocket launcher should actually go boom, the text interface doesn't have to tell me it did, it just goes boom through the speakers). X@com also had a fair bit of sound discovery appeal due to some slightly non-canon weapons ("Squeeee! A chain-gun laser!") that could have sounded like crap and still been awesome.

I'll go through the files, but they all sounded pretty good in my opinion. I'm not exactly professional in this context either. Rough, ready and quick, slightly knowledgeable and experienced, but by no means a professional ear to judge quality by.

[Kyzrati]

How hard is it to do sounds procedurally?  For example:

It's certainly possible. Though I'm not good enough at audio to do it

I don't think I'd want to in this particular case anyway, because I'm going for a more "realistic" sound atmosphere while procedural sound tends to be more synthetic. That's referring to completely procedural sound, instead of semi-procedural sound that is increasingly common in AAA games these days, having a professional create content in a full sound engine like FMOD, and integrate it into the code to modify things on the fly. Pretty amazing stuff, but it absolutely really requires an experienced dedicated sound technician to do.

What I've done instead is include engine support for a huge range of different sound samples in different situations, as you describe. It's something that already exists in X@COM, where things like bullets, and even ejected casings, sounding different depending on the type of material they hit. I don't need to make as much use of it in Cogmind because there are far fewer materials, but it's really helpful in X@COM where it's important to be able to handle a variety of environments realistically.

It's been a while since I fired up x@com, or looked through the files. From memory they were pretty good and added a lot to the atmosphere and feeling (it's amazing how much sound adds to any game). It might have also been the emotional attachment to the effect of some weapons with the particle system providing the visual feedback (RL purists be damned. My rocket launcher should actually go boom, the text interface doesn't have to tell me it did, it just goes boom through the speakers). X@com also had a fair bit of sound discovery appeal due to some slightly non-canon weapons ("Squeeee! A chain-gun laser!") that could have sounded like crap and still been awesome.

I'll go through the files, but they all sounded pretty good in my opinion. I'm not exactly professional in this context either. Rough, ready and quick, slightly knowledgeable and experienced, but by no means a professional ear to judge quality by.

Yep, amazing how much sound added to the game. I think feedback and immersion are the most important things it brings to the experience, which makes roguelikes all that much better. Unfortunately few devs tackle it.

And your opinion on X@COM's sound would still be very valuable, in my opinion

One reason I'm not *too* worried about having super awesome high-quality sounds is that I can get away with less given the emulated terminal and ASCII particle effects, as you point out. Obviously I want them to be "good," but they're not going to win any awards for sound design.