#i once made a similar audio post on an indie blog

[ochrepaints]

Because it’s a thinking sort of day, I’m again thinking about how Irene’s accent makes her sound so trustworthy. People have accused Natalie Dormer of doing a bad American accent, but to my ear it sounds so bouncy, casual and friendly. The way she stretches her vowels and turns “t’s” into “d’s” and just sort of... makes her words round-edged, if that makes sense (that is a terrible way to put it, but I hope you get what I mean). At risk of sounding insulting to Americans, her accent almost has a lazy ring to it, languid and laid-back and informal.

Even her syntax is so casual and confident, saying things like “Sherlock Holmes P.I., hi,” and “No problem, what’s up?” so cheerily when she sees Sherlock on the street. It makes her replies very hard to pin down for me, because she doesn’t have as clear dialogue as Jamie -- as @deductry​ and I talked about, one second her dialogue is very casual, the next she’s speaking with much more technical jargon about artwork (as with her speech on the studies for The Fighting Temeraire.) She’s obviously intelligent, but in an understated way that doesn’t exactly come across in her word choices. She’s also very quiet -- there are several instances in the show where a silence should be filled, but she says nothing and leaves space for Sherlock to speak. I do want to talk, sometime, about her use of those silences, but for now I’ll just say that they’re very interesting, and again lend themselves to this self-confident persona.

And then you have Jamie Moriarty, who’s British and clearly upper-class, or at least that’s what her accent and syntax lends you to believe. For those not aware, Moriarty’s accent could probably be best described as an “estuary accent”, and it’s that clipped and posh south-eastern English accent you hear a lot of villains use in TV and movies. This accent is of course associated with power and wealth, and (importantly) colonialism. There is a whole other meta I have yet to write about Moriarty’s global criminal empire and the undertones of colonialism it conjures up, but I’ll summarise here by saying that the estuary accent brings to mind, whether consciously or subconsciously, Britain’s history of global dominance, power, and privilege.

Far from Jamie’s accent being trustworthy, where Irene’s was boisterous, Jamie’s is sharp and clipped. Her consonants are keen, her vowels short, and even when she speaks softly, there’s such a menace to her voice. It practically screams danger, simply because it’s such a sharp-edged and clipped accent.

Unlike Irene, Jamie’s syntax is much easier (for me) to pin down. She casually tosses out phrases like “I apologise for the subterfuge but seemed the most expedient way to get you away from Sherlock” and “hoped to show you my work someplace less bleak, more conducive to conversation” as if she’s swallowed a thesaurus, and yet the sound completely natural to her. Her accent suggests that she is well-educated. She would never say “hi” or ask “what’s up?” as Irene would. Where someone else may use one word, Jamie would use three.

When you put, for example, Irene saying “Sherlock” and “Moriarty” next to Jamie saying those names, you really hear the difference. Irene shortens the “sher” of “Sherlock”, and it almost becomes “Shrl”, and she stretches the “o” sound in the second half of the name, making it again sound more casual. Compare this to Jamie saying the name, with the harsh emphasis on the “l” and the “ck” sounds, and the shortened vowels. And again, Irene doesn’t say “Moriarty”, she says “Mooreeardee”, where Jamie shortens the the “o” sound, and hits the “t” of the name, her tongue clearly clicking against her teeth to make the sound.

I could talk way more about this, but I’m going to stop because I’ve been working on it for ages. Bless you if you made it this far with reading, and I hope you enjoyed my rambling thoughts!

[stevensavage]

Creative Resources 7/9/2019

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve's Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

I haven't posted one of these in a few months, so here's the latest roundup of creative resources!  I've added a few here and there, plus some game development tools.

Art Sources

Free

Pixabay - A source for art that is free as well as royalty-free. There's a lot here, and much of it is professional.

Unsplash - A source for photos that are free as well as royalty-free. The quality is very high.

Royalty Free

Canstockphoto - A great source for royalty-free art, photos, and more. Has a subscription system and a pay-more-get-more credit system.

Shutterstock - The classic source for royalty-free art, photos, and more. Has both monthly and specific purchases available.

The Noun Project - A fee or membership-based site for downloading a huge selection of royalty free icons! Once you pay for it or download it, it's royalty-free! Useful for all sorts of projects

Book Covers

Premade

Go On Write - Premade covers for books - pick one that looks right and the artist will change the title and author appropriately. A great bargain, and even has series of covers at discount! Will do custom work to.

Services

Paper and Sage - A reliable source of both premade and custom book covers.

Tools

3D Book Cover Design - Makes 3D Mockups of book covers.

Canva - Book cover creator, though you will want to provide your own art if you don't want to pay for rights to their stock photo. Also has other services.

Book Reviewers

Review Sources

Midwest book review - Will review books for free, but it's a matter of choice.

Self Publishing Review - A classic paid review service (where a pool of reviewers is available) for books. Not always a guarantee of the best reviews of course, so you take your risks . .

The Indie Review - A large, constantly-updated list of indie book reviewers.

Color Tools

Collections

Color Tools - Plenty of useful online color tools.

HTML Color Codes - Useful color tools, with a focus on web-focused colors.

Material Palette - Useful tools for desginging palettes, finding icons, and locating specific colors

Color Schemes

Color At Adobe - A color theme creator that lets you create schemes, or even get one from a picture, and has a powerful interface.

Color Calculator - A color scheme creator that also has useful advice and guides.

Colormind - A color theme creator that creates schemes with simple clicking, or get one from a photo.

Colors at Halfpixel - A simple palette creator (with a mobile option) with intuitive controls.

Coolors - A useful and powerful color palette creator that's easy to use and powerful.

Huesnap - A palette repository and creation tool

Contact Management

Mailing Lists

Mailchimp - Mailchimp may have some restrictions, but it's the go-to for easy mailing list management, which is perfect for authors and artists. It also integrates well with other tools.

Professional

LinkedIn - The classic business networking site, and pretty unavoidable for most professionals.

Game Creation

General

Game Maker Studio - A powerful game creation tool, with free and paid options

Unity - A popular, well-supported game creation tool, not only popular, but one with many tutorials available.

Interactive Fiction - Graphics

Ren'py - A powerful game creation tool with an inclination to visual novels and life-sim, and capable of powerful customization.

Interactive Fiction - Text

Choicescript - A choice-based game system, both for fun and used commercially.

Twine - A web-based Interactive Fiction development tool with multiple options.

RPGs

RPG Maker - Game creation tools - the original was RPG focused, but the company has also expanded into Visual Novels.

Generators

Generator Sites

Chaotic Shiniy - A diverse source of generators in a variety of styles.

Darkest of Nights - Fantasy-oriented generators.

Donjon - Generators for a variety of genres and game systems, some of which provide graphics as well!

Dropping-the-form - Generators for various settings.

DunGen - A powerful dungeon generation tool!

Eposic - Generators - among other imaginative efforts.

Fantasy Name Generators - And there are a LOT of them here. About anything you could want, and a few you didn't know you needed.

Feath - Generators of various types, conveniently categorized.

Generator Blog - Links out to many other generators.

Generatorland - Lots of generators and generator tools.

Mithril and mages - Generators for a variety of genres.

Name Pistol - Band name generators.

RanGen - Random generators, from fantasy to helpful writing tools.

Serendipity - A generator site with some setting and name generators.

Seventh Sanctum - A gigantic collection of generators founded in 1999, with a focus on writing and RPGs.

Springhole.net - A site of generators and other creative tools.

Squid.org - Home of a complex name generator with many, many options.

The Force - A powerful name generator with multiple options.

Graphics

Graphic Tools

Art Rage - A painting-oriented digital art program supporting many operating systems, tools, and formats.

Clip Studio - A comics, painting, and illustration tool with many options and features

Mediabang - A comic and painting application that's free and multiplatform!

Paintstorm - A low-cost digital painting program with many advanced features.

Graphic Tools - Free

Gimp - Aka The GNU Image Manipulation Program. A free, open source graphic tool that will take care of almost all of your graphic needs (barring a few limits like CYMK conversion and the like).

Krita - A free graphic tool focused on professional workflows.

Made With Mischief - A quick, free sketching and brainstorming tool.

Sketchbook - A free sketching program.

Graphic Tools - Painting

BlackInk - A painting program, focusing on stylistic work as opposed to realistic

Mac

Pixemlator - A low-cost alternative to Photoshop for Mac, with lots of compatibility options

Helpful Tools

Relaxing Backgrounds

4 Ever Transit Authority - Ride the bus through randomly generated art deco cities. A great program to run in the background or on your TV or monitor to relax you while you create.

Anomolies - A relaxing background display/artgame that creates surreal spacescapes, often with strange nebulas and sites that resembe anything from devices to lights to disturbing lifeforms.

Becalm - A relaxing journey via sailboat through surreal worlds with a relaxing soundtrack and audio. Can be run for a few minutes or in a loop and you can switch between multiple settings.

Panoramical - Available on Itch.io And Steam. Panoramical is an audio/visual remixer where you can tweak settings in multiple environments, turning them into audio/visual displays. Find your favorite setting, leave it on, and relax.

Station To Station - A simulated train ride through imaginary environments. Run it in the background or through your television while you create to help relax you

Portfolios

Services

Adobe Portfolio - The popular porftolio site - that comes with many Adobe subscriptions.

Artstation - Multimedia-focused portfolio and blog platform

Format - A portfolio site with store services as well.

RPG Resources

Random Charts

Chartopia - A site with a huge and expanding amount of charts for RPGs, easily sortable and classified.

Self-Publishing

Audiobooks

ACX - Amazon's self-publishing audio platform

Audible - Another amazon audiobook publishing platform

Findaway - A wide-ranging audiobook distribution service.

Cards

Drive Thru Cards - Self-publishing for card games, both physical and downloads.

eBook

Itch.io - Itch.io doesn't just do games - it also allows for people to publish books, and is very open-minded.

Kobo Writing Life - Distribute your eBook via Kobo

Nook Press - Distribute your eBook via Nook

eBook-Multiple

Draft2Digital - A service that distributes to multiple eBook platforms.

Smashwords - A wide-ranging ebook distribution service.

Physical And Ebook

Ingram Spark - Ingram's eBook and physical book publishing platform. Wide reach, but may require some setup fees and has some limitations.

KDP - Amazon's full-service print and Kindle publishing service. Warning, the eBook distribution is only through Amazon.

Lulu.com - A print and eBook creation and distribution service.

RPGs

Drive Thru RPG - Self-publishing for RPGs, both downloadable and in print. Also supports related merch like calendars.

Video Games

Itch.io - Itch.io is a supportive, indie-oriented game store site. It also has a lot of self-published resources for game development, as well as supporting books of all kind.

Website Creation

Services

Squarespace - The popular website creator with many options.

Weebly - Easy and simple to use website, blogs, and stores.

Wix - A simple And effective website source, though paid options are reccomended.

Wordpress.com - The classic site, with free and paid options. Obviously blog-focused.

Writing Research

Maps

Old Maps Online - A way to find and view old maps of the world. Great for research and imagining.

Writing Tools

Ebook Creation

Calibre - A free ebook creation tool.

Jutoh - Not only converts your book to various ebook formats, it's a powerful enough tool that you could even write books in it.

Word Processing

LibreOffice - A full, free, open source office suite. Beyond the free price, it's fantastic ad using ODT format and creating PDFs.

Word Tools

Describing Words - Ideas for how to describe a given word.

Dictionary.com - The classic online dictionary.

Related Words - Helps find words similar to or related to one you're using.

Rhyme Zone - A tool to help you find rhyming words.

Thesaurus.Com - The classic online thesaurus, with plenty of useful options and displays

Wordsworth - A tool to see if words you're using fit the time period you're writing

Writing

Scriviner - A writing tool that combines note taking, tracking, and writing into one application.

Writing Checking

Grammarly - A pricey but powerful service and software for checking grammar, spelling, and even plagarism if you need. There are free, limited options.

Hemmingway - A grammar checking tool with both web and desktop versions.

Pro Writing Aid - A subscription-based writing checker service/tool.

Steven Savage

www.StevenSavage.com

www.InformoTron.com

[kylydian]

Hollow Knight: Making Music Better with Ambience

Hey all! Sorry I’ve been absent from the blogging thing lately. Let’s just say one thing led to another and that other thing led to another and damn it built up fast. In fact, I’m not going to lie, I probably still won’t be posting consistently for a few months yet. I know many of you followed me for some Zelda stuff, and that’s still coming I promise, but I have a few new priorities right now!

Please understand!

I’ve got some really really exciting things in the works right now! One of them I can share with you!

I was selected to speak at PAX Dev this year! My talk will be “The Voice of Our Games: Novel Ideas in Game Music.” I’ll talk a bit about the contents of this soon!

In the meantime though, let’s explore some new music. Today we’re going to be talking about last year’s indie hit Hollow Knight.

Hollow Knight and I have had kind of a weird relationship. So often will I actually play a game now after listening to the music, and with Hollow Knight, I definitely knew the soundtrack inside and out before even playing it. I had always heard about how great the music is in Hollow Knight, how it was a game changer, how it did things that are just incredible. And upon listening to the soundtrack I remember thinking, “Wow. This is really good.” And that was about it. I didn’t have my jaw on the floor like I did for Breath of the Wild, Mario Odyssey, Nier: Automata, Cuphead, Stardew Valley, Undertale or a lot of other recent hits.

So, I kept wondering if maybe I was missing something. I had to be…right? I took a look at what the soundtrack does really well by itself:

·        Setting a mood.

·        Lietmotifs.

·        Use of Instruments/Orchestration

These are all goddamn good, and the skill here rivals so much music today. So then, if these are all really good and don’t really need too much explanation, what was missing?

Then I decided to finally play Hollow Knight. Almost 6 months after first listening to the entire sound track. I actually just beat the game a few days ago. Don’t judge….

The first time dived in I noticed something weird.

The music was an entirely different experience.

100%. It had completely changed. Why did it change. This thought nagged at my mind constantly. And once I came to Greenpath all the pieces fell together. The ambience in this game is fucking incredible.

Let’s break off for a second right there.  I’ll be dating myself a bit right now, but I remember like ten years ago, I saw on Myspace, GameFAQs, or somewhere a post/topic that read “Oh my god you need to listen to this track with rain in the background.”

So let’s throw both of those right here.

rainymood.com

I recommend adding Rainy Mood after playing the track to fully get what I’m talking about. Make sure to adjust the volume of rainy mood so it’s just a bit quieter as well.

This was an experience that almost enlightened me or something. Listening to music with rain? What? You can do that?

After entering Greenpath I was struck with how the quiet animal sounds and forest drone accentuated the music that was on screen. As I went to the other areas I noticed it too. The music took on new life, almost like the ambience was part of the soundtrack. Later I went back to check on the track by itself on the OST, and I instantly wanted the ambience back again.

Another one that I really dig is the City of Tears, in fact, just slap rainy mood on top of City of Tears and you’ll get a pretty similar effect as to what was in game.

Here. Try it yourself. Again, play the track first, then add Rainy Mood. I think this works even better than the previous example.

So what’s happening here? I’m not going to lie, I don’t exactly know best how to explain this either. But if I were to take a guess, I think that by itself the tracks are missing a subconscious focal point a lot of the time. And this is okay! Perfectly okay, you definitely don’t need one all the time, but for gameplay they’re often very useful. Often in music these focus points can be pedal orchestration or inner orchestration or however you want to label it. But basically, I’m talking about a line or notes that aren’t meant to be heard in the conscious, but give the listener some kind of background focus that fills in the gaps of music.

Using Greenpath, you eventually get some of these focus near the end of the track, but at the beginning you don’t really have it.

That’s where the ambience comes in. The ambience works as that focal point, allowing the music to do what it’s supposed to do. As mentioned earlier the music in Hollow Knight does a really good job of allowing music to set the mood of literally everything. I can only imagine the love and care that went into each track, and even before seeing the areas, I could associate the type of area each track was for. That’s some masterful work.

But if you’ve been following my analysis of music and soundtracks, you probably know that I don’t stop at scratching the surface of these things. So deeper we go, down to the Deepnest. In the Deepnest, you can kind of liken it to the darkest depths of the real ocean. There’s very freakish enemies down here, many of which don’t conform with what you’ve seen up to now. But what music plays? It’s just an ambience. It has some synth sounds in the back, but it creates this air of horror, something very different up until now. All along the way, insects scratch all around you (Listen to this part with headphones on. Just trust me) and it’s almost like the sound of your enemies adds to the ambience. The thing though is this makes sense. There’s still a very small semblance of music right here, just a bit. There’s still life after all, but it’s weird. It’s foreign.

The thing though, is you can go deeper. If you go past the Deepnest, you come to an area simply called The Abyss. And this is where things fully clicked for me regarding ambience and music. Let’s take a listen to what this area sounds like.

Notice this ambience? For the most part, The Abyss is completely devoid of life. There’s nothing present. Just like this ambience. You’ve got a slowly swelling deep drone, and a higher one. And really…that’s about it. There’s not much life in sound, music or visuals. It’s…just dead.

So, what if we symbolized areas in Hollow Knight by their ambience, and we symbolized life as music?

I can’t necessarily test it myself, but I’d be willing to bet that the game would still make sense if we just heard the ambience in gameplay. The areas would still make sense, they would have the basics of life around them, but they’d be lacking. And this is where you add the music, the life back into the soundtrack. By adding the music on top of the ambience you get the full package of what an area is supposed to sound like.

And that’s why this soundtrack accomplishes what it does so well and is so great. It’s truly genius.  

But let’s check something else, let’s hammer this in farther. During the boss fights the ambience is either brought way down or completely cut out. And if you listen to a lot of the boss fight music, you know what’s a lot more present? Some form of pedal orchestration. There’s that subconscious glue for us to subconsciously focus on music.

And I’m not even touching the general sound design in Hollow Knight past ambience. I love the sound design in this game. I found myself smiling so often at the sounds bosses or enemies made upon attacking, noticing you or dying. So many awesome creature sounds just made with the voice. It definitely brought to the forefront some of the charm that this game has in the sound department outside of ambience too.

So, here’s a suggestion. If you’re wanting to really nail a musical feel of a certain location in your game, maybe create a custom ambience for that location first, and write the music to that ambience. Then you have a ton of ways that you can use the ambience and music together, with music fading in and out, the ambience fading in and out, location based, or however you see fit. This can be a unique way of writing music that could make your process a bit different, therefore potentially changing the outcome.

But let’s keep this a shorter post. This topic I think is super important, so I don’t want to bore you with too many details and instead keep it big picture oriented. Let’s break it down as normal with some takeaways.

Takeaways for Developers: Think about how you want your game to sound. What does it need to thrive in the space of audio? Does it need to have a little extra bit of life? If so, maybe talk to your composer/sound designer about creating an ambience to be featured to make your music stand out a bit more.

Takeaways for Composers: Think about writing ambience first and music second in a case like this. What we hear impacts what we write in many ways, and music can be all around us. Musical soundscapes exist outside the realm of music. If we wrote music to an ambience, then took the ambience away…would our music still be a musical soundscape? Maybe it would, maybe it wouldn’t. Just something to think on.

Again, I’m sorry for being absent. I hope all of you have been doing awesome things.

Stay great guys!

[old1ddude]

Got tagged by @cuethetommo on this one. 

(1/2) Harry's given a good assortment of Covers from tour, Radio1, & other special performances. It's so hard to choose a favorite! The one & only time we heard Ultralight Beam; Girl Crush from BBC Manchester; WMYB on tour. Do you have any cover requests for his 2018 tour? Like *new* ones that he has yet to unveil. Here's some categories if you'd like (but make yer own if you want =) : 70s or 80s classic// Indie classic// Today// 1D. (I'm sending this ask to a handful of blogs too.) My picks...

(2/2)80’s// I know Niall’s the Don Henley dude but I’d love to see H cover the lyrical “Boys of Summer.” Indie classic// Mr. Brightside OR something bombastic by Arcade Fire, I’m thinking “No cars go.” Today// new Britney “Make Me.” 1D// Lastly, here’s another one Nialler’s taken – “Fools Gold” would sound amazing covered by Harry, sadly that one’s not going to happen now. And I’m breaking my own rule, and requesting Ultra light beam for 2018 tour!!

This will be a fun one, thanks!  Although, it is a little hard, because I want him to cover all my favorite songs!  I’m going to include some YouTube videos, for songs I think many of you won’t know.

First of all, bring back Ultralight Beam.  It’s a travesty he only did that once.  The original is completely incomprehensible to me (as a piece of music) but somehow Harry made it into a cohesive, bluesy, hymn that would sound only a little different accompanied by a massive pipe organ instead of his band.

For a more current song, I’d love to see him cover When I Was a Boy by Jeff Lynne - ELO.  I think the lyrics apply to Harry’s life and he could do something really interesting with it.

I’d love to hear Harry cover the song that launched the Cars to stardom, Just What I Needed.  It’s a quirky, gender neutral love/crush song and Harry once tweeted a line from it.  Not sure how H would interpret, but I think it would sound very different than the Cars’ version.

For 1D songs He’d do something really interesting with Girl Almighty.  It’s a fun ode to the fans and I love to see him having fun on stage.  Julian’s studio production is pretty awful, but I have a live version with decent audio, I always enjoy listening to.  Since we’re on the topic of fun songs, He’d do a great solo No Control - he always went so hard on that in 1D shows.

Take Me to the River is right up Harry’s ally.  I believe he would draw inspiration from Al Green’s original and the Talking Heads cover.  I would imagine Harry’s sound on this to be similar to his Ultralight Beam.  The song has a great melody and deep, meaningful lyrics.  The images of re-birth, baptism, etc. seem perfect for H.

I could do this all day, but have to end this post somewhere!

I tag everyone who sees this - do it it’s fun!  (I’m crap at tagging people.)

[jordancopsey-blog]

Evaluation

I have done the research mainly on tumblr, I have been doing this throughout this assignment. I have researched into games, how the mechanics, graphics and audio work within a game. The game research has had a massive impact on my game because it has made my game what it is. The research for games I looked into was mainly all categorised under the genre of Adventure or Survival and this is because i needed to fit this assignments genre. The games I researched into were either mainstream successful games (Fallout 4) which had positive reviews or, were either popular indie games (Hollow Knight) that used unique features to get recognition and popularity. By looking into this I could get a real idea of what I want my game to be because it would allow me to understand what my target audience is looking for in a game. I originally thought that I could make a side-scrolling platform game that has pixel art style, this changed throughout the project as I will explain later. I determined my audience through game research, audio research, focus groups and questionnaires.  I first got an idea when I thought about what game I wanted to create from the first game research post, I also have to make it fit the survive/thrive theme. So by making it fit this theme I had to make all of the research, focus groups and blogs posts refer to the certain genre or refer to the audience in some way.

The audio research I completed was into how games companies created their audio and what type of music they used. Many of them had proper equipment and most probably a set to do all of the audio at (like a studio). With the audio research I realised that you can make sounds out of pretty much anything, people made audio out of objects or props or even food. I really had to have an insight into audio in which I mainly looked out for games with a similar audience. I did this because although the game is mine and I am creating it, I feel as if I need to pick the right things for my audience. By doing this I could please the audience as they will be playing a game that fits their needs. The sound effects I added to my game were role playing music like a nice calm techno type of vibe.The research i looked into made me decide on the genre of the music and how it could possibly effect my audience for the greater good.

The progression I had through this assignment was very gradual; I kept on developing research and production diary techniques with the more I learnt. The blog posts were getting more informative with the more I posted, I spoke about what I learnt and how I learnt them throughout the tutorial or whatever it was I was doing.

 I have had to overcome many obstacles when learning and progressing throughout this assignment, i have had to overcome things like understanding code, bug fixes, game design and graphical features. The decision making was difficult because I had many second thoughts on what I had to do in order to make my game what it is and what I wanted to be for my audience and myself. On tumblr I spoke about the things I had to overcome and fix in order to adapt my game and audience. 

I mainly found the bugs within the mechanics of the game i.e. scripts or incorrect code that messes up the game. Some of the bugs were simple and could easily be fixed, like the enemy jolting about and then flying around the map once in range with the player; or some code where the game wouldn’t even load because it was so broken.

I used my strengths as best as I could and used them instead of things I wasn’t the most confident in because if I tried to adapt on all of my weaknesses everything would come out sloppy and not look very professional. I did try to improve on some of my weaknesses and thought I did quite well as I practiced quite a lot on things like pixel art for my animations and backgrounds, game maker to build the game and research to find out about my audience and market.

The original product was supposed to be a side-scrolling platform game; this has changed massively as I have encountered bugs and things that obstructed my progress. I realised I had to change my game drastically when I encountered bugs after bugs and was running out of time as I am completely new to making that style of game I went back to an RPG style pixel game. I have made this game before but it was nowhere near finished, I made the game look quite complete and there are quite a lot of unique features in it that I used from a tutorial on YouTube by HeartBeast. I thought that by changing the game in the next upcoming weeks i would’ve had enough time to finish the new project but if i stuck with the old one i would not of met the deadline. I would of preferred to make the side-scrolling platform game but i am completely new to it and the mechanics is very different as there is gravity in the game and this is new to me. So i feel like i have made the right decision by making the RPG project. 

By reviewing my audience and game I can say that the audience did not change drastically but did change slightly because I made a completely changed the game layout and design. As I changed the concept of my game the audience altered slightly but pretty much stayed the same, the age stayed the same but the audience changed as they are interested in RPGs rather than side-scrolling platform games.

So overall I think i have improved on multiple skills since the start of this assignment, I have improved on the following software's: Game Maker Studio, Piskel, Tumblr and Adobe Audition. Game Maker Studio has been a great help as i have used it for the mechanics and the engine of the game, Piskel was used for my art styles and sprites design. Whilst Tumblr was used for the majority of my write ups, production diaries and blog posts. Adobe Audition was used for the audio that was then implemented into my game and helped me produce some quality sounds. All of these software’s i have improved on in some way even if you cannot see any difference i know i have improved greatly by using them more and more.

[symbianosgames]

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

The following is a shortened version of an article from the RetroNeo Games blog page.

As I write, it's February 28th, 2017. Last day of the month, second day of GDC and our Greenlight campaign for Sons of Sol is 15 days old, but was born prematurely. The original due date was approximately February 26th.

Author's note: Despite the title and opening paragraph, this blog post isn't a gripe! Valve have every right (and it's been long overdue) to make changes to their submission process. We just happen to be caught out by the situation and are sharing our findings.

Red Light for Greenlight

As I'm sure we all know, on Friday February 10th, Valve announced that it would be shutting down Steam Greenlight forever "this Spring" and replacing it with Steam Direct, a system that does away with the community involvement in favour of a verification process "similar to setting up a bank account" and then a recoupable fee for each game submitted. We all also know that this process involves an as-yet-unknown fee that could be "as high as $5,000".

Given that Greenlight costs only $100 to get on, any small studio who had hoped to get on Greenlight any time soon is now rushing onto the platform - usually underprepared!

Our game

Briefly, Sons of Sol is a 2D space combat sim where you decide how and when to fight. Essentially we're taking the controls of Asteroids, and building a 90s-style space combat sim (think Wing Commander or TIE Fighter) on it. The progression is systems-driven with a light story. Think of the strategy layer of an XCOM game, with story dotted here and there.

You can get the demo for yourself here.

We're a very small team. I'm the lead developer, and Steve Gregan and Fred Mangan are part timers on the art and audio, respectively.

How this all affects RetroNeo Games

Our plan was to launch the game's Greenlight campaign to coincide with our new 'vertical slice' demo that would show off our home carrier, some characters, new sound design and music, and a bit more gameplay. This same demo would be ready for GDC for any publisher or press meetings we might stir up.

But with Valve's announcement that Greenlight would be gone during Spring (when I was in school in Ireland, I was taught that Spring was Feb - Apr, so we were already in it by my count) the team had a quick emergency meeting over Skype on Saturday and decided to shift focus to doing a Greenlight trailer and page, sprucing up the website, and launching by Monday. The trailer would basically now just be the one we'd released just weeks before but with a Greenlight logo at the end. Previously the plan had been to shoot new footage from a playthrough of a newer demo and put that on the trailer.

We chose to move up our timeline because we knew that hundreds of other developers would be thinking the same way as us, and that the Greenlight servers would be absolutely flooded in a matter of days. We were only a few weeks from our intended launch anyway, so we figured we had an advantage in terms of the quality of the submission that we could make.

It's a pity because I've done a lot of research in the past year (one 2016 Gamasutra blog stood out in particular) as to how to maximise your launch on Greenlight, and I was eager to put it all to use. This included having a playable demo ready, having YouTubers play said demo, try to get press to talk about it, translate the page into multiple languages, and hook up Google Analytics.

Now, just two weeks shy of accomplishing all of this, we had to go off half-cocked. Seeing the green light turning red, we basically had to rev the engine to try and make the amber, because the red might be too expensive to... eh.. this metaphor is falling apart, sorry!

So, without translations, a press mailing list, a MailChimp campaign, or a demo, we launched. About the only thing we did get from our list (because it was the quickest thing to set up) was the ability to take some preorders on the site to prove to certain legal bodies that we're "in commerce". They're still available at the time of writing, discounted, but limited in quantity.

How have we done so far?

In the first week we got about 300 votes and made it 18% of the way to the top 100. There's no specific target to meet, but thousands of votes and being in the top 100 is certainly desirable (and normal for games getting through in the past).

The problem is that now, after a second week, we've gotten almost no further!

The reason we wanted all our ducks in a row was to maximise the 'yes' votes while Steam's algorithms were still sending natural traffic to our site. Just by launching, you'll get a certain number of referrals from normal Greenlight users browsing, but after that you're on your own to generate your voting traffic. In normal circumstances, the Steam algorithms send people your way for a few days.

Our natural traffic died off in under 12 hours!! That's a measure of just how many other new Greenlight games were going up just 3 days after Valve's announcement. At that stage we were closer to 200 votes. The next 100 votes we got during the first week were basically from friends and colleagues through Facebook and Twitter shares.

I've heard similar stories from many developers who are struggling with the campaign because they were forced to launch early and are just drowned out by the noise. The Steam algorithms just aren't sending people to your game's site for as long right now, and that's a big deal!

Below are our results from the first 24 hours.

What did we try?

Since the launch I've been working every day for at (the very) least 12 hours, but not so much on the Greenlight campaign. Getting the demo ready for GDC to wow press and publishers was still a better priority - after all, nobody knows how many Greenlight votes you really need anyway, nobody knows when Greenlight is actually shutting down, and we had appointments scheduled with people who wanted to see a new build of the game. So, after launch and until yesterday, a new demo was priority number one!

I suspect that once Valve stops taking new submissions for Greenlight, they'll probably let through a lot of what remains in the following weeks, though they have kept their options open by declaring that anyone who has paid the $100 Greenlight fee and who doesn't get through will be reimbursed. So, who knows?..

That doesn't mean that I've ignored Greenlight either, though. Not at all! Over the coming days I ran a tentative €5 Facebook and €5 Twitter ad campaign (well targeted, with video) to see what happened. We got about a dozen clicks total and about 2 new votes. So, probably not worth investing too heavily there, then. Not for votes, anyway. 

One issue is that you have to log in to Steam (assuming the ad-clicker even has an account) and often have to be emailed a security code for a 'new device' (so sick of doing that!), so anyone clicking a mobile or browser link would not likely be logged into Steam, and probably wouldn't bother doing so.

I got the Greenlight page translated into Russian, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese and German. Even though the algorithms had stopped sending us traffic, I hoped that a new language detected might send us users from those territories. It didn't. Absolutely nothing! So I decided not to proceed with French, Spanish and Italian.

I also contacted about two dozen Greenlight Collections groups. I especially targeted groups interested in space games. We did get included in five collections, but I saw no corresponding increase in traffic to us, unfortunately.

What now? 

Well, with the GDC demo complete, I now get to turn my attention to contacting proper press outlets and YouTubers. I'm a big fan of grassroots marketing and using your own networks, but having tapped the social circles and developers that I know already we seem to have reached the limits of what that can offer us - namely, 320 votes. Note: On Feb 28th, a batch of games must have been put through, as for virtually the same amount of votes we have now jumped to 25% of the way towards the top 100.

Contacting press and YouTubers is a fairly low probability activity, but one good bit of coverage can do wonders! That's now the stage that we're at to try and get more votes. You're commercially dead if you aren't doing this anyway.

I have confidence in our game, our trailer, our demo, and our team, but we're fighting in an oversaturated market, most definitely. Add to that that this is the week of GDC and the press (including Gamasutra) have even less column inches than normal to spare for Greenlight and indie demo stories.

To Conclude

This has felt like a bit of a weird blog to write. I often write about the industry somewhat abstractly, but I'm right in the middle of this one, and it's an incomplete story. Greenlight isn't gone yet, we haven't yet been accepted for or refused press coverage, and nobody, including Valve, knows much about Steam Direct yet.

I do hope I can do a positive follow-up to this blog in the near future. Until then, I can just thank you for reading, ask that you vote for us if you haven't yet, and consider sharing our Greenlight campaign with anyone that you think might be interested.

Thank you! Don't forget to try our free demo. You can download it from the Sons of Sol page.

Until next time..

[stevensavage]

Steve's Creative Resources 5/16/2019

It's been awhile since I posted my list of creative resources (which I keep at Seventh Sanctum) for your use.  Please reblog freely, and suggest new ideas.

Art Sources

Free

Pixabay - A source for art that is free as well as royalty-free. There's a lot here, and much of it is professional.

Unsplash - A source for photos that are free as well as royalty-free. The quality is very high.

Royalty Free

Canstockphoto - A great source for royalty-free art, photos, and more. Has a subscription system and a pay-more-get-more credit system.

Shutterstock - The classic source for royalty-free art, photos, and more. Has both monthly and specific purchases available.

The Noun Project - A fee or membership-based site for downloading a huge selection of royalty free icons! Once you pay for it or download it, it's royalty-free! Useful for all sorts of projects

Book Covers

Premade

Go On Write - Premade covers for books - pick one that looks right and the artist will change the title and author appropriately. A great bargain, and even has series of covers at discount! Will do custom work to.

Services

Paper and Sage - A reliable source of both premade and custom book covers.

Tools

Canva - Book cover creator, though you will want to provide your own art if you don't want to pay for rights to their stock photo. Also has other services.

Book Reviewers

Review Sources

Midwest book review - Will review books for free, but it's a matter of choice.

Self Publishing Review - A classic paid review service (where a pool of reviewers is available) for books. Not always a guarantee of the best reviews of course, so you take your risks . .

The Indie Review - A large, constantly-updated list of indie book reviewers.

Color Tools

Collections

Color Tools - Plenty of useful online color tools.

HTML Color Codes - Useful color tools, with a focus on web-focused colors.

Material Palette - Useful tools for desginging palettes, finding icons, and locating specific colors

Color Schemes

Color At Adobe - A color theme creator that lets you create schemes, or even get one from a picture, and has a powerful interface.

Color Calculator - A color scheme creator that also has useful advice and guides.

Colormind - A color theme creator that creates schemes with simple clicking, or get one from a photo.

Colors at Halfpixel - A simple palette creator (with a mobile option) with intuitive controls.

Coolors - A useful and powerful color palette creator that's easy to use and powerful.

Huesnap - A palette repository and creation tool

Contact Management

Mailing Lists

Mailchimp - Mailchimp may have some restrictions, but it's the go-to for easy mailing list management, which is perfect for authors and artists. It also integrates well with other tools.

Professional

LinkedIn - The classic business networking site, and pretty unavoidable for most professionals.

Generators

Generator Sites

Chaotic Shiniy - A diverse source of generators in a variety of styles.

Darkest of Nights - Fantasy-oriented generators.

Donjon - Generators for a variety of genres and game systems, some of which provide graphics as well!

Dropping-the-form - Generators for various settings.

Eposic - Generators - among other imaginative efforts.

Fantasy Name Generators - And there are a LOT of them here. About anything you could want, and a few you didn't know you needed.

Feath - Generators of various types, conveniently categorized.

Generator Blog - Links out to many other generators.

Generatorland - Lots of generators and generator tools.

Mithril and mages - Generators for a variety of genres.

Name Pistol - Band name generators.

RanGen - Random generators, from fantasy to helpful writing tools.

Serendipity - A generator site with some setting and name generators.

Seventh Sanctum - A gigantic collection of generators founded in 1999, with a focus on writing and RPGs.

Springhole.net - A site of generators and other creative tools.

Squid.org - Home of a complex name generator with many, many options.

The Force - A powerful name generator with multiple options.

Graphics

Graphic Tools

Art Rage - A painting-oriented digital art program supporting many operating systems, tools, and formats.

Clip Studio - A comics, painting, and illustration tool with many options and features

Mediabang - A comic and painting application that's free and multiplatform!

Paintstorm - A low-cost digital painting program with many advanced features.

Graphic Tools - Free

Gimp - Aka The GNU Image Manipulation Program. A free, open source graphic tool that will take care of almost all of your graphic needs (barring a few limits like CYMK conversion and the like).

Krita - A free graphic tool focused on professional workflows.

Made With Mischief - A quick, free sketching and brainstorming tool.

Sketchbook - A free sketching program.

Graphic Tools - Painting

BlackInk - A painting program, focusing on stylistic work as opposed to realistic

Mac

Pixemlator - A low-cost alternative to Photoshop for Mac, with lots of compatibility options

Helpful Tools

Relaxing Backgrounds

4 Ever Transit Authority - Ride the bus through randomly generated art deco cities. A great program to run in the background or on your TV or monitor to relax you while you create.

Anomolies - A relaxing background display/artgame that creates surreal spacescapes, often with strange nebulas and sites that resembe anything from devices to lights to disturbing lifeforms.

Becalm - A relaxing journey via sailboat through surreal worlds with a relaxing soundtrack and audio. Can be run for a few minutes or in a loop and you can switch between multiple settings.

Panoramical - Available on Itch.io And Steam. Panoramical is an audio/visual remixer where you can tweak settings in multiple environments, turning them into audio/visual displays. Find your favorite setting, leave it on, and relax.

Station To Station - A simulated train ride through imaginary environments. Run it in the background or through your television while you create to help relax you

Portfolios

Services

Adobe Portfolio - The popular porftolio site - that comes with many Adobe subscriptions.

Artstation - Multimedia-focused portfolio and blog platform

Format - A portfolio site with store services as well.

RPG Resources

Random Charts

Chartopia - A site with a huge and expanding amount of charts for RPGs, easily sortable and classified.

Self-Publishing

Audiobooks

ACX - Amazon's self-publishing audio platform

Audible - Another amazon audiobook publishing platform

Findaway - A wide-ranging audiobook distribution service.

Cards

Drive Thru Cards - Self-publishing for card games, both physical and downloads.

eBook

Itch.io - Itch.io doesn't just do games - it also allows for people to publish books, and is very open-minded.

Kobo Writing Life - Distribute your eBook via Kobo

Nook Press - Distribute your eBook via Nook

eBook-Multiple

Draft2Digital - A service that distributes to multiple eBook platforms.

Smashwords - A wide-ranging ebook distribution service.

Physical And Ebook

Ingram Spark - Ingram's eBook and physical book publishing platform. Wide reach, but may require some setup fees and has some limitations.

KDP - Amazon's full-service print and Kindle publishing service. Warning, the eBook distribution is only through Amazon.

Lulu.com - A print and eBook creation and distribution service.

RPGs

Drive Thru RPG - Self-publishing for RPGs, both downloadable and in print. Also supports related merch like calendars.

Video Games

Itch.io - Itch.io is a supportive, indie-oriented game store site. It also has a lot of self-published resources for game development, as well as supporting books of all kind.

Website Creation

Services

Squarespace - The popular website creator with many options.

Weebly - Easy and simple to use website, blogs, and stores.

Wix - A simple And effective website source, though paid options are reccomended.

Wordpress.com - The classic site, with free and paid options. Obviously blog-focused.

Writing Tools

Ebook Creation

Calibre - A free ebook creation tool.

Jutoh - Not only converts your book to various ebook formats, it's a powerful enough tool that you could even write books in it.

Word Processing

LibreOffice - A full, free, open source office suite. Beyond the free price, it's fantastic ad using ODT format and creating PDFs.

Word Tools

Describing Words - Ideas for how to describe a given word.

Dictionary.com - The classic online dictionary.

Related Words - Helps find words similar to or related to one you're using.

Rhyme Zone - A tool to help you find rhyming words.

Thesaurus.Com - The classic online thesaurus, with plenty of useful options and displays

Writing

Scriviner - A writing tool that combines note taking, tracking, and writing into one application.

Writing Checking

Grammarly - A pricey but powerful service and software for checking grammar, spelling, and even plagarism if you need. There are free, limited options.

Hemmingway - A grammar checking tool with both web and desktop versions.

Pro Writing Aid - A subscription-based writing checker service/tool.