SUMMARY:

• QUICK THANKS - Without your feedback and support, we would not have such great progress in a short time.
• GRASS SOUNDS - We improved the grass step sound FX and reduced it to a minimum. Did it work? You decide!
• RELAX! AUDIO PLAN - Evenutally we want all our ambient environment sounds to be made from anything that helps you unwind and meditate.
• LESSON LEARNED: KEEP IT SIMPLE - With sound editing, less is more we're learning.
• TASK TRACKER UPDATE- Improved performance and stability for the UI and Gallery page.

Latest update

QUICK THANKS

First, thank you for your support. Your feedback has taken our prototype to the next level, we'll continue to make progress every week into what is starting to feel like a real game. There are TONS of issues to fix and iron out but because of your input, it's really coming along, can't say thank you enough for your comments, likes, and shares.

GRASS SOUNDS

"Remove that annoying sound every time you move. Holy hell!" was the comment that jumped out this week as we took feedback from the dev community.

I'll admit, the feet shuffle sounded like hay slashing or some kind of weird noise. Whatever it was, it wasn't feet on grass, so we removed it.

Then we got carried away by scripting left and right foot mechanics, implementing a softer sound, then recorded reference in real life, and took a crash course in wave file engineering to get it right. Did it work? You decide, the latest has been uploaded.

But in the process of working on it I realized we weren't ready to do a full sound pass. The ambiance of ocean waves crashing by the edges of the fence as you draw closer would be amazing to add. But it's too soon. To do a proper job, we're better at holding off as long as possible to the point where it's all what remains for us to treat it as a whole rather than a patchwork of parts.

It's a shame to lose most of our dev time this week, that's what prompted a second thought. Our next goal is to fix the treasure float problem. But more than that, there are a list of tasks to address that would make the game more fun and engaging.

Going forward, we'll make audio secondary. If we can sneak something in we know works, it'll happen. Otherwise, we can't risk it so soon with other, more important features, awaiting progress to get a fun game.

LESSON LEARNED: KEEP IT SIMPLE

During a workout I recorded sounds of myself walking on grass and it was barely audible. When I took off my headphones and paid attention, it came as a realizion how it's barely heard in real life unless one pays attention. That's why we kept it simple, lowered the volume, and tweaked the pitch a bit, yet a lot of the complex bipedal coding mechanics were kept for an added sense of realism.

Sound is a rabbit hole. It's best to get great quality source files as much as possible. It pays to do the minimum amount of tweaking to get it right, we did, and it worked.

RELAX! AUDIO PLAN

The overall direction we want to go for with sound is "relax". That's the secondary name of the game. If we can find any noise that is used for meditation, relaxation, or some sort of ambient frequency that would help with letting go of stress, we want it!

For the metal dectector, it would be cool to have some kind of low frequency, meditative hum. Ambient wind would nice. Other animal sounds such as crickets, frogs, or more bird variety such as owls would be interesting. If you have an idea for a relaxing sound that would fit the game, let us know!

TASK TRACKER UPDATE

As for Task Tracker Pro, we updated the gallery page to work better across different platforms and addressed bugs regarding missing images. While there's still some behind the scenes work to do, it's safe to say it's close to full release. You're welcome to try it out and give feedback by sending us an email: support@monarchgames.net

SIGN UP FREE: Use Task Tracker Pro to start managing your projects

MORE TO COME, STAY TUNED

So much more to say, but it's time to sign off. We'll continue to focus on one main thing each week while addressing bugs as we go. When you get a chance, check out our links to this and all our other projects. As always, to be continued...

Weekly playthroughs: Check out our YouTube channel and subscribe for updates.

Task Tracker Pro Checklist (link): Check out our progress on Task Tacker Pro | Progress 49% Count(82/166) :

Star Kingdom GT Demo (link): Star Kingdom GT Demo (check out our other game, a space stratgey in the works)

Monarchgames.net (link): Our website (for more on what we're up to!)

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