BRS - Pandemic Flashback #1: Audio Engine

The first big task of v0.3 was to rebuild the audio system. Well, to build an audio system, more accurately. As I was wrapping up v0.2, I decided to throw some sound effects in as an afterthought. I only intended to add a few ambient sounds so that the game wouldn't be completely silent, but they improved the experience of the game so much that I just kept adding more and more sounds with no plan for how to manage them. I mean, there was a plan, which was for future me to deal with it, which he did. So sounds were all scattered around in the code with no rhyme or reason, which would have ended up causing a ton of problems. Like, if I wanted to add some super advanced feature like the ability to adjust the game's volume, it would mean changing dozens of lines of code, and it would only get worse as I added more sound effects. So it needed to be done. And it is. BEHOLD:

There are now TWO OPTIONS!

The new system makes it much easier to add, remove, and alter sounds from here on out. I also added support for placing sounds in 3-D space. Unity does this out of the box, but the built-in system lacks a few features that I needed (such as smoothly adjusting the pitch of a sound on the fly) so I ended up rolling my own. It's not very noticeable in the game as it exists but I think it will add a lot to the sense of immersion once I start implementing ship systems.

I did all of this over a year ago, back in February, when I only used the word 'pandemic' while playing the board game and Corona was just a skunky spring break beer. In the next exciting episode, I'll build an input system while the world crumbles. Stay tuned!

Black Road Sky Pandemic Report

 As PCG Stans are well aware, we were tapped by the Shadow Obama Administration to develop a COVID-19 vaccine in the early days of the pandemic. Through extensive research, the Totino's Party Pizzas and Natty Daddy tallboys that we've tested over the past year have proven ineffective in terms of vaccination potential, but fabulously effective in other ways that we are still actively studying. This allocation of resources to R&D forced us to put Black Road Sky on the back burner ... until now.

Work resumes on BRS v0.3, picking up where we left off nearly a year ago. The focus of this update is on behind-the-scenes infrastructure to get ready for implementing ship systems in v0.4, but there will also be a few notable gameplay additions. You will be thrilled to know that I'm currently working on a sci-fi savings and loan, bringing a much needed breath of fresh fiscal responsibility simulation to the game.

Fiscal Responsibility Simulator 2021

In the next few posts we'll be looking at the work on a new audio system, input manager AND MORE that was done back in early 2020. My hope is that by the time these posts catch up with my current work, v0.3 will be about ready for release. But hopes are made to be dashed yeah?

WE WILL NEVER GIVE UP unless this gets boring then I'll probably play Tetris.