Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Laser Hockey DS Speaks

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Finally, we have sound in Laser Hockey! After three months of doing other stuff and one month of working we have uploaded the latest build. The game still needs tremendous polish but with sound in, it's finally starting to feel like a real game. All music and sound effects were created by a member of Moose-At-Play.

Build 0.6.0 Enhancements and Fixes

  • Original streaming music and sound effects for the title screen
  • Original streaming music and sound effects during game play
  • Hooking into Box2D's collision system to play sound effects during game play
  • Randomizing which neon sound gets played on each contact
  • [BUG] Cancel button on Host/Join screens never pops up
  • Removed paddle-neon collision from Box2D using ContactFilter, doing it manually with bounding box to avoid bouncing paddles
  • Moving your paddle into the goal area is no longer allowed by design, graphics to convey this will be added next month
  • Randomizing which wall sound gets played on each contact

You can download it by clicking this link: LHDS_2008_12_31.zip

The ZIP includes an emulator but it doesn't play the streamed music very well. You should play on real DS hardware. The ZIP no longer includes the DS.GBA version because, with the music, the game is now over 5 megs and I don't want to include two copies in the same package. If you really want a DS.GBA version, download the dsbuild tool.

Sunday, December 14, 2008

On the Twelfth Day of Homebrew

Moose-At-Play gave to me:

12 sound effects
11 missing pucks
10 megs to download
9 practice games
8 bug fixes
7 にほんごのもじ
6 days of notice
5 filler syllables
4 months of nothing
3 background musics
2 re-hashed screen shots
And a new game audio team member

Yes, there is some junk in that jingle but there are some hints and information too.

From the beginning of September through the end of November, I've mostly been working on a big project for work in my spare time. That and finishing Etrian Odyssey and Castlevania. This month, we will finally get a build out. The goal was background music and sound effects and we've already succeeded in getting a lot of it to work. Also, as the horrible song says, we do have a new team member creating the game audio and that's a great deal for you because the rest of us wouldn't have any clue.

The release is scheduled for December 31st. We the addition of audio, Laser Hockey DS finally has all the necessary components to be considered a real game. It needs loads of polish and features but in my mind it has made it to a very important milestone.