For the creation of some of the sounds I went outside to a local park and recorded the sounds of ducks, swans and other wildlife using my phone. I then uploaded it to my computer, opened it in Audacity and cut the parts that weren’t needed and removed background noise, Then I put the finished .wav file on to our Google drive where it was downloaded on another computer and added to the game. For other sounds that couldn’t be recorded in real life I used the website http://www.bfxr.net/ and created sounds like the picking up of energy, exported them as a .wav file, uploaded them to the drive and added them to the drive. For the creation of music I used the website http://www.pulseboy.com/ which allows you to create 8-bit style music for free. Learning to use Pulseboy properly took a while but was a lot easier when you know what all of the buttons do. WordPress doesn’t let me upload .wav files but they’re in the game so you can hear them there.
Category: Tyler Atkinson
Art and Sound Evaluation
Things that went well
I made all of the essential art and a lot of the non-essential art as well as the music and sound effects for the game within the allocated time, there wasn’t any problems with Photoshop or the Pulseboy website. we were able to easy transfer the art and sound into the game using Google Drive which lowered the chance of files getting corrupt and deleted by accident. Primary research was quite easy for us because people like to give their opinions on games which told us what we needed to improve or fix.
Things that didn’t go well
My USB corrupted all my work so a few pieces of art were lost but most of it was backed up on Google Drive anyway so it wasn’t a major setback. At first the pixel art style was hard to create and make work well so this time I spent learning reduced the time spend creating art. Learning how to use Pulseboy was also time consuming and frustrating because the only type of music I could make was boss music which really didn’t fit with anything else.
Problems
There wasn’t any major problems other than being able to create the art and upload it to the blog and write about it without running out of time. The Pulseboy website has quite a few glitches which made me loose my songs a few times.
Solutions
Allow more time for the blog posts and more time for learning how to create pixel art and sounds. To get around the glitches with Pulseboy I just had to click things slower and not try to make it multitask too much.
Art / Sound gantt chart
Art and Sound Project proposal
Proposal:
Our game is a tower defence style game where you defend your base from constantly spawning enemies who want to stop you. My role in creating this game is to make the art, like the sprites and backgrounds. My other role is sounds, like the music and the sound effects.
Influences
Influences for the art came from games like Terraria, Gods will be watching and Starbound, I like the way the artist for the game shade the pixel art and give it details rather then going for the retro style that some pixels artists use. From feedback from primary research of questionnaires and secondary research of using the internet to find games of the same genre.
Problems
Some problems could be with the software I will use, like Photoshop crashing before saving or the website for Pulse boy being down. Other problems could be hardware related like my USB memory stick corrupting or breaking. Another problem could be time based, like not being able to finish the game in time for the deadline.
Solutions
A solution to Photoshop crashing could be to constantly save any changes to the art I’m making in case it does crash. There isn’t really a solution to the Pulseboy website being down, I’d just have to make music at a different time. A solution to not finishing the game on time would be to make sure I always stick to the scheduled on the gantt chart. Finally, a solution to my USB breaking or corruption could be to back up my work in multiple places like my home computer and Google drive / Dropbox.
Player feedback
I asked people questions about the art and sounds in Evolution of Defence.
Inspiration for pixel art
I took inspiration from other pixel artists like Jim T Myhre Kjexrud (Terraria) and Finn Brice (Starbound) when making the sprites for Evolution of Defence, their pixel art is shaded and detailed rather than some other artists who go for a solid non-shaded style. I used this style because I feel that it looks nicer and more professional than solid colours.
Turret upgrade
We made a turret upgrade that can be bought from the shop 
this will be changed and upgraded when we get player feedback
Main Menu
The original menu didn’t fit the theme of the game so I made a new one with different shades of blue and green as a colour theme. The buttons for the menu went through a few different looks before we decided on one that fit well. The first button with the wrong theme looked like this 
so I changed it to look like this
but feedback for this button said it didn’t really work well with the background so I changed the button to be enclosed rather than have an open side 
and this is the final design for the menu. All together the main menu looks like this:
A UI for the shop
The shop items appeared at the bottom of the screen where people wouldn’t use them much so I made a UI. First it was just 
but after player feedback I found that this was too bare looking so I added some slots for items and a description 
in game the shop currently looks like this:
This is not the final look for the shop though and will be updated soon. When the mouse cursor hovers over an item in the shop it shows the description for it and its price.
Evolution of Defence is now online
You can play here:
http://gamejolt.com/games/other/evolution-of-defence/63746/
Please rate and give feedback!
Evolution of Defence 