@Icebox said:
I bought the music and it was at 44100 Hz and i changed it to 22050 Hz to reduce its size in audacity, and upload it in gamesalad.
Remember, Music files don't actually impact on game performace (if this is why you reduced the sample rate?) as they are not loaded into RAM, they are actually streamed by dedicated hardware on the device.
. . . and depending on how you resampled it to 22kHz, saved it, and imported it to GameSalad (and in what format) it might have ended up as 44.1kHz anyway !
@Icebox said:
Is this what you mean by 400 Hz to 20 Hz ?
No, I should have been a little clearer, the 44.1/22kHz you mention above is the sample rate of the audio file, think of it like the frame rate of a piece of video, video runs at 25 or 30 frames per second, audio runs at 41,000 'frames' per second.
The 400Hz I was referring to was the frequency at which everything on an iPhone speaker starts to disappear.
My point was that because mobile device speakers are so small don't expect them to reproduce anything lower than 400kHz reliably, so your track might have - for example - a really cool deep bass drum and bassline, but all the iPhone user will hear through their speaker is a little click and no baseline at all ! . . . not only that but the fact that the speaker is powering all those frequencies we can't hear means it is a lot less efficient with the rest of the frequency spectrum - or in other words the music coming out of your speakers is quieter and - without getting too technical - the transients are 'mushed'.
tl;dr . . . getting rid of low frequencies no one is going to hear makes your audio clearer and louder.
Hold on, let me make a picture, back in a second . . . .
Ok, I'm back . . . look at the picture below, the spectrum in the background, the darker shade of purple outlined in white, is your track, the spectrum in the foreground, the brighter shade of purple outlined in white, is your track playing on an iPhone speaker.
I've marked off 400Hz, as you can see everything above that (to the right) matches up reasonably well (i.e. the iPhone will reproduce your audio well), everything below that starts to roll off as we go lower.
Hope that makes some sense, hope I've not confused you too much !
@Icebox said:
With the coin sound colliding on the floor and picked up i actually downloaded random beep alert sounds from the web ( royalty free). I modified it with audacity by changing tempo/pitch/speed and added echo until i felt it sounded good, and in gamesalad i changed the pitch to 1.1.
Sounds great, sits with the music nicely !
@Icebox said:
The same goes with all the sounds in my game. I didnt notice i can use the expresion editor with the pitch , ill add the random method you gave and will test and see , thanks !
Yeah, give it a try, it can work really well on often repeated sounds, but like I say in the previous post with non music sounds (sounds that haven't got a note / pitch) like impact hits and thuds and bullet sounds (and so on) you can pitch them however you like as they won't be out of tune with your music, but musical sounds (like the coins/diamonds being picked up) it's best to keep them in tune with your music.
hope I've not overloaded you with too much info !
P.S if you want, when you've finished the project I can master the music for mobile devices if you want, limit it and EQ for iPhone/iPad type speakers.
Remember, Music files don't actually impact on game performace (if this is why you reduced the sample rate?) as they are not loaded into RAM, they are actually streamed by dedicated hardware on the device.
. . . and depending on how you resampled it to 22kHz, saved it, and imported it to GameSalad (and in what format) it might have ended up as 44.1kHz anyway !
Im worried that it will affect the size of the final app, I didn't do it for performance ,the music I bought is .wav ( waveform audio 37 MB , Bits per sample : 16 ) , I thought the size is way too big so i converted it to mp3+ reduced the rate to 22050 Hz and it reduced the size to 3.4 mb. Unfortunately the exported mp3 format always added a silent gap at the beginning ( about 0.08 seconds ), and no matter how many times i trim it as soon as i export to mp3 the gap is back ,which caused an issue with looping the music. I researched for a solution but many said its the way mp3 works (as i said i don't understand audio at all) . So i reduced the rate(project rate) and looped the original track 3 times in audacity to avoid the silent gap for atleast 10 minutes and exported it as mp3 (10 mb much better than 37 mb, couldnt come up with a better solution)
Hope that makes some sense, hope I've not confused you too much !
your explanation made alot of sense but i will have to read about it to understand better.
P.S if you want, when you've finished the project I can master the music for mobile devices if you want, limit it and EQ for iPhone/iPad type speakers.
That would be great, unless its a long process then there is no need to bother with it ,ill try to look into tutorials first research and see if i can do it myself. Thanks for the offer !
@Icebox said:
Im worried that it will affect the size of the final app, I didn't do it for performance ,the music I bought is .wav ( waveform audio 37 MB , Bits per sample : 16 ) , I thought the size is way too big so i converted it to mp3+ reduced the rate to 22050 Hz and it reduced the size to 3.4 mb.
Personally I would have converted it to MP3 and left it at 44.1kHz, it wouldn't have been much bigger, maybe 2 or 3Mb bigger, with games of 2GB+ (GB not Mb!) often topping the iOS app stores I wouldn't compromise the quality of a game to save a couple of Mb.
Did I ever mention my 'psychology' experiment on 6-7 years olds (I'm pretty sure that was the age range), without going into detail they preferred bigger apps, a 300MB app was perceived to be a better app than a 16MB app, kids would more likely download a 300MB Spiderman app than a 16MB Spiderman app, I don't know how far up the age range this goes, but it makes sense to me, I expect a similar effect in adults.
@Icebox said:
Unfortunately the exported mp3 format always added a silent gap at the beginning ( about 0.3 seconds ), and no matter how many times i trim it as soon as i export to mp3 the gap is back ,which caused an issue with looping the music.
You probably don't have a gap (unless the conversion software you are using really is adding a gap!) it's just that the decoding hardware introduces a little bit of latency, this is always the case with 'Music'. You can easily tell by importing the same file as 'Sound' and try looping that.
Music = No processor / RAM footprint on the device . . . but playback is subject to minor latency issues and loops will be subject to a small gap, so useless for button push noises and all the usual in-game sounds.
Sound = Instant playback, great for bullets and bombs, and any sound that needs to be in sync, makes perfect loops . . . . but comes with a processor / RAM footprint.
@Icebox said:
I researched for a solution but many said its the way mp3 works (as i said i don't understand audio at all).
It's not really the MP3, it's the decoding hardware/software.
@Icebox said:
So i reduced the rate(project rate) and looped the original track 3 times in audacity to avoid the silent gap for atleast 10 minutes and exported it as mp3 (10 mb much better than 37 mb, couldnt come up with a better solution).
I'd arrange the music so it loops on a part where there are no percussive elements, for example the music could drop down to just a single chord, throw a bit of reverb on there, let it fade out and . . . loop . . it all kicks in again, if you do this well no one notices that the music is even looping.
@Icebox said:
That would be great, unless its a long process then there is no need to bother with it ,ill try to look into tutorials first research and see if i can do it myself. Thanks for the offer !
No problem, it's not a long process at all, I'd just roll off your low end (which has quite a lot of low end!), and limit the whole track to -1dB or so, it'd take just a few minutes.
Did I ever mention my 'psychology' experiment on 6-7 years olds (I'm pretty sure that was the age range), without going into detail they preferred bigger apps, a 300MB app was perceived to be a better app than a 16MB app, kids would more likely download a 300MB Spiderman app than a 16MB Spiderman app, I don't know how far up the age range this goes, but it makes sense to me, I expect a similar effect in adults.
This makes sense your right , i would also download the 300mb app , but i would expect alot of content to take up this much space , maybe thats why im worried but your right ill just leave it as it is for now and see the size of the final app.
Sound = Instant playback, great for bullets and bombs, and any sound that needs to be in sync, makes perfect loops . . . . but comes with a processor / RAM footprint
This is something i didnt know , thanks for all the info !
I like the enemy throwing stuff (and I really like the fact that it aims at where you are/where when the projectile is thrown), but I haven't got a clue what he's throwing ? And the projectile (whatever it is) seemed really big on first viewing ?
Loved the way the hero/player's cape flutters when he jumps/lands, not noticed that before.
@Socks said:
I haven't got a clue what he's throwing ?
I thought it looked like a bomb maybe adding particles would make it look obvious.
And the projectile (whatever it is) seemed really big on first viewing ?
Ah I actually couldnt see the bomb when playing on an iphone cause of the color and size and it didnt look interesting , so i added replicate to give it some bounciness effect , i probably went too far with the spacing so it looks big. I didnt notice until now , thanks!
@Socks said:
I haven't got a clue what he's throwing ?
I thought it looked like a bomb maybe adding particles would make it look obvious.
And the projectile (whatever it is) seemed really big on first viewing ?
Ah I actually couldnt see the bomb when playing on an iphone cause of the color and size and it didnt look interesting , so i added replicate to give it some bounciness effect , i probably went too far with the spacing so it looks big. I didnt notice until now , thanks!
That's actually a very cool use of replicate! - it also seems to give your bomb on the right a cool 'depth' effect, pseudo 3D! - I'm gonna have to look at replicate for more stuff!
That's actually a very cool use of replicate! - it also seems to give your bomb on the >right a cool 'depth' effect, pseudo 3D! - I'm gonna have to look a replicate for more >stuff!
Yes i actually use it on the mushroom and heart , as you said adds a cool depth , and it works pretty well with animation.
That's actually a very cool use of replicate! - it also seems to give your bomb on the >right a cool 'depth' effect, pseudo 3D! - I'm gonna have to look a replicate for more >stuff!
Yes i actually use it on the mushroom and heart , as you said adds a cool depth , and it works pretty well with animation.
@fmakawa said:
Are you using replicate instead of animation?
Heart , i use replicate and change size behaviour.
Mushroom i do animation + replicate. id use animation alone but i don't know how to animate the exact same effect.
@Icebox said:
I thought it looked like a bomb maybe adding particles would make it look obvious.
I see now, that looks more like a naval mine with the little firing pins sticking out !
If you type 'cartoon bomb' into Google it will universally return a stereotypical black ball with fuse wire, that's what most people think of when they think of a bomb, a smooth sphere with a lit fuse . . .
@Socks Ah , first time i hear of "naval mine" + i didnt know that there was a difference between a naval mine and a bomb ( silly me ) i actually thought that it was just a type of bomb. I remember typing in google bomb pixel art and kept searching until i found a naval mine looking sprite which looked nice so i used it as reference when drawing.
Comments
Remember, Music files don't actually impact on game performace (if this is why you reduced the sample rate?) as they are not loaded into RAM, they are actually streamed by dedicated hardware on the device.
. . . and depending on how you resampled it to 22kHz, saved it, and imported it to GameSalad (and in what format) it might have ended up as 44.1kHz anyway !
No, I should have been a little clearer, the 44.1/22kHz you mention above is the sample rate of the audio file, think of it like the frame rate of a piece of video, video runs at 25 or 30 frames per second, audio runs at 41,000 'frames' per second.
The 400Hz I was referring to was the frequency at which everything on an iPhone speaker starts to disappear.
So our hearing goes from 20Hz (20 cycles / second) to 20kHz (20,000 cycles a second) - 50Hz low bass . . . 60-100Hz kick drum . . . 200Hz snare drum . . . 3kHz-5Kz voice . . . 10kHz sparkly tinkly stuff . . . etc etc
My point was that because mobile device speakers are so small don't expect them to reproduce anything lower than 400kHz reliably, so your track might have - for example - a really cool deep bass drum and bassline, but all the iPhone user will hear through their speaker is a little click and no baseline at all ! . . . not only that but the fact that the speaker is powering all those frequencies we can't hear means it is a lot less efficient with the rest of the frequency spectrum - or in other words the music coming out of your speakers is quieter and - without getting too technical - the transients are 'mushed'.
tl;dr . . . getting rid of low frequencies no one is going to hear makes your audio clearer and louder.
Hold on, let me make a picture, back in a second . . . .
Ok, I'm back . . . look at the picture below, the spectrum in the background, the darker shade of purple outlined in white, is your track, the spectrum in the foreground, the brighter shade of purple outlined in white, is your track playing on an iPhone speaker.
I've marked off 400Hz, as you can see everything above that (to the right) matches up reasonably well (i.e. the iPhone will reproduce your audio well), everything below that starts to roll off as we go lower.
Hope that makes some sense, hope I've not confused you too much !
Sounds great, sits with the music nicely !
Yeah, give it a try, it can work really well on often repeated sounds, but like I say in the previous post with non music sounds (sounds that haven't got a note / pitch) like impact hits and thuds and bullet sounds (and so on) you can pitch them however you like as they won't be out of tune with your music, but musical sounds (like the coins/diamonds being picked up) it's best to keep them in tune with your music.
hope I've not overloaded you with too much info !
P.S if you want, when you've finished the project I can master the music for mobile devices if you want, limit it and EQ for iPhone/iPad type speakers.
Im worried that it will affect the size of the final app, I didn't do it for performance ,the music I bought is .wav ( waveform audio 37 MB , Bits per sample : 16 ) , I thought the size is way too big so i converted it to mp3+ reduced the rate to 22050 Hz and it reduced the size to 3.4 mb. Unfortunately the exported mp3 format always added a silent gap at the beginning ( about 0.08 seconds ), and no matter how many times i trim it as soon as i export to mp3 the gap is back ,which caused an issue with looping the music. I researched for a solution but many said its the way mp3 works (as i said i don't understand audio at all) . So i reduced the rate(project rate) and looped the original track 3 times in audacity to avoid the silent gap for atleast 10 minutes and exported it as mp3 (10 mb much better than 37 mb, couldnt come up with a better solution)
your explanation made alot of sense but i will have to read about it to understand better.
That would be great, unless its a long process then there is no need to bother with it ,ill try to look into tutorials first research and see if i can do it myself. Thanks for the offer !
Personally I would have converted it to MP3 and left it at 44.1kHz, it wouldn't have been much bigger, maybe 2 or 3Mb bigger, with games of 2GB+ (GB not Mb!) often topping the iOS app stores I wouldn't compromise the quality of a game to save a couple of Mb.
Did I ever mention my 'psychology' experiment on 6-7 years olds (I'm pretty sure that was the age range), without going into detail they preferred bigger apps, a 300MB app was perceived to be a better app than a 16MB app, kids would more likely download a 300MB Spiderman app than a 16MB Spiderman app, I don't know how far up the age range this goes, but it makes sense to me, I expect a similar effect in adults.
You probably don't have a gap (unless the conversion software you are using really is adding a gap!) it's just that the decoding hardware introduces a little bit of latency, this is always the case with 'Music'. You can easily tell by importing the same file as 'Sound' and try looping that.
Music = No processor / RAM footprint on the device . . . but playback is subject to minor latency issues and loops will be subject to a small gap, so useless for button push noises and all the usual in-game sounds.
Sound = Instant playback, great for bullets and bombs, and any sound that needs to be in sync, makes perfect loops . . . . but comes with a processor / RAM footprint.
It's not really the MP3, it's the decoding hardware/software.
I'd arrange the music so it loops on a part where there are no percussive elements, for example the music could drop down to just a single chord, throw a bit of reverb on there, let it fade out and . . . loop . . it all kicks in again, if you do this well no one notices that the music is even looping.
No problem, it's not a long process at all, I'd just roll off your low end (which has quite a lot of low end!), and limit the whole track to -1dB or so, it'd take just a few minutes.
This makes sense your right , i would also download the 300mb app , but i would expect alot of content to take up this much space , maybe thats why im worried but your right ill just leave it as it is for now and see the size of the final app.
This is something i didnt know , thanks for all the info !
A little update , I added a couple of enemies , bat and an enemy throwing bomb projectile that follows the player and a little bird .
Ipad testing
Looks great! Can't wait to play it!
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Awesome! Can't wait. Keep up the good work
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Nice progress
I like the enemy throwing stuff (and I really like the fact that it aims at where you are/where when the projectile is thrown), but I haven't got a clue what he's throwing ? And the projectile (whatever it is) seemed really big on first viewing ?
Loved the way the hero/player's cape flutters when he jumps/lands, not noticed that before.
I thought it looked like a bomb
maybe adding particles would make it look obvious.
Ah I actually couldnt see the bomb when playing on an iphone cause of the color and size and it didnt look interesting , so i added replicate to give it some bounciness effect , i probably went too far with the spacing so it looks big. I didnt notice until now , thanks!
That's actually a very cool use of replicate! - it also seems to give your bomb on the right a cool 'depth' effect, pseudo 3D! - I'm gonna have to look at replicate for more stuff!
Yes i actually use it on the mushroom and heart , as you said adds a cool depth , and it works pretty well with animation.
Are you using replicate instead of animation?
Heart , i use replicate and change size behaviour.
Mushroom i do animation + replicate. id use animation alone but i don't know how to animate the exact same effect.
I see now, that looks more like a naval mine with the little firing pins sticking out !
If you type 'cartoon bomb' into Google it will universally return a stereotypical black ball with fuse wire, that's what most people think of when they think of a bomb, a smooth sphere with a lit fuse . . .
Nice technique !
@Socks Ah , first time i hear of "naval mine" + i didnt know that there was a difference between a naval mine and a bomb ( silly me ) i actually thought that it was just a type of bomb. I remember typing in google bomb pixel art and kept searching until i found a naval mine looking sprite which looked nice so i used it as reference when drawing.
Any progress?
I no longer use gamesalad , and im working on other projects with another game engine
Oh.