Sound and Music

Sound and Music makes one level, The Music Box: a crypt seen from above that a knight explores room by room, from its entrance hall to a music box in an alcove at the far end, which he finds by ear. On the way, torches crackle, a well drips, doors creak, a bridge groans under him, a waterfall roars in a cave, a flooded passage muffles everything, a bell tolls and the music dips under it, and a gate grinds open. A ghost drifts round the flooded passage, and the music turns tense as it nears him, with a heartbeat that swells. In front of the crypt, a title screen with its own music and three volume sliders; beside it, a gallery of small cases.

You start from a starter with the whole crypt and the title built, the knight walking, and not a sound. By the end, every room sounds like the room it is, the music follows the game, the pause menu muffles it, the options screen sets each volume, and the crypt runs as an exported game. A last chapter builds small cases of their own, each a recipe to take into your own game.

The tutorial is for learning every sound control to the end. Every field of the four components that make sound (the Audio Source, the Audio Listener, the Audio Mix and the Audio Zone) and of the music asset is defined with what it does, its unit and the value the crypt or the gallery gives it, and every sound builtin a script calls is printed in a script that runs.

• Rengy, installed, on Windows or Linux. Getting started installs it and shows you round the editor.
• The starter, sound-and-music.zip: the crypt and the title, built and silent; the knight with his walk and his graph, the ghost on its round, the pause menu and the options screen; the pictures; and fifteen sounds made for the tutorial, in its audio folder, that no download holds. Unzip it somewhere outside your other projects; in the editor’s launcher, choose Open project… and pick the sound-and-music folder.
• Headphones or speakers, two of them. Much of the tutorial is where a sound is, left or right, near or far, and one speaker cannot tell you that. Each clip on these pages is worth hearing in stereo.
• The downloads below, as the chapters ask for them: Kenney’s sounds and two pieces of music, each from its own page. Each chapter that needs one lists the files to copy and where each is in its download.
• Nothing else. Part 1 is clicks, apart from four short scripts in chapter 4 and one in chapter 5. Every script is Rengy Script, which the editor runs as it is, with nothing to install.

Every download is in the public domain (CC0). The tiles, the title’s panel and buttons, the sliders and the lettering are already in the starter. The knight’s walk, made from Tiny Dungeon’s knight, the torch, the music box, the bridge’s planks, the chasm, the water, the bell, the lever and the hole were drawn for these tutorials, and the crackle, the drip, the gate’s grind, the crypt’s music and its moods, the box’s tune, the waterfall, the water, the bell, the heartbeat and the gallery’s whisper and voice were made for this one; all of them are in the starter too.

You can stop after any of them: each leaves you a crypt that works. The chapters below are listed by part.

• Basic, chapters 1 to 5: a crypt full of sound, all clicks but five short scripts. A crackling torch, sounds near and far, footsteps that never repeat, doors, a bridge and a gate that scripts play, and music: the title’s, the crypt’s, and a music box found by ear.
• Simple, chapters 6 to 9: the whole mix working. The game’s mix and the options screen’s sliders; a cave that rings, a passage that muffles and a well that answers; a bell the music dips under; and a pause menu that muffles the music and holds the room.
• Pro, chapters 10 to 12: music that follows the game. Calm while he explores, tense when the ghost is near, a phrase when the box is found and a sting when he is caught; a heartbeat that swells as the ghost nears; the crypt exported as a game; and a gallery of small cases.

• Every control is defined. A list of terms in each chapter says what a field does, its unit, the range that suits the crypt and the value the crypt gives it.
• Sound is heard. Where a chapter says what you hear, it plays a recording of the game, with a line under it saying what to listen for, and the same sounds in words for a reader who cannot listen.
• Sound is seen. The pictures of the editor in Play show its Sound tab: a meter for each bus, the music and who asked for it, and every sound playing with its level.
• Who plays it. A sound can be started by its own Autoplay, an animation’s frame, a script, the level, a cutscene’s cue or the music asset. Two of them asking for one sound is the mistake that is hardest to hear, so every chapter says who plays each sound now, and shows the Problems row where the editor catches it.
• Each thing you build ends in a table of its values, so you can build it again in your own game.
• Every picture is a capture of the editor or the game, and every clip a recording of the exported game, never a mock-up.

Besides the four components and the music asset, the editor has tools of its own for sound. Each is taught where it is first needed:

The chapters take about 9 hours at the keyboard: most take between half an hour and an hour. Every chapter ends at a place you can stop, with a Check it works box that says what you should hear and see.