Guns and explosions rebuilt in layers, and a 95-minute AI test

A long day, mostly about how the game sounds, with a code review and the first long AI test in a week.

Why more recordings would not fix the guns

The studio's note was that the real-gun recordings sounded like guns from an old film. That thin, dry sound is in the old recordings themselves, so collecting more of them would not change it.

The guns are now built the way modern games build them. Only the bright crack of a real recording is kept. A snap, a body thump, a mid-range punch, a sub-bass layer and a short room tail are added under it, and the result is compressed hard and loud. It covers the Old Faithful machine gun, the generic shot, the Blunderbuss, the Pumpkin Cannon and the Bell Mortar, and so Tubular Todd's missile launch. The game stopped adding its own thump under these shots, since the new clips carry a better one.

Every gun clip peaks at about -1 dB and sits at -10 to -14 dB loudness. The machine gun is short on purpose, so ten shots a second stay tight.

Explosions, the same way

Explosions had the same old-film problem. They are now layers around a cinematic boom or a bass drop at the core: a bright blast front, a rolling low rumble, crackling debris and a room tail. The small explosion keeps the sharp crack of a real one, with the same layers under it. It also covers the saucer being shot down, with a falling whine, and the boss collapse. Every clip peaks at the very start, fades smoothly and ends clean.

The sound bank stands at 189 sounds and 543 clips, 29.3 MB. None of this has been listened to yet. The tone is set by a short list of numbers, so it can be retuned quickly.

Two honking weapons

The Hearse Horn and the Goose Bomb were the only two real car and motorcycle horns in the game. The Hearse Horn is now a deep, falling shockwave thump, and the Goose Bomb a silly cartoon pop and wobble. The placeholder sounds that play before recordings finish loading were honks too, and are now a thump and a pop.

What reading the code found

Three reviewers read the week's new boss and enemy code, the audio and editors, and the HUD and game flow. Each finding was checked against the code before it was fixed.

• The Weapon Editor had reached only 12 of 19 weapons. It now changes every one, and five weapons that never played their hit sound now do.
• Three upgrades did nothing and now work. The Belfry Bell brings a fallen Wakeguard back once per Wake. The Small Library shows a faint arrow toward a hidden neighbour. Hollow Touch makes kills calm the Dread twice as much.
• A sound set to "off" now stays off. An explosion sound turned off in the editor used to come back, and a sound with every clip switched off is now silent.
• Some sounds had a synthesized layer playing underneath the recording. The Bell Mortar, Todd's missile launch and the player's cries sounded fake because of it.
• The pharmacy side-quest is fair. It can no longer be repeated for free healing, and dying there no longer ends the whole run.
• A run is saved the moment the squad falls, so closing the game on the death screen no longer loses it.
• Enemies no longer aim through wall corners after the previous week's path change.

The first long AI test in a week

It was the first time the AI visited Sunny Acres and the Sunshine Plant. Two findings came out of it. Frame rate is the weak spot on the studio's test PC, about 20 frames a second on the Balanced setting against a target of 30. And the AI finds the game very easy, clearing most nights in about a minute with almost no damage, so difficulty waits for people to play it.

For the frame rate, graphics now step down by themselves. If the game cannot keep up even at its lowest resolution, it moves to a lighter preset at the start of the next night and says so. Three false alarms were also removed from the test logs: sounds reported missing that were only still loading, loading hitches at the start of a level, and the AI reported stuck while it was simply fighting.

Zoom out to fit both

In two-player games the camera now pulls back to about twice as far as before, so both players stay on one shared screen instead of the view splitting. The fog thins as the camera pulls back so the ground stays as clear as at the old distance, and the moon's shadows stretch to cover both players. An options setting switches between "Zoom out to fit both", the new default, and "Split screen when far apart". It has not been played yet. Smoothness at the widest zoom, and whether small characters still read, are what to watch.