Welcome to this weeks State of the Game! Good news, I have finished most of the functionality of the main menus and have started to implement a better sound system!
Also, I vastly under estimated how amazing a full featured game option menu could be. Do you know how much fun it is to hop into a Arena game with 3 teams of 3 and work with your AI team mates to dominate? It’s wonderful 🙂
So, I did say I finished ‘most’ of the functionality. There are some minor polish items I need to do, like have proper AI portraits so you can identify the AI in the menu better and have the AI role type selection work. The difficulty setting is currently hooked up, but all it controls is the ‘level’ of the MAV that the AI will use. A lower difficulty level will have AI using MAV’s that have been intentionally weakened. Examples include: Not using all the weight available, swapping for light weapons instead of large ones, using more limited range weapons [Like AR’s instead of Snipers].
So, back to the sound system! I have implemented a plugin called Master Audio. I am using this to help speed up the process and so far it seems to be doing the job. It has at least saved me $11.25 worth of time so far, so who can complain?! 🙂
As I explore what problems it does and does not solve, I will be putting together a full plan for the audio design that I have in mind for M.A.V.. I have been watching lots of videos and doing research as much as I can, as this is an area that I have not worked in before. If you are interested in learning about audio design in games with me, join me on Twitch tonight at 7:30pm PST!