Hi Everyone,
I've been back working on Solo Hero iOS for about 3 weeks now and I've got a WIP video to show you all. I'm still working almost exclusively on the full original paid-app version of the game. Still to do - A few gameplay issues, a few minor technical bugs and some alignment issues on the screen layouts.
Alongside that I'm only about 50% done composing the replacement ambient music loops. Solo Hero has a set of four ambient tracks which correspond to the four quarters of the players health bar. The idea being that the music can become more urgent/panicky as the player loses health and less urgrent/panicky if some health is restored. When I first wrote the game I hadn't thought of this idea so I didn't ask the composer of the theme tune and audio fx, Tom Barker, to produce any ambient loops. Later, after I'd added the feature, Tom wasn't available to create something in keeping with the original tune. I decided to find some free music loops but wasn't completely happy even with the best set. Nothing to do with quality of the loops just that they didn't quite fit the idea I had in mind.
I do a bit of music composition and playing as a hobby but I've never been confident enough to try and produce something commercially. Although I still don't think my work will match up to Tom's or any other professional or even semi-professional composer I've decied to give it a try. I hope it won't matter too much if it's not quite top quality since each piece doesn't need to be very long and because it's background music rather than the main focus. NB the user can mute the ambient music and I could in future add alternative sets of ambient loops so it's not like anyone will be stuck with my tunes :)
The main inspiration for creating a switchable music system is my love of the quirky music of Captain Beefheat & his Magic Band; particularly the Magnus Opus that is "Trout Mask Replica". Although I can't enmesh convergerce & divergence of tempos,keys and time signitures in the same way that album does. I'm trying to make use of those elements to creating diversity between the tracks. At the moment I'm very happy with the extremes (full and low health) but not with the middle two quartile loops. You can hear parts of these loops playing in the background of the video.
Solo Hero iOS - Work-in-Progress - Indie DB
Thanks for reading!
Best wishes,
Martin @ Ludopus
