invadeRemix
invadeRemix for the iPad – video coming soon!
I developed invadeRemix in Febuary 2011 using openframeworks and FMOD.
motIvation
Most video games allow the user to interact with the environment using a sprite or avatar. This ouf-of body interaction (from user to sprite to environment) may provide goals, rewards, challenges, and lessons throughout the gaming experience. All the while, the physical environment remains unaccessible to the user. In most scenarios, the isolation of user and environment is likely due to a number of factors but can largely be accounted to the fact that gaming is for users and game developing is for a game engine(er), and the task of moving around scenery and breaking level logic might be disastrous, uncontrollable, or simply boring. While this could potentially lead to interesting hacks or creative levels, more focused implementations of game editors have been previously successful. Many first-person shooters, such as Counter Strike and Red Alert offer map editors that allow a user (outside of gameplay) to remake a level or develop one from scratch. New versions of Guitar Hero permit users to create their own songs. Allowing the user to create simplified and localized parts of the game provides constant entertainment for seasoned users. One of the missed opportunities of environment editing is audio.
gamepLay
invadeRemix gives the user the power to choose their own game sounds while playing Space Invaders. Providing the user a musically interactive interface along with typical gameplay allows the user to control higher-level game design parameters that are typically only manipulated by game designers. While this may provide entertainment during the remix phase of playing the game, the end goal of invadeRemix is to then provide a database of user-created sonic environments to anyone that wants to play the game with a new pallet of sounds. With a large database of these sounds users could create many different versions of the game such as a version that uses only text or a version of farm animal noises. With this unlimited pallet of sound options for the game, playing the game helps users look for new strategies and goals that provide atypical rewards. For example, normally the entire object of the game is simply to shoot all of the invaders for as many points as possible. By adding control over the sounds in the game, particularly shooting and destroying objects with different sounds, users now strive to shoot for different invaders so that the sonic environment would change accordingly. When an object in the scene is tapped, editor controls appear for the highlighted object. The editor includes the following features: – a sixteen-step sequencer for each object in the scene that shows the current beat as well as four different positions where that scene object will be heard – pitch control for each invader – volume control for each scene object – shake across the x axis to create a chorus effect – shake across the y axis to create distortion – color feedback for change in pitch and effect These audio effects combined with a number of sound files for the invaders provides for an entertaining step-sequencer performance and with more development could be a very entertaining overall experience. While a few other opportunities are available for editing the sound of the game, such as scoring and explosions, the current features provide enough sound for constantly textures.