Hello! Hope you all are doing fine!
Welcome to another weekly devlog: this time about sound redesign of our current red fusebox!
Back in May we exhibited a demo of our game at the Nordsken convention in Skellefteå. From there, we managed to gather some helpful data on several aspects of the game — both on things that worked, and on things that could be improved. Touching upon the latter, one such thing is the tricky part of conveying information to the player regarding the state of an active puzzle (or part of it). An example of this, and what we will talk about in this devlog, is the fusebox.
--- Author: Pontus "Sparkles" Andersson ---
At the moment our fusebox doesn’t have that many sounds connected to it — which doesn’t aid a players understanding of what’s going on and what they have to do. Thus, the aim of this redesign is both to improve on the feedback given to the player, as well as creating a more unified sound experience when interacting with the fusebox.
Jumping into it, we first need to break down the fusebox into it’s individual components:
– We have the breaker, which is essentially a handle or lever with two settings: engaged or disengaged. The state of the breaker dictates wether the fusebox is connected or disconneted to an external grid.
– We also have the main unit: the box containing a slot and lock for the fuse. The lock is meant to keep the fuse in place, and is required to be in the engaged (locked) position in order for the unit to work.
– And last we have the fuse(s) which we slot into the main unit. These currently have two states: broken and healthy, with the latter state, surprise surprise, being the one you need.
These three component dictates the overall state of the fusebox, meaning, all three of them needs to be in the “good” state at the same time in order for the fusebox to function.
Here is a visual representation of the components and the current sounds attached to them:
The name of the sound gives a clue of when the sound is played, and the color correlates to whether that state is good (green) or bad (red).
As seen in the picture, there aren’t many sounds that would help a player understand what’s going on. The picture even looks empty. Additionally, the lock and breaker share the same sound effect for both of their states, and the fuse sounds the same regardless if it’s healthy or broken. Hopefully, these are some of things we can address.
This is the visual representation of the components and their sounds after the redesign:
Key changes includes:
– the lock and breaker receiving their own interact sounds (and with distinguishable state variations).
– the fuse sounding differently depending on it’s state, as well as if the fusebox is connected to an external grid or not.
– the addition of an overall state sound.
I’ve rendered a demonstration video which includes the before- and after sounds. I’ll attach it below so you can have a listen yourself!
That concludes this week’s devlog! På återseende!