A little over a year ago, right around the time the development of Space Trucker was starting there was a loss in my family. I heard over the phone that my Oma had passed away, I got to talk to her one last time and tell her that I love her which is really more than any of us could ask for. It was a very surreal day, the passing of time felt slower and I was reminded of good times growing up playing in the backyard and swimming in her pool with friends on those hot summers.
When all of the assets in her home were being split up amongst the family I found out my sister was going to inherit all of the tapes and records of her singing from the 40's, 50's, and 60's. I remembered then how she used to do show tunes and had a really amazing singing voice. I personally lacked the equipment to transcode from tape and records so I asked her to please create digital copies of these items so I could use them in the Space Trucker project.
Development on the game continued as normal until around the prototype stage I was finally the recipient of a couple of CD's with the digitally remastered versions of the songs. This was not just a simple dubbing either, great care was taken in the conversion process to clean up the audio, remove artifacts, and generally make it as high quality as the source media would allow with today's technology.
When I got the discs in the mail I was super excited. I set to work on creating images of the audio data contained within and eventually to the OGG format our game engine uses along with OpenAL for playback. With the conversion from physical media complete I was free to edit them in programs like Audacity and snap the tracks together, figure out which ones I wanted to use, and organize them based on BPM for use in the game. Eventually all of this culminated in a radio station that the players can listen to in the game before the end of the world occurs while everything is still working fine.
Since the game takes place in the early 90's it made sense lore wise even that someone who is in their late 20's (AKA the player character in the game) it would not be out of touch for them to be listening to music from this era especially if they had a liking to it. Accommodations were made in the game's storyline and character creation to fit for this so everything would be just perfect. You can listen to some of the tracks for yourself, I have them all on a YouTube video for your personal enjoyment below the drop.
It really brought me lots of joy and happiness to see this come to fruition. The way the music sounds in the game fits well with the tone we are trying to achieve as you can hear background noise like people laughing and clapping sometimes between songs. This compliments the life on Earth, and makes it all the more ominous when communications cease and you cannot hear the people laughing anymore.
As you cruise throughout the galaxy it is comforting to know that my Oma's voice will be there coming through the radio as the stars flyby at faster-than-light speeds. Furthermore, the idea that even long after I am gone the stories I have told with my previous games, this one, and the ones I have yet to create will live on like my Oma's singing voice. I hope that you all enjoy this story and piece from my personal life.
The next post will be about the map editor, how rooms get filled out, how doors get wired up, and a few tidbits about how levels come to life.