This small update adds a soundtrack to the game.

Key changes

The game now has a proper custom soundtrack made by composer Jos Ramn "Bibiki" Garca. There is the main theme and 8 gameplay tracks. This is obviously not a large update, but I'm super-excited about the new music and wanted to add it to the game as soon as possible. Previously, there was a single gameplay track running on a loop. It was a lovely track, but it got old really, really fast. And it was a stock track, so not original work.

I also needed a proper music system to support multiple tracks and proper transition between them. It's mostly just picking a random track with a bunch of rules about not repeating things. There is one interesting consideration though. If you've ever listened to a soundtrack/album on repeat, you know that your brain learns which tracks follow which. Even years later, you can instantly tell which song will follow next. This is something I wanted to avoid, so the music system stores the history of recently played tracks and avoids repeating the same consequitive tracks.

Here's an example of a random track order:



You can see that all tracks appear roughly equally, but the order is different and there is always "spacing" between the same track.

Here's an example of the sort of debugging I may have to create to support a new system, like the music system in this case:


You can see a bunch of things that hint at the internal logic. I could probably make a full write-up about all the decisions and details of the music system, but now I'm just padding this update post :)

Future plans

I am currently working on the season update and this is my planned next update in the near future. It's about 85% complete for the immediate milestones.

The main reason for the update delay is that I had to work on a new save system. I will talk about this properly in the next update post. Unfortunately, new saves won't be compatible with the old save format. However, I intend to release a separate save upgrade release of the game that can perform a one-time conversion of the saves should you wish to do so.

Changelog

Changes

Added new game soundtrack (menu track and 8 gameplay tracks)
Gameplay tracks will play randomly, but avoid recent repeats or following the same order
Music tracks swap with an interval in-between (instead of cross-fading)
Music toggling now quickly fades out/in the track (instead of instant switch)

Fixes

Selecting between buildings with different item transit setups would not update the HUD transit selection buttons properly

Rudy
Snowy Ash Games