State of Decay #3 (December 2024): Small Updates + Additions to the Toparo Music Preview throughout December 2024.

Blog post number three, perhaps it’ll be “third time’s the charm” in the department of the blog containing anything substantial..? Well, sort of…

So - what was I up to last month? Not too much unfortunately; I’ve started on the character portraits beyond the playables, it’s nothing major, but they’re some of the more “show off-y” things I can make, so getting them done sooner rather than later would be excellent (not to mention I’ll need to have a decent handful done for Demo 0!). Next would be that I’ve started chipping away at the bullet sprites again; I can say I’m over halfway now, which is exciting, probably far over halfway but I’m not too sure. It’ll be nice once I have them all done but I’m dreading importing all 1,000+ sprites into GameMaker one by one; it’ll probably take a whole day, hope I don’t make any mistakes! (^^;

Otherwise, there’s nothing too notable really, a lot of little things here and there that aren’t too interesting; just a lot of boring background things that have to get done at some point. Hopefully next month I’ll be able to get a decent bit more notable done.

Hmm, what else, what else… Oh, you might have seen it already (I say as if anyone is keeping up with Toparo right now) but I’ve posted two videos to my YouTube channel after 8 months of it gathering dust. They’re both me testing the MMC5 audio expansion (and the DPCM channel) for the game’s music, why..? Well I’d say the description of the first test sums it up well enough:

“Recently, I’ve come to the conclusion that a lot of my dissatisfaction with my own music comes from not the quality of composition (although it can obviously be improved quite a lot) but instead the limits imposed by just using the 2a03.

It’s mostly an issue of the music sounding too empty; I’m too much of a novice to do anything crazy with just the 2a03, so it’ll always sound empty unless I learned. I did try to learn, but as it turns out, there’s few helpful resources really breaking down how it’s done - as far as I can tell it’s either you know it or you don’t.

I picked the MMC5 as it was probably the easiest to work with based on my current knowledge (and the fact that all my 2a03 instruments would work just fine in it, thanks FamiStudio). I also tried to actually use the DPCM, which of course means just spamming the Sunsoft bass… But I did throw in some percussion as well (I also have another looping bass sample I just didn’t use here, so it’s not all Sunsoft).”

That covers it well I think, I’m still on the fence about using the MMC5 (and DPCM) so no promises the music will sound like this in the game. I was originally going to use the VRC7 as well but… I think it’s getting messy enough with only seven sound channels; almost doubling that would be absurd (probably).

Oh, and here are the videos so you can watch them easily (don’t say I never did anything for you ;P):

Of course this is great and all but it does make the original plan for this month a little silly looking. You see, last year, I uploaded a piece of music to the YouTube channel every fifth day of December (including the first) as a little music preview. The issue lies in the fact that… I don’t have 7 showcase worthy MMC5 tracks..! And I don’t want to rush them to meet an arbitrary deadline, so I’ll be posting the 2a03 stuff I’ve already made videos for. You see, I only came up with the idea to use expansion audio part way through this month…

Find them on the YouTube Channel, or right here (The text below each video is the main part of that video’s description!):

“This is the theme of Maunanns, the Stage 2 (A/B) boss. It’s quite heavily based on Seihou 3’s Super I.I.G.G, probably a bit too much but whatever, I quite like the original even if it is a bit underbaked feeling for an Extra Stage boss. Although Maunanns seems to be out for blood, he's only the stage 2 boss, so he may act tough, but he’s way in over his head; I thought that a serious sounding theme would fit this idea, but it sounds kind of silly.”

“This is the theme of Stage 1 (A/B). This was one of the few pieces of music that was made for the unnamed album that became Toparo ~ the Forgotten Rotting Technology; I cut it down by over a minute so it fits for that Stage 1 feeling. It’s quite sad and slow, not a particularly exciting first impression, it was made with the idea of representing the games’ entire setting, not just Stage 1 - a bit sad, a bit empty, but there’s something hidden here… at least, that’s the idea.”

“This is the theme of Puglia, the Stage 1 boss (A/B/C/D). Considering Puglia is the Stage 1 boss for all four routes, I tried to make something that had exactly 2% more effort put into it than usual. She’s quite playful and childish so I tried to make something that’s a bit simple but high energy, it ended up sounding a bit creepy in places I think, but she’s a ghost, so it’s a feature. I felt quite limited while making this one, sometimes I wish I could squeeze an extra sound channel out of the NES (^^; (Continues to ignore the stupid DPCM channel or whatever it’s called).”

“This is the theme of Stage 2 (C/D). This is an old piece that I salvaged from the discard pile, it was originally made for Toparo ~ the Brilliant Shining Light’s first stage - I hated it. Now that I've cleaned it up though, I still don’t like it that much, but it’s good enough. I wanted to make something high energy for the park stage, it might feel a bit tropical here or there but it should be fine if you just think of nature instead. Originally there were parts that briefly became dissonant, but they didn’t match the track's new purpose.”

“This is the theme of the Game Over screen. The original idea was that there would be a rare chance of being taken to a blank screen after the TALENA logo where a unique character would talk to the player directly. This was a stupid idea, so I changed it. Now, when you get a Game Over, this unique character talks at the player character commenting on the circumstances of their “death”. The music was made just to be ambient and mysterious; the wave sounds were fun to make.”

“This is the Main Story Opening (A). This is the most recently composed piece in this month’s collection. It might be a bit high energy for a theme that’s used exclusively for reading terrible tabloid newspapers, but I just wanted to compose *something* for this scene as a warm up. It sounds a bit like an old ringtone.”

“This is the Main Story Ending (C). This was supposed to end up as a boss theme, but I had no idea where to take it, so it ended up as a lesser theme just for the story scenes; I originally wrote that this was for the Extra Story Ending, but these lesser themes will probably keep switching around until I’ve made them all. I moved this here as I thought it would fit a bitter but perhaps hopeful feeling, some things might just be for the better… It’s always fun to try and use the triangle channel as the lead; also, this is vaguely based on Clair de Lune.”

And yeah, that’s the blog post… There *is* something substantial this month, just not in the blog post itself. Think of this as “part one” of the blog post and the descriptions of the videos being the exciting yet less financially successful “part two” of the blog post… despite the fact that they’re already in the blog post.

Eh~ (^^;

Hmm… I’ve no idea what I’m going to do for the January blog post; hey, if anyone *is* reading this when it’s new and not years after 2024 once I’ve amassed a grand total of a singular fan, throw me a suggestion lol - Hell, throw me a bunch, I’ve got to come up with twelve of these a year. What do *you* want to see..?

…

This month’s crystal ball grazing: When it gets foggy, don’t look up, once the fog clears, keep quiet; you didn’t see anything - got it? Good.