Game Progress Update #63

Hello World! And welcome to the 63rd Dev with Dave Game Progress Update.

It’s not the longest update I’m afraid this time round. I was hoping to get another couple of bugs fixed as well, but time got away from me.

The weather hasn’t helped. I am the exact opposite of solar powered, and the weather here in the UK has once again been amazing. Blue skies and sunshine however means a very lazy Dave.

Most of the work I did get done this time round was relating to the promotional video I am planning to make.

Promotional Video

The goal is to make a 30 second video to use to promote Flappy vaders on social media and on paid adverts. I’d already written a basic plan for it last update on paper.

I am just about happy with the plan for the video, but I am a little less happy that I have the skills to pull it off, but I will try, lol.

While I was planning the video, I did spend a while watching some more videos on how best to make game trailers and promotional videos in general.

I found >this< post to be quite an interesting read about transitions. Not only does it talk in depth about the types of transitions and where they work best, it also had a lot of example movie trailers which demonstrated exactly what the guy was talking about.

Promo video sound track

I started with the musical sound track. As I explained in the previous progress update, the first 6 seconds or so of the video will be quite extreme, full on game play. So the music will start off at around 1.5 times normal speed. Then after the initial 6 seconds have passed, then it slows down to its normal speed. And begins to slowly speed up as the next 18 seconds goes by until it reaches once again the speed it was initially.

I decided the easiest way to get the exact speeds and timings in the music was to code it specifically, so i added a few lines of code to the beginning of the game to do this and allow me to capture it using as video OBS Studio.

Promo video action sequences

Since it was such a success for the sound track I decided I was also going to use a similar method with the gameplay footage as well, rather than leaving up to luck and/or skill! lol.

I am going to disable the automatic acceleration of the game and instead set it manually in code before each recording session.

Also I am going to make an specific zone with all the elements I need in it for the first six seconds of the trailer. I will also be specifying the zones manually.

These game play sections will be recorded without the UI being seen. So I will need to hide those beforehand. I also do not need these videos to have music, only sound effects. So I will need to turn off the music volume in the settings before hand as well.

Unfortunately I didn’t get the special zones for the video finished in time. So I can’t show you any progress on this as yet. I am hoping that I will have at least a rough draft of it done for next time.

That’s all for now.

As always, I will be back in a fortnight with another update. In the mean time, don’t forget to follow Dev with Dave on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to stay up to date with the project.

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