Music of the Spheres by goadrich

made by goadrich for LD32 (JAM)

Fly through space and create the music of the spheres. Can you resonate all 12 tones of the chromatic scale while avoiding harmonic dissonance and duplication of tones?

My unconventional weapon is the use of soundwaves to alter sphere tones and combat dissonance.

PLEASE NOTE: Make sure to turn on sound, the game won't make much sense without it.

Tools
- Unity
- Pickle
- Gimp
- bfxr

Musical Tones and Sphere Textures from
- http://jetcityorange.com/musical-notes/
- http://opengameart.org/node/40326

This is my first Ludum Dare. Thanks for playing, hope you enjoy!

Web	http://mark.goadrich.com/ludumdare32/musicofthespheres/musicofthespheres.html
Original URL	https://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-32/?action=preview&uid=50710

Ratings

Coolness	52%	3
Overall(Jam)	2.88	794

Fun(Jam)	2.53	869
Humor(Jam)	1.83	909
Innovation(Jam)	3.94	61
Mood(Jam)	2.71	751
Theme(Jam)	3.38	495

Feedback

SledKnight

21. Apr 2015 · 05:59 UTC

Nice art and concept. I just suck at it. lol! Nice job!

Buko-Studios

21. Apr 2015 · 07:32 UTC

cool concept. i suck at it too. i did not understand well how to make a good harmony with the spheres.

🎤 goadrich

21. Apr 2015 · 17:34 UTC

Thanks! I tweaked the parameters to make it just too difficult for myself, this could definitely use some refinement. To preserve harmony, you need to create chords out of major fifths and thirds, minor thirds and major sixths between the notes of the 12 tone scale. I tried to incorporate music theory about harmony, consonance and dissonance intervals.

http://www.musicawareness.com/intervals.html

The challenge then is to create a chord progression that gets to all the notes, like the circle of keys:

http://www.musicawareness.com/circle.html

SadSmile

21. Apr 2015 · 19:21 UTC

i have no idea of music so i suck at this game. But i can imagine, that if you know what you are doning this could be fun to play ;)

HotBoxGames

21. Apr 2015 · 19:26 UTC

Really like the concept of this one! I seem to be extremely bad at it though xD

Great work

goerp

21. Apr 2015 · 19:27 UTC

Very very original! It was an unique gameplay for me. I've played games with sound before, but thinking about harmony was never one.
The game is also very very hard: I could go from harmony of 80 to 0 in 1 second.
And is there a way to skip tones? If I know the next tone will be the same or a dissonant I would like to skip it.

Nice one.

🎤 goadrich

21. Apr 2015 · 19:38 UTC

Thanks @SadSmile and @HotBoxGames!

@goerp I think I need to tweak the way harmony is eroded, so that when dissonance starts it falls of slowly, but as the dissonance stays around, it falls faster. Right now, as soon as a new sphere appears, it starts to impact harmony, but this should be a gradual introduction. This might give you more of a chance to recover from bad tones. Spheres should also fade as they leave the space instead of stopping abruptly.

mitchellsha

21. Apr 2015 · 19:42 UTC

The concept is so cool! So creative!

I had an issue with the intro screen randomly popping up while the game was still running. Not sure if that was on my end or not.

🎤 goadrich

21. Apr 2015 · 19:46 UTC

@mitchellsha Thanks! The intro screen pops up again when your harmony goes to 0 and you lose. Not the best solution; I really need a clear separation between the intro and restart states of the game.

CliffracerX

22. Apr 2015 · 02:26 UTC

This is quite interesting! More instructions for the less musically inclined (like me) would be useful :P

Difficulty is a tad high.

TheMeorch

22. Apr 2015 · 02:47 UTC

What an interesting concept. It's a bit difficult to handle once a bunch of spheres are on screen, since the ship moves pretty slowly and it can be hard to know how much you'll need to shoot a sphere in order to correct its pitch. I think it would be an interesting challenge to try to make a more accessible version of this game concept. Nice work!

ZQMony

22. Apr 2015 · 02:47 UTC

Nice concept. It seems really cool even though I was no good at it.

roving-stone

22. Apr 2015 · 06:20 UTC

I really like how matching notes is a game mechanic. This feels the most "musical" of the music related entries I've played so far. It's tough though! I think if you ran with this concept and polished it up you could make a very cool game.

BIZM

22. Apr 2015 · 18:40 UTC

Very interesting and bold concept! :) Figuring out the mechanics felt rewarding. We wish the harmony meter was more forgiving.

GarethIW

22. Apr 2015 · 19:15 UTC

Really nice idea, but I feel the ship moves and fires too slowly compared to how quickly harmony goes down. Would be good if harmony was rebuilt while stable as well?

ArcturusDeluxe

23. Apr 2015 · 18:19 UTC

Cool idea. Decent graphics. Quite difficult though, the harmony counter drops really quickly. Found the constant sine wave noise a little grating, even when the harmonies were on track. Maybe some more varieties of sound would have been nice. Interesting game though!

Cosine

23. Apr 2015 · 18:24 UTC

I really like the idea, it was very interesting to peruse the tones I should make. I think that it was hard enough to get the tones to sound right, having to shoot the planets just made it even harder! :)

Xanjos

23. Apr 2015 · 19:42 UTC

Pretty difficult but I actually like the concept (especially how the audio is a major factor in the game).

crazyninjamofo

23. Apr 2015 · 20:30 UTC

I really dig the idea. Even with an understanding of basic music theory, it takes a while to understand what you are doing and how you can change the tones to avoid dissonance. The vibrant planet colors were cool too.

igoramendola

24. Apr 2015 · 04:02 UTC

The idea is pretty good. I wish I had a better knowledge of music to achieve a better result hehehe. Congrats for concluding your first Ludum Dare entry :))

geekdrums

10. May 2015 · 20:30 UTC

Need more feedback how much tones are harmonized.

but overall, nice concept game.

CiderPunk

10. May 2015 · 23:05 UTC

looks neat but I super sucked at this one might! might have been more sensible of the planets had played different tunes/rhythms in their key and pulsed with their notes or something...