Sound Designer
Release type: Retail (Game-Maker suite)
Release date: 1991 (original release)
Author: Recreational Software Designs
Related tools: Integrator, Xferplay, Blaster Master, WinDat, Goldwave, AdLib Visual Composer
One of a few support tools programmed by Oliver Stone, Sound Designer is used to generate and edit .SND format files -- which traditionally employed the PC speaker, though in modern emulation the sound tends to output through the computer's normal sound driver.
With Game-Maker 1.05 (November 1992), support for FM music was added. Although Game-Maker lacks a native utility for composing or editing .CMF music files -- indeed, no such utility seems to exist -- AdLib Visual Composer is the official tool for writing .ROL files, from which all .CMF files are derived. So, throw in a command-line utility to convert the .ROL files to .CMF, and Visual Composer may safely be considered an extended part of the Game-Maker development suite.
Sound Designer does come into play here, though. Much as Graphics Image Reader is used to format .GIF files, Sound Designer is also used to tweak the clock speed of Creative Music Files (.CMF) for use with Game-Maker.
With the release of Game-Maker 2.0 in August 2003, Sound Designer was again upgraded to also incorporate digital .VOC files into a game's sound bank -- although the user still needs to produce the sounds with an external program like Blaster Master, WinDAT, or GoldWave.
Version history
1994 - Version 3.00
Tips
- Try rapidly contrasting high and low pitches to create a dirty, organic tone.
- In actual play, any sound block that you set to zero will play as a medium tone. If you want to set a block to silent, your best option is to set it to the lowest possible pitch rather than to absolute zero.
- Alternatively: if you type text into the .VOC sample window and there is no corresponding sample, then instead of the given PC speaker sound the game will just play silence.
- As above, you can write your own music in AdLib Visual Composer and then convert it to CMF with a command-line utility called ROL2CMF. Often the instrument patches and the volume levels will sound different in Game-Maker than in other players. That instrument that sounds so great in Visual Composer might sound like a dying raccoon in Game-Maker. Get used to twiddling and compromising.
- Remember to reformat any new .CMF music in Sound Designer, or else you'll probably only hear silence.
Links
- The Making and Unmaking of a Game-Maker Maker (Gamasutra)
