Rhythm Quest News

Level 6-4 is sickkk.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h2]New Patterns[/h2]

This is the second-to-last level of the 30 main ones, so I can't hold anything back now! Even this late in the game, I'm actually still managing to introduce a new curveball or two...starting off with combining speed zones with ghost enemies:



Since this isn't immediately obvious how it would work, I've provided the tutorial icons below to show where the ghost ends up. It's actually simpler than it looks, as the timing is just equivalent to regular eighth notes (like a normal double-hit enemy). But now I can use this triplet->eighth note rhythm as a satisfying way to cap off a phrase.

In a similar vein, I also combine speed zones with spike enemies:



This is another instance where I'm secretly making the rhythm easier to parse by adding extra elements -- the green combo enemies allow you to have a more obvious indicator of when you need to jump.

Besides that, I'm making full use of the 16th-note rhythms that I introduced in the previous level:



I feel okay using this tricky purple + yellow ghost combination as a "fixed pattern" since I already introduced it in level 6-3 at a slower tempo. As you can see, I'm also leaning more into variations on 16th-note flying enemy patterns as well.

Honestly, the new rhythms are a blast to play. It's crazy to think that over a year ago I thought that speed zones would be the last mechanic added to the game, until I was inspired to make the yellow ghost enemies (partly due to some custom level work I was doing!) which started to open up the opportunities for more variations.

[h2]Backdrop Design[/h2]

I'm quite pleased with the backdrops for this level, not just because they look great but because I managed to do something different than just a 4th version of "outer space with a bunch of stars, plus something extra". I started things off with these spraybrush layers, actually very similar to some of the cloud layers in previous worlds, just with a lot of dithering going on (that's the main stylistic thing going on in world 6):



I liked the way that looked, but wanted to add something more to it. My first attempt was just to do some mountains (clouds + mountains...just how many of my previous level backdrops are variations on this?):



It wasn't the worst (the dithering on the shading of the mountains was a nice touch), but I felt like it wasn't quite hitting right, plus it didn't really feel like it vibe with the whole space theme. I decided to try using translucent triangles instead, kind of like how I did in world 5, and that looked much better:



I'm scared at how this might perform on the switch (this is the kind of backdrop set that requires toggling off some layers when in low-quality graphics mode), but it looks beautiful when you see all of the translucent layers scrolling at different rates and blending together.

[h2]Audio Design[/h2]

The element that kicks of the track and plays through its entirety (and the one I wrote first) is this gated pad sound. I layered some different sustained synths and then applied a rhythmic volume automation to it:

https://rhythmquestgame.com/devlog/71-gatedpad.mp3

There's two different basslines going on in the first section of the song -- one main "plucked" bass synth, and then a simple pulse wave bass that's a bit higher in frequency:

https://rhythmquestgame.com/devlog/71-bass.mp3

The drums aren't anything too fancy, just a drum loop that I've chopped up and rearranged, plus some extra hi-hat layers:

https://rhythmquestgame.com/devlog/71-drums1.mp3

Here's all of that coming together in the first chorus along with the lead melody:

https://rhythmquestgame.com/devlog/71-chorus1.mp3

In the second second of the song where the big drop happens, I switch to a different main bass sound. This one is really thick, made by layering a handful of different synths -- some providing a really "meaty" low-end, and others providing a more middle-range detuned sound.

https://rhythmquestgame.com/devlog/71-bigbass.mp3

The drums get a little changeup too! Most notably, I switch to a halftime beat, but I also use a beefier kick drum, and there's an extra drum loop layer, which mostly adds extra strength to the snare hit.

https://rhythmquestgame.com/devlog/71-drums2.mp3

There's this heavily-reverbed chirp sound too. I featured this same sort of thing in the previous level too, but I guess I just can't get enough of it; it provides this sort of nice melodic "shimmer" in the top-end without getting in the way of the lead melody.

https://rhythmquestgame.com/devlog/71-echoarp.mp3

In the buildup I also turn on a "notch filter" (removes a narrow range of frequencies) and sweep it from high to low, for an almost phaser-like effect. Here's all of that coming together:

https://rhythmquestgame.com/devlog/71-chorus2.mp3

[h2]Other Bonus Songs[/h2]

I've also been working on adding some more classical music pieces to the game as bonus songs -- this time by composers other than Mozart!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Starting off with a classic, "Flight of the Bumblebee". While this one isn't quite as well suited to Rhythm Quest as it is to some sort of 7+ key rhythm game where you can just chart out all of the 16th notes, it was still a fun one to do.



Past the very start of the song, you spend the entire time in the air through combinations of air jumps and flight patterns, as a nod to the theme of the song. The scrolling speed also increases bit by bit with every checkpoint, adding to the frenetic nature of the song. (PS: I spy mountains + clouds in the backdrops...)

Then we've got a song that I heard about a billion times at music recitals for young piano players, "Für Elise":



This one is more laidback -- kind of a repetitive song, to be honest, but I made sure to chart each repetition a little differently so that you don't end up falling asleep (like I did during those music recitals...). It's also notable for being the first song I've charted that makes use of a non-4/4 time signature. (Hm? Yes, that functionality totally worked the first time that I tried it, there were no bugs to speak of, nope, not at all. ...why are you looking at me like that?)

That's it for this month's update. Comparing level 6-4 to level 1-1 is wild; I can't believe how far I've come in these past 8 years and how deep I've gotten into Rhythm Quest charting and level design. I'm honestly almost glad that the journey to get here has taken this long, as it means I get to put the knowledge and skills that I've accumulated over the years into use. Well, it also means I probably need to revisit some of the older levels to touch them up, but I'm going to not think about that just yet...

Level 6-5 feels like it might be a little intimidating to work on, so I might try and work on a few other things next month to start with. Knowing how I work, though, I feel like it's going to be the sort of thing that I just decide to just sit down and knock out most of it in like a day or two. Just has to be the right time, I guess.

Working on new levels has consistently been my favorite part of Rhythm Quest development! As I continue to flesh out my roster of bonus stages (I've got 15-20 at this point!), I've been thinking about other musical styles that I haven't yet represented. One of those is DnB (Drum and Bass), so I made a track called "Midnight Moon" inspired by "Liquid DnB" soundscapes:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

This one is at a very brisk tempo of 170 BPM, but doesn't feature any of the mechanics from worlds 4-6 (water/speed zones, green enemies, yellow ghosts), so it's a good exercise in simply testing your ability to read basic patterns. I'm making more liberal use of syncopated rhythms in the bonus songs throughout, though, so they are going to be a little trickier to sightread than the main stages.



As I've probably mentioned in the past, even when I do use offbeat rhythms, I'm trying to keep them relatively readable, often favoring airjump patterns over basic enemies as they tend to be easier to read at a glance based on height differences.

For the music side of things, the basic structure of the DnB soundscape is actually not very complicated. The foundation consists, of course, of a nice drum loop, and then a prominent low bass synth with a little bit of "wetness" (growl/detune/warble) to it:

https://rhythmquestgame.com/devlog/70-drumsbass.mp3

The cool thing about the liquid DnB-inspired soundscape for me is that the tight drums contrast with the other melodic layers going on, which are either drenched in lush reverb, or have softer textures. Here I'm using a droning bell-type pad loop sample, some electric piano-ish plucks, and then a chiptune arpeggio that's put through a ton of reverb:

https://rhythmquestgame.com/devlog/70-texturelayers.mp3

Here's all of that coming together in the main drop of the song, which also adds in a few other new elements (an additional drum loop layer, a high blippy synth):

https://rhythmquestgame.com/devlog/70-drop.mp3

[h2]Rondo Alla Turca[/h2]

I'll eventually try to get someone else like Bach in the mix, but for now we've got some more Mozart! This time the very well-known "Alla turca" movement of Piano Sonata No. 11 in A Major, also known as the "Turkish March":

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

This chart is simpler (doesn't even use ghost enemies) and should be a fun, light-hearted playthrough for anybody who has gotten to world 3-ish. Being familiar with the melodies of the song should also make sightreading a bit easier, which is nice. There's not much else to say about this one so let's just move onto talking about other stuff!

[h2]Pausing while Respawning[/h2]

Finally!!! This seems like such a trivial thing but has literally been on my TODO list for years...you can pause in the middle of a respawn now:



It's...actually still not perfect, as instead of immediately resuming the respawn where it left off, it restarts the respawn transition so it might take a few extra beats. But that's certainly good enough for me!

You might be asking why this took so gosh-darned long for me to implement and the answer is that the respawn logic is actually really complicated with a bunch of different moving parts. Briefly speaking, during a respawn the following things happen:

- Switch over seamlessly to the respawn music loop (which was already playing, just at 0 volume)
- Find a seamless point in the future to reschedule the main music
- The pause music loop and respawn music loop also need to be scheduled (at 0 volume!)
- Take care of the actual camera and player animation, which needs to be smoothly interpolated
- At the end of the respawn, the entire audio timeline needs to be shifted

Because of how audio needs to be scheduled in advance (otherwise you run into audio buffer/latency issues), pausing that entire process isn't as simple as "just pause here and resume later" -- the scheduled music transition needs to be cancelled entirely. Of course, pausing the game also involves some special logic (keeping track of when in the music the player paused, so that we can later schedule the unpause seamlessly and drop you in on the right beat).

This was really daunting, so I kept putting it off, but recently I was working on handling an edge case where switching the audio device (e.g. plugging in a pair of headphones) would cause all currently-playing audio sources to stop (sigh...) and need to be rescheduled, so I went in and tried to just solve for all of this at the same time.

[h2]Weblate Setup[/h2]

For a while now the community translation/localization efforts for Rhythm Quest have been managed via its page on Crowdin. This has mostly sufficed (actually was a headache at first as their Unity integration wasn't robust and I had to patch it up a lot...fortunately they have patched all of that up since then), but despite my impressions of the game not having a lot of text, I eventually started adding enough options and level editor UI flows that I quickly started running into the limits of their free plan (word count X number of languages can be 60,000 at most).

The next tier up would cost $150 USD a month (yeouch) and only increase that limit to 100k, so I chose to look for alternative solutions for hosting and managing community trnaslations (hopefully something better than just reverting to using a scrappy shared google sheet). I ended up looking into Weblate, an open-source solution for this. Weblate's cloud-hosted option costs ~$40 USD a month, but you can also host it yourself if you have enough know-how to administrate a web server and set up all the infrastructure for it.

After some failed (but educational) attempts at bringing that online earlier this year, I managed to actually get that mostly up and running on my web/cloud infrastructure stack:



This is not really production-ready yet (I've disabled new user registration and everything), and there are still some aspects of it that I need to follow up on, but it's good to know that this has a good shot of panning out for my localization needs moving forward. It's still not free, of course, as I need to pay for the server resources and all that, but the cost is an order of magnitude less than I would be paying otherwise, so it's a win there nonetheless.

Translation is actually quite an important thing for my game if you look at the Steam wishlist breakdown by region, as the majority of my wishlists are actually from non-English speaking countries...



I had some plans initially for transitioning to using a professional agency and/or service for localization, but got a little discouraged after thinking about the costs involved. I guess it's a hard thing to commit money toward something that hasn't really yet cost you anything nor made you anything either...

The Rhythm Quest Demo has been updated to version 0.32.1! This patch contains a few bugfixes, but also finally allows you to pause during the middle of a respawn.

Full changelog:

Version 0.32.1
- Allow pausing during respawn (finally)
- Fixed pause music continuing to play after exiting practice mode
- Fixed music desync when pausing during level 1-1 tutorial
- Attempt to handle audio device resets/changes by restarting music
- Fixed minor menu navigation issues
- Fixed some text strings
​

The Rhythm Quest Demo has been updated to version 0.32.0! This patch adds in various assist features to help if you're struggling with particular levels or sections of the game.

Full changelog:

Version 0.32.0
- Added track preview, practice mode, track freeze assist features
- Added assist prompt when failing a section too many times
- Added control settings to in-game menu
- Added setting to enable/disable coin collection chime
- Tweaked/increased respawn timing
- Increase coin loss on respawn
- Decrease coin bank amount on checkpoint
- Fixed pause drum loop played after unpause
- Fixed pause drum loop synchronization issues when music speed was altered
- Fixed missing blur screen filter description
- Fixed jump arc calculations
- Fixed doublehitenemies always awarding coins even after respawn
- Fixed wrong ghost helper beat-matched sprite colors for second helper
- Fixed beat-matched colors not updating correctly via in-game menu
- Fixed visual hitch for ghost helpers on respawn
- Fixed keyboard rebinding not being available on web build
- Updated localizations
​

Another month, another new level. Hopefully I can at LEAST keep this pace up, if nothing else, haha. There's some other stuff I worked on that's not ready to show off yet, but here's the preview for level 6-3, titled "Quantum Orbit":

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h2]Chart Design[/h2]

I don't have any more game mechanics to introduce (we're nearing the end of the main levels, after all!), but this level still introduces some new rhythms into the mix to spice things up.

I'm hoping to introduce two "combination rhythms" involving the yellow ghost enemies, one for A.bA ..A. and another for A..A b.A., where A is the ghost hits and b is a basic enemy inserted in the middle of the pattern. Level 6-3 features the former of the two:



A little later in the level I also feature the same rhythm, but this time with a green jump+attack enemy:



I originally had these as ghost + jump combinations (without the green combo enemy), but I was worried about the visual readability for that rhythm because the ghost =looks= like it's a half-beat after the jump (even though it's only a sixteenth-beat after the jump). My hope here is that by adding the green combo enemy it's actually easier to recognize as being the same rhythm as before (with the red enemy). Things are definitely getting trickier here near the end of the game!

Level 6-3 has what I believe is the slowest tempo out of all of the main songs so far (95 BPM) due to featuring these fast sixteenth patterns. This also gives me the opportunity to introduce sixteenth-note strings of flying enemies:



We've already seen this same grouping inside of water zones, but this is the first time we're seeing them outside of them, meaning the pattern is twice as fast. I like how despite being a very fast rhythm, it should be very easy to pick up due to being so similar to something you've already gotten used to recognizing throughout the previous 2 worlds. This is where my consistency in pattern usage will hopefully pay off!

Last but not least, towards the end of the level I throw this super-interesting purple + yellow ghost combo rhythm at you:



This is another instance where I'm trying to help the player out by first introducing the same rhythm, but with basic enemies instead of the purple ghost. Since the musical rhythm repeats the same way both times, there's a higher chance that you'll be able to get it -- if not on the first try, then hopefully without too much trouble after practicing it a few times.

[h2]Visual Design[/h2]

I went kind of wild with the number of transparent layers for the backdrops here (I have to be careful not to do this too much as the backdrop textures will end up eating up more memory and storage space), which is why the colors look to have such a gradual gradient when they're all blended on top of each other.



I'm staying consistent with the general visual theme of world 6 and using the spraypaint tool everywhere for the "nebula cloud-like" dithering textures. That combined with the gratuitous layer blending really makes this world's backdrops feel different than any of the other worlds. It's working out nicely that the colors involved are the most complex compared to the other worlds as well.

The main focal point of the backdrops is the big rimlit planet. Honestly at this point I'm just searching for random sci-fi/space-themed drawings and photos and using those as inspirations. It's working out okay so far! I tried to draw the stars a little differently this time -- have to do something to set apart all these generic "dark space backdrops"...

[h2]Music Design[/h2]

I'm trying to use more varied bass synths through world 6. Here we have a thicker "plucked" bass sound that kicks off the song, as well as plays through the first "verse" section. Note the use of triangle wave tom fills to accentuate the triplet speed zone pattern (that's becoming pretty consistent musical signage for me):

https://rhythmquestgame.com/devlog/69-verse.mp3

I'm trying to keep my lead sounds diversified as well. I still use my trusty square wave "bell" tones, but I also use more complex synths like this synth patch. Here I'm using an added square wave "pluck" layer to accentuate the onset of each note, and also adding extra "cool spacey" vibes by slapping on a reverse effect on the delay/echo trail:

https://rhythmquestgame.com/devlog/69-reversedlead.mp3

For the main chorus section, I'm using a bog-standard VI-VII-i chord progression (probably the most common progression in the entire soundtrack) with some added sevenths/suspensions to spice things up a bit. Dropping into this specific progression at the main climax of a track is definitely a go-to techinque of mine, both inside and outside of Rhythm Quest, so I'm well, well acquainted with it. The pad synth is sidechained against the kick drum to give it that "ducking/pumping" sound, which you can hear here:

https://rhythmquestgame.com/devlog/69-sidechainedpads.mp3

I'm trying to let loose a little more with reverb through world 6 as well, which means some heavy use of my favorite huge-reverb plugin, ValhallaSupermassive, which can turn any sort of basic/dry sound into an entire soundscape of washed out echoes. I use it mainly on this "call-and-response" arp synth:

https://rhythmquestgame.com/devlog/69-reverbarp.mp3

Here's the entire main drop into the chorus of the song. The echoey arp that I mentioned above is definitely a background element here since it needs to make room for the actual gameplay-based melodies, but it's my favorite element of the track by far.

https://rhythmquestgame.com/devlog/69-chorus.mp3

That's going to do it for this update! I only have TWO MORE LEVELS to make before I can celebrate at having all 30 songs in the main 6 worlds done! (and then go back to the million other things that I have to do, ha ha ha...)