Edit: (may 14, 2011) You can download a beta version from http://attr-x.net

Time to tell you people a bit about my project :-)

I'm not really making a game, but it looks kinda like it. My background is experimental classical music, with a strong focus on electronic sound. I wanted to work on the idea of a soundscape, witch is traditionally a kind of audio montage with sounds. It can be anything, from emulating a nature environment towards pure abstract electronic sounds. So no melodies, chords or anything like that, just pure sounds, hopefully put together in way that it is interesting to listen to the montage.

Two years ago i started working on the idea of making such a soundscape visual again. The starting point was that a musical idea is more comprehensable to people when they see what happens. So all sounds should be represented by visual objects, and when the sound moves through the speakers, the objects should move as well.

I made a first go at it with the irrlicht engine and the FMOD sound engine. Irrlicht was a bit primitive though, and I switched to torque this year. Went much better, but the more I wanted to implement, the more chaotic it all became. I needed source code access and that was very expensive too.

Last july I discovered Esenthel, and now things are really taking off. The sound and programming are nearly finished. I'm working on a more interesting world to look at, now. And on an initial gamestate that makes the sounds interesting to start with.

At first, people could only 'see' sounds move, but with Esenthel i've improved the concept so that people can really interact with them. You can grab a sound an trow it in a certain direction, alter the pitch and volume of each sound, and make it follow a path you enter.

I have made a few screenshots available on http://www.flickr.com/photos/youngmusic/

Video will be more interesting of course, and I'll add it in a few weeks, when the world is really finished. I hope to get a first version of this project ready for friends by the end of december.

After that, it is time to implement some new stuff. Some things i'm gonna work on are:

- multiplayer, so that people can manipulate sounds together and have some kind of 'gig'.

- DSP. I have visual sound emitters now, but it would be great if i also have filter objects lying around in the world. They should be able to manipulate a sound more if it's close to them.

- audio occlusion with walls. Sound should not just pass trough walls and such. So you should be able to hear if a sound is behind a wall. And after that, I'm planning on flickering walls and such to inject in the world..

Well, more than enough plans :-) I'm working on this in my free time, and to teach myself programming, so development is not always going very fast. There won't be a commercial release of this, but i hope to find an affordable server that allows me to make a 1GB game download available. My main target are experimental art festivals where I could setup the game as some kind of art installation.

Regards,

yvan

It looks very interesting and promising; I'll be eagerly awaiting a video update. ^^

The objects only emit sound when you interact with them, right? Will/do they make different sounds when they bounce, get pushed harder, softer?

Well, pushing them harder has an impact on the Doppler effect when they move. Bouncing has no impact. Good idea though :-)

Very cool concept looking good!

That looks interesting! This will stand out from the rest as not much products are like this, i wish you luck!

It's mean, u need a very huge sound-base, Do u have some top secret free sound websites?

I took some sounds from freesound.org and i'm sure i will find some more over there. But since my background is computer music, I also make some myself. And my next big spending will be some proffesional portable audio equipment to make some interesting fieldrecordings myself.

That said, you really don't need tons of sounds. It won't even make it more interesting because it easily becomes just noise that way. For example, I have one sound of a ringing wineglass (remember, you wet your finger and go gently over the edge of the glass?) and that is the only sound i will use in a certain area. There will be about 50 or more instances of the same sound. But by changing the pitch, i can produce chords at some spots, and just shift a few frequencies at others. And some objects may move at different speeds, thus having Doppler applied to them.

By moving around, you should hear something that sounds 'right' in a way, not just random sounds one after another.

A small update. Here you can see a walk through the gameworld.

http://www.vimeo.com/18326112

pretty nice! but I don't hear any sounds.

ah, no. I still have to add the sounds. Everythings is there to do it, but i still have to think about what goes where.

looks cool, keep it up

Hello again!

I got a first playable beta ready. (Yes, WITH sound this time!) You can download it from http://www.sendspace.com/file/c5yupv

A small manual is included in the zipfile. You'd better read it, because i'm not certain how intuitive the interface is. Please notify my if any file seems missing. It's the first time I make a package that should run on another computer. So I'm almost certain I forgot something :-)

cheers!

yvan

Goosh, that whispers close to the Swirling rocks are awesome effect!

the moving tones were awesome! The scenery is very lushy and vivid, and the floating swirly rocks were enchanting

I really like the progress so far, well done!

Oh one note, for the minimap, its not intuitive to press (+) and zoom out, and (-) to zoom in, its usually the other way around.

Thanks for the feedback! Yes, I also think the swirly rocks part was one of my better ideas :-) And I'll change the minimap buttons. I thought it was the other way around, but I forgot to check.