Musical Races

Remember Scott? He’s a musically gifted game developer-in-training who works with instructor Logan as part of Game-U’s Accelerate program. Scott loves combining music and gaming, so after spending several classes in Project Spark, Logan introduced Scott to ButtonBass.

Using ButtonBass, a website that lets users create music with cubes, Scott “played” the piano while Logan recorded the result with Audacity. Once Scott declared himself satisfied with the recording quality, he and Logan imported the Audacity file into GameMaker, a more advanced development studio than Project Spark, as an asset for Scott’s new racing game. Scott also used ButtonBass to play the “level up” sound from the game Bejeweled, where it becomes the audio cue for a win! Scott’s definitely got a way with music.

In GameMaker, Scott learned how to build a racetrack and a player vehicle. GameMaker operates on “rooms,” which can also be thought of as scenes. The racetrack is one “room” or scene, and if the player wins the race, he is switched to a second “room” that announces his victory. Code controls player movement as well as room switching. With Logan’s help, Scott got his racer working and even added the Audacity files as background music! He’s picking up the principles of game design very quickly.

Great work, Scott! We love your game and look forward to playing it for ourselves. Be sure to let us know when the next levels of your racing game are finished. You’ve got talent!