August 2022 - Week 155 - Treehoppers

Summary

• Treehoppers
• Sound effects
• Nests

Detail

I get back to work on Sunday with adding a new enemy. I was going to add giant spiders until Rao Dao Zao pointed out they are terribly cliched. I want a territorial creature living in forests that will slowly reproduce and eventually encroach on the player. I thought Grasshoppers might work but renaming them Treehoppers to indicate they are huge. Then I find Treehoppers are real and they are so much more terrifying.

With the Treehopper sprite complete I move on to the audio. Each animal has four sounds; idle, attack, injured and death. Sourcing cricket, squishing, crunching and chittering recordings from freesound.org, editing in Audacity, I add Treehopper, Copperpede and Flintworm sounds.

I want the Treehoppers to occupy forests and periodically spawn from nests. I've underestimated this work but decide it will make for some interesting gameplay, so I may end up moving some other work into a later release.

For the next week I'll be finishing the Treehoppers, foreshadowing future threats and adding wandering enemies.