Sir Mike
(5/2024)
HEYAH!!!
A sound-controlled Medieval fighting game. With stereo information, loudness, and a BIG sword, block and strike to topple your foes!
Made in the Godot game engine.
Footage
This strange game is best introduced by a video demo. See the later section for more details.
Origins of the Knight
This was my final project for Sound Image Mapping, a course in the University of Chicago that explores the relationship between sound and images. We made a lot of weird and fun things, and this was the culmination of our explorations and experiments.
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Personally, I find myself making funny sounds when I'm immersed in a game... but what if it can go the other way around? That you can make sounds to immerse yourself in a game? This was the idea behind Sir Mike.
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​For a prior assignment, I'd used Godot since it's fairly easy to work directly with the audio engine. I made a small game where you can control a ball with pitched sounds and wanted to make something similar.
​The biggest challenge was getting a decent stereo setup. I thought my laptop stereo mic would suffice... but no. You have to press these holes to get meaningful stereo information, which is horrible for gameplay.
After going through a bit of gear, I settled on getting two of the same USB mic. Windows doesn't recognize them as being entirely separate, but Cakewalk, my DAW at the time, could. So I panned the mics in Cakewalk, sent that information to the virtual input in Voicemeeter, and then had Godot use that information.
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The game determines the position of your sword based on which channel (left or right) is louder. The difference is sent to an animation tree and affects both the idle and attack animations. and then sums the two channels' volumes to see if it's louder than a threshold. If it's louder, you swing your sword.
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The model is something I made myself based on images of microphones and late Medieval armor. The sounds come from Freesound or are recorded by me. For example, the movement sounds (i.e. the jingling of armor) are made by me swinging my keys and pitching that sound down.
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CONCEPT ART! WOAH!
The game includes a few useful settings that can be saved. To give credits where it's due, I adapted the saving system from a YouTube video.
The attack threshold lets you calibrate the system depending on the loudness of your environment/razor.
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As always, stay tuned for future updates. If you want to play this for some reason... be my guest. You can play the game with space & the arrow keys if you can't match my oddly specific mic setup. Press R to reset.
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https://drive.google.com/file/d/1W2bBl4CYoKpHO_JJluQ1JbhDgEb2GO4d/view?usp=drive_link