Echo Sings at Night 1.1 - New Funky Mode

This was supposed to be just a post-jam Quality of Life update, but I eventually found a small new feature to add to the game.

Here is the changelog:

• Added controls (oh no) to select instruments and scale
• New "Sequencer Mode", can be activated with Space
• Minor adjustments on volume, notes, change of scale (probably unnoticeable)

So, what's this Sequencer Mode (unofficially "Funky Mode")? It started from an attempt to play the game on smartphone. I got two surprises: first, it works and is actually playable! Second, the notes are playing in rhythm. Why? Absolutely no idea. I suppose a low framerate might cause this. Anyway, it sounded quite different from the original game, and kinda nice. So I wanted to implement it!

It wasn't too difficult actually. Instead of playing notes immediately, I just had to store them in an array and play them at the next beat, provided by a timer. All the functions were already here, I mostly had to clean up the code a bit to allow this new logic. Thanks Godot signals and Observable pattern! The result sounds way more energetic than the arrhythmic mode! It's closer to minimalist music in the Steve Reich fashion, and has a bit vibe of jazz sometimes. This might please the players who found the resulting music a bit too chaotic! I also tried to add a beat, but since the melodies don't follow a strict grid it wasn't sounding really great. It's already nice as it is, so I'll let you the pleasure of remixing it if you have the motivation!

By the way, once again, this new mode sounds better in the desktop version. I suppose the web build of Godot use setTimeout for timers, and it isn't always reliable.

I think this is probably the only update the game will have! I could do a Post-Mortem of the GMTK jam, but there's not that much to say really. This game is close to what I've done previously, especially In Octave. But it sounds totally unique, and that's something I'm really satisfied with! The joy of making procedural music is discovering something new by experimenting. And I'm really glad that the players of Echo Sings at Night enjoyed the melodies it produced as much as I did!