SMU Guildhall Graduate Catalog Fall 2015 — Cohort 22 | Page 28

Trevor Youngblood Software Development « Combining Interactive Music and Musically Reactive Game Elements My thesis project is a game demo that of this thesis was to show a mastery of mechanics with a turn-based Role-Playing and seamless musical transitions, which combines interactive music and rhythm Game (RPG) combat system. I chose this topic because I wanted to challenge myself while making something fun and visually interesting. In the game, each character can perform a number of actions that require the player to press arrow keys on beat with the background music. The patterns of the arrows depend on the action being performed and the character performing the action. In addition, the background music changes depending on the status of the fight, such as who is attacking or which team is winning. The end-goal 28 SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT animation pacing, compositional layering, are all important parts of combining interactive music and musically reactive game elements. I completed this project in ten months. Throughout the development of the project, I encountered many problems, such as performance issues from audio manipulation, time constraints with art creation, and lost time from failed experiments. After working through these issues, I ended up with a product that I’m very proud of while learning a great deal about synchronizing game events and dynamic audio.