A plug in that assists in creating 8-bit sound effects for game, stores them, and makes them playable within your Excalibur Game!
Table of Contents
This plug in creates a class which is an abstraction of the JSFXR project that is wrapped nicely to use with Excalibur.
In the API:
- initialization of JSFXR
- Ability to store a dictionary(Records) of sound configurations
- Ability to directly play a configuration through the library
- the ability to download the sounds directly as a collection of key/value pairs
To import the plug-in, from your shell:
npm i @excaliburjs/plugin-jsfxrDeclare and instantiate the new module and initialize
import { JsfxrResource, SoundConfig } from "@excaliburjs/plugin-jsfxr";
import { sounds } from "./sounds";
let sndPlugin = new JsfxrResource();
sndPlugin.init(); //initializes the JSFXR library
for (const sound in sounds) {
sndPlugin.loadSoundConfig(sound, sounds[sound]);
}As you may notice, we are loading sound configurations from sounds.ts in the example above. Let's take a quick look at an example from sounds.ts
import { SoundConfig } from "@excaliburjs/plugin-jsfxr";
export const sounds: { [key: string]: SoundConfig } = {};
sounds["pickup"] = {
oldParams: true,
wave_type: 1,
p_env_attack: 0,
p_env_sustain: 0.02376922019231107,
p_env_punch: 0.552088780864157,
p_env_decay: 0.44573175628456596,
p_base_freq: 0.6823818961421457,
p_freq_limit: 0,
p_freq_ramp: 0,
p_freq_dramp: 0,
p_vib_strength: 0,
p_vib_speed: 0,
p_arp_mod: 0,
p_arp_speed: 0,
p_duty: 0,
p_duty_ramp: 0,
p_repeat_speed: 0,
p_pha_offset: 0,
p_pha_ramp: 0,
p_lpf_freq: 1,
p_lpf_ramp: 0,
p_lpf_resonance: 0,
p_hpf_freq: 0,
p_hpf_ramp: 0,
sound_vol: 0.25,
sample_rate: 44100,
sample_size: 16,
};There are two ways to get the plugin to play a noise...
After you've stored your configs in the plugin, you can call the name of the config from the plug-in method playSound(name: string)
sndPlugin.playSound("laser");If you do this manually, your heading for some pain, there are tools that can do this for you, and I'll share those briefly.
the Plugin has a playConfig() method that accepts a SoundConfig object, and it will play it immediately.
const tempSound: SoundConfig = {
oldParams: true,
wave_type: wavetype,
p_env_attack: m.attack.value,
p_env_sustain: m.sustain.value,
p_env_punch: m.punch.value,
p_env_decay: m.decay.value,
p_base_freq: m.fstart.value,
p_freq_limit: m.fmin.value,
p_freq_ramp: m.fslide.value,
p_freq_dramp: m.fdelta.value,
p_vib_strength: m.vibDepth.value,
p_vib_speed: m.vibSpeed.value,
p_arp_mod: m.arpMult.value,
p_arp_speed: m.arpChange.value,
p_duty: dutycycle,
p_duty_ramp: dutyramp,
p_repeat_speed: m.reRate.value,
p_pha_offset: m.flgOffset.value,
p_pha_ramp: m.flgSweep.value,
p_lpf_freq: m.lopassFreq.value,
p_lpf_ramp: m.lopassSweep.value,
p_lpf_resonance: m.lopassRes.value,
p_hpf_freq: m.hipassFreq.value,
p_hpf_ramp: m.hipassSweep.value,
sound_vol: m.Gain.value,
sample_rate: sampleRate, //441000, 22050, 11025, 5512
sample_size: sampleSize, //16, 8
};
sndPlugin.playConfig(tempSound);The old fasion way of doing this is using the original tool
You can use this tool to create the SoundConfig object, which can be copied/pasted from the browser itself.
Another way is using the Excalibur Demo for this plug-in.
This demo let's you create your 'library' of sounds, and then you can click export button in the top left of window and it will download your sounds.ts file prewritten for you!
SoundConfig
export type SoundConfig = {
oldParams: boolean;
wave_type: number;
p_env_attack: number;
p_env_sustain: number;
p_env_punch: number;
p_env_decay: number;
p_base_freq: number;
p_freq_limit: number;
p_freq_ramp: number;
p_freq_dramp: number;
p_vib_strength: number;
p_vib_speed: number;
p_arp_mod: number;
p_arp_speed: number;
p_duty: number;
p_duty_ramp: number;
p_repeat_speed: number;
p_pha_offset: number;
p_pha_ramp: number;
p_lpf_freq: number;
p_lpf_ramp: number;
p_lpf_resonance: number;
p_hpf_freq: number;
p_hpf_ramp: number;
sound_vol: number;
sample_rate: number;
sample_size: number;
};deleteSoundConfig(name: string)This method clears out the the particular element from the sound configs stored
getConfigs(): { [key: string]: SoundConfig }These methods return a set of key/valuepairs representing all the sound config keys, paired with a SoundConfig object
Justin Young - @jyoung424242 (Twitter) - Mookie4242 (itch.io)
Project Link: GitHub Repo: Excalibur-Graph
Special thanks to two great communities that are always available to jump in help, and inspire little projects like these!!!!
About JSFXR: Jsfxr is an online 8 bit sound maker and sfx generator. All you need to make retro sound effects with jsfxr is a web browser. It's a JavaScript port of the original sfxr by DrPetter. You can also use it as a JavaScript library for playing and rendering sfxr sound effects in your games.