wasm4nia

wasm4nia

wasm4nia was created for the WASM-4 Game Jam in January of 2022.

Strange audio?

If the audio sounds stuttery or popping, it might be due to a bug in the current version of the WASM-4 audio engine. Firefox is known to not behave correctly, so I recommend using a Chromium-based browser (such as Chromium or Google Chrome).

The native runtime also has some audio issues, but a version built recently from the main branch will do alright.

Input

When playing on keyboard, WASM-4 uses X for button 1, Z for button 2, and the arrow keys for directions.
In wasm4nia, 1 is used to confirm, and 2 is used to back.
You can press all directions and 1 and 2 (meaning all 6 buttons) to exit out of a song whilst playing. R also works to restart back to the main menu.

For starting out, I strongly recommend these settings:

Difficulty

When picking a song, the number shown represents an approximate difficulty rating. Use this to pick a song closer to your own level.

Chart modes

There are two different chart modes which change how the charts are generated:
4-Key: Meant for playing with four fingers in a split manner, using two finger from each hand. For this mode I recommend using the [2][1][Down][Right] layout (such that it maps to Z, X, Down, Right on keyboard.)
Index: Meant for playing using only your two index fingers on the directional buttons. For this mode I recommend using the [Left][Down][Up][Right] layout.

Audio offset

If you get a lot of EARLY or LATE when you feel that you are timing correctly, nudge the Audio Offset setting a couple of steps. Note that this setting counts in frames, so you don't need to change it by a lot. -2 works well for me.

Enjoying the game?

Leave a comment, or send a screenshot of a score! It makes me happy to hear people enjoy my games.

Technical details

wasm4nia itself was written in C. For the (few) sprites, I used aseprite. All of the music was written in FL Studio, exported to MIDI, and then converted, compressed, and bundled into the game. The charts are algorithmically generated from the note data using various weightings for things like following melody, jacks, and finger switches when playing index. Despite its flaws, I'm pretty happy with how it all turned out.