u/DulaLipa

Recently, I connected an old SSD I had from a few years ago.

I browsed the files, with a bit of nostalgia, until I saw a "Strange noise" sound file I had recorded, I immediately had the flashback.

During a time, there was this strange analog sound going on periodically in my house, I never caught the origin of it but it was strange, unsettling and scary, since, I'm the only one that lives here. Why would something emit a sound without my knowing of it?

It was primarily localized in my kitchen, and no, I don't have a smoke alarm or any similar device that could emit such a sound, I mean, I do have a blender, an oven and a toaster, none of them are "smart" gadgets or anything, they're rudimentary, baseline functional appliances.

It was so weird because I didn't know what was causing it, I checked all my drawers, behind the stove, everything, nothing, almost like if I was imagining it.

I decided to leave my phone recording, until I finally caught it, it was so strange, it happened at seemingly random intervals, like every 3 or 5 minutes.

It was so creepy because of how out of nowhere it was, imagine something similar happening in your home, your sanctuary, where you're supposed to be in control, it felt like that.

But, I never really got to show anyone the audio, I wasn't reddit-savvy so I didn't think of trying this subreddit, but everywhere I showed or uploaded the audio to, just got me ignored or simply got generic answers like a smoke alarm and such, with no follow up after I clarified.

Eventually it stopped, and I forgot about it, until today that I saw the file, I figured I could maybe come to a subreddit like this to figure out what this thing was.

Audio File (Google Drive)

Edit extra context: I live in Mexico, the house is made of brick, it is in it's own property, not an apartment building or similar.

I understand and imagine that it may come to common sene to a lot of experienced devs, but I still wanted to share this because I thought that like me, it could help a lot of newbie devs.

TL;DR at the end

While playtesting my first game with RPG maker, I wanted to get the players to understand that certain enemies and bosses need a specific approach, in the sense that:

-This boss is effective against the player trying to do strategy X

-This boss is weak against the player trying to do strategy Y

I wanted to steer the player's behavior towards strategy Y, but this player kept doing strategy X, and they kept losing, getting frustrated, eventually I stepped in and let them know what the proper strategy was (Which is wrong, you should never have the need to step in and tell the play tester what to do, ideally), and they just told me "Okay cool but I want to do strategy X", and they got stuck in a loop, trying different party setups, equipment orders, but still trying approach X, and they were stuck in a loop of getting wiped.

After it eventually worked, we got stuck in an argument, me telling him that he should know that strategy X is weak because of how many times they attempted it and saw it wasn't working, and they telling me that they should be able to use their own strategy to solve the combat puzzle.

After a while, I understood something, instead of simply assuming the play tester was "too dumb" to understand what was needed to be done, I shifted towards a better way to achieve what I wanted to achieve, which was discourage strategy X, and instead of locking the player into a fail state situation, I figured a solution:

Instead of discouraging a strategy and making them lose when they choose the wrong approach to a fight,

have the encounter/boss to be incredibly strong against using strategy X, that will hugely tax the player's resources, making them feel the inefficiency in their approach, but still letting them walk away victorious from the fight. In order for them to take a look at their resources and for future fights take a different approach, which can steer them towards strategy Y, my ultimate goal.

This makes players feel smart about choosing how to approach next time, when in reality you're just using consequences to steer their behavior instead of "Wrong! Try another strategy!" and putting a game over screen on their faces.

TL;DR: Don't make players lose for using the wrong strategy; make it expensive to win.