Game Audio 101

On Thursday we had another lecturer talk who founded Salix game in 2016 , was the winner of best sound design – Tiga awards…

What is game audio?

• Assert creation, recording, designing, sourcing, implementation, triggers, events, optimisation, pipelines, ambience, Walla (muttering,etc), Foley, sound design, UI, dialogue

Ambience

• Starting point, build form the ground up, point sources ( a point of origin), revert preclusion

Example : A forest

• Where : Geographic Location important, floral fauna will change.
• Type : Different types, all sound different
• Time : Dusk, dawn night, day
• What : Is it in the forest? Something in the distance, hints of enemies.

Foley

• Creates real world sounds adding depth and realism , grounds the character and the player to the world. More than just footsteps, requires thought and study of movement rule of 7:

Example : Two people sit down for a cup of tea

• Who : Who are they, what are they?
• Materials : What are they wearing? Natural or synthetic
• When : Modern? period piece?
• Where : Is there furniture? what it made of?

Walla

• Aka crowd sound or loop group (Do you need it?), 5+ rule, Use one shot dialogue, 5 seconds – fade in fade out…

Example : Someone with a giant sounds

• When : Modern? Period peace? This will change the ground of the group completely
• what : whats going on? is the bar full or at closing
• context : Should the person with the giant sound be there ? is there a reaction to them? is there a fight or people listening to music?
• where : where are they? sketchy? upmarket?
• who : who is there ? whats the demographic – teens?

Sound design

• tends to be anything unreal, can be hard to quantify…guns, explosions,physics fall under this category (mostly)
• Creatures, particles, “subjective”
• Can cross over with music and Foley (sea creatures, guns)
• The job title, physics & destruction

Example : You are standing in front of a creature

• Where : Where is it taking place
• Scale : How big is the creature to / how close are we?
• Biology : How does it work / how does this creature attack? / breathe / internal mechanism

UI

• The menus , more than blips & bleeps has to cut through the rest of the soundscape, sole purpose to relay information to the player, avoid repetition on for multi- sounds, a co-cohesive suit so the player knows what is happening even subconsciously, (happy, sad, and neutral tones are key)

Music

• A sound designers job will be implementation, dealing with pipelines, does your composer understand video games.

Dialogue

• From script to script , working with implementations , dialogue editing and post – pressing implementations , dialogue management
• Types of dialogue- combat back, play thoughts , etc