Splash Damage’s upcoming futuristic shooter looks to stands apart from other shooters by focusing on parkour-style movement along with gunplay. The gunplay is what falls into audio director Chris Sweetman’s territory, a role where all things related to audio must come together and not sound like a garbled mess. In this e-mail Q&A, Chris shares how he got into sound design and the work that went into making all of Brink’s weapons sound unique.

Read the interview here.

The “Brink” developer diary also has a feature on the sound of the game. Sweetman explains his approach to the game’s design and also the use of multiple perspective samples, detailed Foley and a granular system for the gun sounds. Read it here.

In early June of 2010, I became Sony Online’s Audio Director for San Diego. So how has this experience been so far? I’ll dive into a few points.

A Delicate Balancing Act

When I started working at this company, my primary focus was as a Senior Sound Designer on “Clone Wars Adventures”. It was very different for me as I was initially the only person working on the game, especially after coming from High Moon where we had a 6-member team for one console title (and needed every person).

There were two other people in the San Diego audio department, one Audio Manager overseeing the ongoing maintenance of some of the older titles, and another Sr. Sound Designer working on the maintenance of Free Realms. There were also two Apprentices working on sound for the expansions of both EverQuest and EverQuest II, and that was it. Our boss was in Austin with his team, busy with “DC Universe”, so we were pretty much on our own.

Although we didn’t have enough people to cover all of the games properly (in my opinion), it didn’t seem right to me that the older games’ teams were solely being supported by the greenest guys on our team, working late or super-early hours that barely crossed paths with the rest of us.

Eventually, the existing division of our team began to run up against newer projects that were either starting up or had been moved to San Diego and weren’t being covered at all, while I was getting quite busy myself with “Clone Wars”. The decision was made to split the leadership duties, and I was put in charge of the San Diego headquarters.

As I mentioned in the previous article, from day one I immediately reorganized everyone on my team to jump in and start working on “Clone Wars Adventures” to get it ready for its September launch. It was definitely the big-ticket game happening that year. I also began to have meetings with the other teams to find out where they were in the production of their titles or expansions, to try and work out a schedule to finish out the year. Most of our work was unfortunately reactive at this point, as things were coming up quick. Fortunately, we were able to hire on another experienced senior-level Sound Designer as well. One of our apprentices left and we let the other one go, as I preferred to have more experienced hands on the games going forward.

With the team reorganized like this, and remaining fluid throughout the coming months as we adjusted to the schedule, we squeaked by 2010 managing to cover everything without killing ourselves.

Audio Archaeology

It’s funny. Back when I started in games, I got to know almost all of the SOE audio team circa 2004 through a friend of mine at High Moon. A large group of them were colleagues that had come from Colorado after their studio closed, as did the Audio Programmer I worked with at HMS.

Over the years, some of them had left SOE or moved to the Austin studio to work on “DC Universe”, so by the time I came on, only one person remained in the department from that era. So as we began digging through the tools of the older titles, I likened it to “audio archaeology”, where we were trying to discover how things worked from existing members of the game teams who knew very little about the audio systems.

I would send out messages from time to time to some of the former and existing employees I knew to try and find out what happened with pieces of audio equipment that the department used to have, or come across audio equipment in storage that was still useful and I didn’t even know we had (a keyboard synth / controller and some cool effects units / sound modules).

I also learned there used to be a full-blown, built-out audio studio in a different building than we were in, but it had been repurposed years back for another use while we worked in noisier, square offices not ideally set up for sound.

Interesting things have happened here before, and some of them didn’t make any sense, but I don’t dwell on it. I prefer positive energy, and there is definitely enough to think about and plan for looking forward.

Improving Technologies

One of the best things I was able to do in my short time here is hire on an experienced Audio Programmer. Like so many studios, if there isn’t an audio programmer working on the technology needed to bring current game audio standards into a project, the department will absolutely suffer and end up at the bottom of the list of game technology that needs to be developed, often near the end of the project if at all, or with little time to work out the kinks.

Programmers are very smart people, but it doesn’t mean they understand the science and nature of sound all that deeply. It takes a dedicated specialist (that quite frankly should exist for many of our ever-growing, complex disciplines in a game development environment) to completely understand how to build an audio engine and toolset within a game engine that minimizes risk and maximizes capability and value.

With the majority of our newer games either being on the same game engine or being planned for it, it’s essential that we now have our “ace in the hole” to help bring up the capability of what we can contribute to the projects.

Having come from a studio that not only valued the contributions of audio in a game experience coupled with the top-notch audio programming work on a mature engine, I had definitely “seen the light”, and want to help bring it here as well.

Moving Forward

With recent personnel loss, my goal is simply to continue moving forward. I’m striving to improve our planning, generating ideas to improve the fidelity in our existing games, while maximizing efficiency and quality of the department and making sure we can hire on the right resources that we need.

Continuing to build solid relationships with the teams is of vast importance, as there is really no other way to build respect and allegiance for our part in the titles we produce. We are all in this together, striving to make our games better and better each year, and I firmly believe that with a little bit of time we can help turn the flat reputation of “MMO’s just sound OK” completely around. There is absolutely no reason this cannot be the case.

Game sound alone has brought metacritic scores UP in the past, and it can again!

Final Thoughts

I truly care about the quality of the audio in the projects that we release. In many ways we are limited simply by the technology created for the games at the time they were launched, and since they are supported by much smaller teams nowadays, it might take a little while to refresh their audio systems and bring them a little closer to current standards. Little changes here and there, improving fidelity and capability over time, will help contribute to this, and it will improve the experience overall and help keep players coming back to the games.

It may not be 100% true, but it definitely feels like sound in games is treated with less importance that it should be. Being an “invisible” art, it definitely doesn’t garner the attention it deserves since it’s not the shiny thing on the screen that everyone can easily “see”.

This disparagement seems true to me in both games and film, and while there are game studios and film directors alike that absolutely value the craft, it is usually a bit of a battle to try and get people to understand the value and role that sound can play.

When you think about the amount of audio work that goes into any game, it can easily exceed much of what some of the other disciplines contribute. With every sound you hear (hundreds or thousands), and every bit of music with how it is written, edited and where and how it is played (hours of material), along with all well-performed dialog telling the story (hundreds or thousands of lines), it all has to work together to help bring our game worlds alive.

In short – what’s a quick and easy way to understand all of this? Shut the sound off when you fire up the next game you play. Literally do this, and see what it feels like. It will make you a true believer!

Sophia Tong of Sound Byte has published an interview with audio director Stefan Strandberg, who talks about his work on “Battlefield 3″.

“Many people might think that we are trying to create the ultimate weapon sound in every single case, but it is the other way around. We create sounds that match the palette that we have decided upon. So it is not about creating an awesome gun sound; it’s about creating a war. This might sound trivial, but it is still a key aspect of the whole sound experience.”

Full interview

As usual, below is an interview with this month’s guest, Rodney Gates.

Designing Sound: How did you get started and How has been the evolution of your career since then?

Rodney Gates: In 1996 I attended the Conservatory of Recording Arts and Sciences in Tempe, Arizona. At the time, the focus of the school was on audio / music production with a little bit of post and live sound thrown in, but nothing in the way of video game audio really existed back then.

I interned at a large recording studio in Manhattan for a brief time before realizing that it wasn’t for me. I didn’t wish to slug it out getting coffee for people and eventually serving as an assistant engineer for something like 5-10 years until finally “making it”, so with no other real options at the time, I left it behind and returned to my day job for a while, always thinking about what niche in audio could turn it around for me.

After years of playing Commodore 64, early PC, and pre-Playstation console games, I never, ever imagined that game sound design could actually be a career choice until popping the discs for Medal of Honor: Allied Assault into my PC, back in 2002.

Never before had I played a game that felt so richly-detailed in it’s soundscape and musical soundtrack. Though I’m sure they were out there, none really featured WWII, which was such a hot topic at the time with shows like Saving Private Ryan and the miniseries Band of Brothers around.

I was just awe-struck; it was then when the bug bit me. I needed to get into this industry.

I purchased my first SFX collection, Hollywood Edge’s “The Edge Edition”, a 4-disc library of general effects, to kick off my demo. Then I picked up a used stereo AT-825 on eBay with a Rycote windscreen, bought a Sound Devices USBPre and with my old crash-happy Dell laptop, went out into the world to record what I needed for three, 2-minute, audio-only “stories” that I used as the main portion of my demo reel. One story was science-fiction, one a jungle adventure, and one a monologue of a sniper preparing to take out a high-profile target.

This became a lot of fun, and took about a year to get everything I needed (while working full-time). Any sound effects I didn’t have or couldn’t be designed with my one library had to be recorded, so I planned field sessions like road trips to remote places in Arizona for ambience, or borrowing a friend’s hunting rifle to record all of the mechanical functionality in my clothes closet, etc. I remember one scene I was working on required multiple cars to pull up in the rain, let out passengers, then drive away, but since we didn’t get much rain in Phoenix, I had to get crafty with a 5-gallon bucket of water. A friend poured it slowly off of a 6 ft. brick fence onto the concrete below, which I later edited into the scene to mimic the sound of tires driving through rain-drenched streets.

These fits of creativity were necessary when faced with limited resources, possibly how Ben Burtt  might have felt when working on the first Star Wars film in the 70’s (although there’s no comparison between his brilliance and me). They definitely are some of the most precious memories I have.

So actually getting into the game industry? Luck of the draw, really. After reading one of the only game audio books available at the time, Aaron Marks’ The Complete Guide to Game Audio back in 2002, I started bugging the author with emails and MP3 versions of what I was working on. Finally, using Gamasutra’s developer lists, I mailed a slew of CD-Rs off to several studios, not really knowing one from another. This was before LinkedIn too, so I didn’t know anyone in the audio departments at these studios.

After a few months, I heard back from one person at a place called Sammy Studios (a developer I almost didn’t mail a disc  to, due to what I thought was a silly name). That person was Paul Lackey, working there at the time. He liked my demo and though they might have a position open up  eventually, and if I were still interested, he’d keep me in mind.I couldn’t believe it was as simple as that. However, it was one long 6-month wait!

I finally got an interview as the position became available, and fortunately, I was hired on as an Associate Audio Designer. I say fortunately because traditionally there are paths such as quality assurance and / or customer service positions that may eventually land a spot like that, but it typically doesn’t happen quickly. I was able to bypass those avenues and get right to work.

Since those early days, I have continued to learn and grow. Sammy Studios became High Moon, which was independent for a short time as they shopped for a publisher to release Darkwatch. Then, High Moon was bought by parent company Vivendi Universal and we produced Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Conspiracy.

When Vivendi merged and became part of Activision | Blizzard, we started work on Transformers: War For Cybertron. When that game was nearly complete, I left High Moon for an opportunity at Sony Online Entertainment where I currently serve as Audio Director.

I am still very much in the trenches of day-to-day content creation, while managing several titles at once, with all manner of different requirements here at Sony. Some are Facebook games, some use Flash exclusively, while others may be live products that have been up for over a decade using older technology. With San Diego being our headquarters, many of the projects come through here in some fashion, so it is definitely a lot to keep track of and ensure they are being developed with the best soundtrack they can have.

DS: Did you have a mentor or any special source of learning early in your career?

RG: Like many of us in this field, even before we realized it, a unifying film captured our attention: Star Wars. George Lucas’ introduction of the instant-classic space opera saga blew me away, well before I knew anything about sound or how it could be used in such ways, completely out of context with it’s actual source or real-life reason for existing, to deliver a never-before-heard, yet entirely organic and believable experience, pulling me into the story like no other movie.

Before I ever heard the name Ben Burtt, on the playground I heard from some kid about how the blaster fire was recorded by tapping a rock or hammer on a metal support cable. This piqued my curiosity as I tried every cable I could find, finally finding one that was so similar it was eerie. I remember it like it was yesterday, with a big grin on my face, and I have always kept my ears open for sounds like these.

Once in the industry, I typically learned directly from guys like Paul Lackey, Gene Semel & Robert Burns, and indirectly with other great film and game sound designers / editors out there that I admire like Ben Burtt, Randy Thom, David Farmer, Charles Maynes, Charles Deenen and Scott Gershin, to name a few.

DS: What inspires you creatively?

RG: Well, there’s always the joke – deadlines! But seriously, I get inspired easily and it happens when I hear something unusual and imagine that sound’s use outside of its intent or reason for existing. I am always imagining what else a sound can be used for, or as an element for, and that sometimes has limitless possibilities. Nowadays it comes from things like odd little squeaky stick-‘em letter set my daughter plays with in the bathtub, or somebody vacuuming the carpet upstairs creating a weird, flanging-type whine, or the sound of spoon inside the cylindrical metal tin of cat food. All of these things make me grab my D50 and record / perform them to get some unique new material that I didn’t have yesterday, and though I may never use for 2 years, I know I have it and someday it will have a unique use.

I don’t always have a firm idea in mind when designing a sound for something, which leads to a lot of discovery. During the process of spotting source sounds to Pro Tools, sometimes you’ll accidentally drop them over each and they’ll playback in a way you hadn’t anticipated, and you end up designing the whole thing around that “happy accident”.

DS: Why do you love most about working on video games?

RG: Marrying the sound to the game. That last step of creation when you finally attach the audio you’ve been painstakingly working on to the actual game itself is very satisfying. It is also the moment you find out whether your “genius” creation actually works as intended, or if it gets lost in the rest of the game’s soundscape, or repeats too often and becomes annoying.

Some of these things are game-specific and are issues not shared by films, and may require you alter the sounds themselves, mix them better, create more variants, etc.

But above all things, this is the best part – bringing the worlds and characters to life.

DS: Do you have an sopecific philosophy for your audio direction role?

RG: I definitely try to lead by example. I do not professionally respect anyone in a leadership position who does not have their chops down, so every day I work with the team as just another sound designer trying to make things awesome, in addition to the more-administrative duties I am now working with in my supervisory role.

I do not believe in designing “temp” audio for anything. Unless there is a special recording trip coming down the pike for certain sounds in a given project, creating temp audio for something could put you into the corner with what is considered “temp love” by your colleagues. What happens is they may come to really like your temporary assets, so when they are finally replaced, you may face some opposition.

Besides, most game dev cycles don’t leave time for you to re-create the “final” assets for much of the game’s sound, and you may find that you are wasting your precious mixing and polish time doing so at the tail end of a project.

I am also a firm believer of an old motto carried over from High Moon: “Results Onscreen”. It doesn’t matter how much you toil away on your local computer to craft the perfect sounds for a game. If they are not in-game and set up correctly, they may as well not exist. This sounds like a no-brainer, but there is no better way to iterate on how your ideas are working unless they are in the game. You will most-likely garner some feedback on your work from the team (usually if it isn’t working), which is important for growth as well.

DS: What would be the best advice you could give to any aspiring/professional sound designer?

RG: One thing I always keep in mind is where I came from. If a student is interested in shadowing us for the day or taking a tour to get an overview, I try to set that up to expose them to the game side of an audio career that they might not see much of in school. Informational interviews are big on my list for helping and educating others.

I remember how eye-opening it was for me to learn how sound functions within a three-dimensional game world, and aspiring sound designers today have never had it easier to learn the basics of these kinds of skills before they even set foot in a development studio. Jump into one or more of the existing third-party sound engines out there such as FMOD Designer or Wwise, or even the Unreal Editor itself. These tools typically have a sandbox game space where you can practice placing sounds in a 3D world, which is invaluable practice. You can download all of this software for free. It didn’t exist when I was trying to get into the industry, so take advantage of that.

Additional advice would be to get out there with some equipment and record! Learn Pro Tools well, as it is the standard. Experiment with plug-ins and automation. Learn all you can about sound design and practice, practice, practice. It’s an art form, and you won’t get any better unless you practice.

If you’re in some kind of audio production school, USE the studio – as often as you can. You won’t typically have access to that kind of facility when you’re out of school (not for free anyway).

Watch special features on sound from DVD & Blu-ray discs, or featurettes on the web / YouTube, or read about other sound designers in both the film and game worlds on websites such as Designing Sound. Read audio blogs from guys like Chuck Russom, Tim Prebble, Frank Bry and others, and listen to their raw recordings, and check out their custom sound libraries they have for sale. Just because you are a student or aren’t working professionally yet doesn’t mean you can’t easily purchase many of their well-crafted, custom sound libraries which are very inexpensive when you compare them to the pricier heavy hitters like Hollywood Edge or Sound Ideas, which are older, overused and lower-fidelity.

Use your own custom recordings in the construction of the audio track for some linear movie or game trailers. This is all excellent practice and you will be better every time you do it. Leave the music out.

Use resources like Gamasutra to help you find interships or junior level positions, but don’t rely on just one or two websites like this. Research the game development companies and publishers and check their individual job listings as well. Do your homework and you will most likely find something that fits, if given a little time, but be prepared to move from where you live unless you’re near the major areas.

In addition, when you’re ready, bother somebody like me with your demos! Look me up on LinkedIn or Facebook. I’d be happy to listen to them and give you feedback, or if you’re showing great promise, refer you around to places that may be hiring, if we’re not.

DS: What are your main tools in the studio and the field?

At work I use a Pro Tools | HD2 system on an 8-core Mac Pro with 5.1 Blue Sky monitoring. The Waves Diamond bundle is my main suite of plug-ins. At home, I use Nuendo 5 on PC with 5.1 KRK VII monitoring. There are a lot of great plug-ins that come with Nuendo, including a convolution reverb, that are nice. This home system also serves as my gaming and movie rig, which I love.

In the field I use my trusty old “frankenstein” 2-channel rig that I put together with a Rode NT4 stereo mic and a Sound Devices MixPre feeding a 1st-generation Microtrack. It’s getting long in the tooth, however, so I’ll eventually make the jump to a Sound Devices 7-series recorder one day.

DS: Is there a specific project that you’ve enjoyed the most?

Transformers: War For Cybertron was my favorite project I have worked on so far. Not being a huge Transformers fan in general (I was into Voltron back in the 80’s), that quickly disappeared when I started work on this game.

I had really wanted to work in the science fiction genre, and we got to pull out all of the stops when designing sounds for this game. We joked that we also got to dust off some of those Waves plug-ins we hadn’t typically used much before. I had a blast with organic / synthetic ambiences, creating futuristic vehicle audio based on real cars from today, as well as coming up with my own transformation sounds that paid homage to the classic one. It was absolute fun.

DS: What are your favorite games? Any specific that you like for its sound work?

I particularly enjoyed the latest Medal of Honor, specifically the single-player campaign. I felt that game possessed some of the best weapon & character sound design and dialog distance treatment I have ever heard.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 has excellent sound design work as well, and is a much-less frantic multiplayer experience than what you’ll find in the Call of Duty / Modern Warfare series. The real-time obstruction / occlusion, along with the beautiful blend of variably-distanced weapon audio transitions are awesome and add a LOT of depth to the game.

Red Dead Redemption has a beautiful soundscape, with well-written dialog, and a cool interactive music system. This brings you into the world effortlessly and makes it feel just as big as it actually is.

Alan Wake ranks up there for me for it’s uniqueness in sound, gameplay and music. The game really feels like episodic miniseries and can be quite frightening. The sound of the searing strings as you use the flashlight on the Darkness in the game is awesome, as it blends in so perfectly with the horrific music that swells when you are about to be killed by apparitions. LOVE this game. It’s hard to play at night as it’s just too freaky.

Dead Space – my second all-time favorite game, ever. Never before have I experienced such a perfect blend of game and sound design, raising the hair on the back of your neck and delivering an awesome storytelling and horrifying gameplay experience. I have the sequel sitting on my desk now and cannot wait to jump in.

Half-Life 2 and its episodes rank as the number one game favorite for me, though, not particularly for the sound. The pacing of the story and characters involved have a special place in my heart and I cannot wait for a new chapter in this story. Genius.

DS: What’s next for you, Rodney? What are you currently working on?

Always! As I mentioned before, unlike the normal console game development studio, we always have multiple projects brewing at Sony Online. Be they expansions of existing products, weekly updates for some of the newer live games, or early pre-production and development for new titles, they definitely keep things interesting on a day-to-day basis here.

We are one of the very few departments in development here that are responsible for each product that goes live, so managing our time and resources are of the utmost importance to maintain a forward-moving workflow, while building solid relationships and maintaining good communication across all of the teams.

I am very excited about the work we will be doing over the next couple of years with the new games we’re working on, as some of them are new genres to me that I am looking forward to.

My continuing goal is to keep creating the best experience I can with my team, across all of our titles, while improving our technology to extend our capability even further!

It’s always a pleasure to announce a new guest on Designing Sound. During this month, Rodney Gates will be sharing with us a lot of his experiences in the world of sound design and audio direction for video games.

Bio

“I became interested in sound and music at a young age, making cassette tapes on my Yorx stereo with a crude electret-condenser microphone with old needle-drop sound effects on LP added in, telling crazy stories in this fashion, at the age of 13 in the sizzling-hot summers of Phoenix, AZ.

The teen years naturally led to an interest in the electric guitar, and after getting my first one at 15, I proceeded to learn every single Metallica song I could, with my brother on drums. I never went the band route though, like my brother did, but instead saved my money working in food service and wholesale printing to get a Tascam Portastudio 4-track cassette-based recorder. I remember vividly the moment I soloed a guitar part over a previously-recorded rhythm track and played it back. It was then I was hugely bitten by the recording bug.

This led to a class at Phoenix College, which opened me up a little to audio engineering. I ended up buying a lot of equipment I didn’t thoroughly understand, which included a Yamaha ProMix 01 digital mixer, an original Alesis ADAT, and a Tascam DAT recorder, plus a couple of mics. I remember buying Cakewalk 3 on a single floppy disk for $300 to use with my Alesis QuadraSynth and a Compaq PC running Windows 3.1 back in 1995, sequencing all kinds of crazy tunes, while recording guitars, bass and drum machines all by my lonesome.

Then I decided to finally jump into something that would hopefully prepare me to be a little more professional – the Conservatory of Recording Arts and Sciences in Tempe, AZ. What a great school. I sponged up the information they taught me there and couldn’t wait to intern someplace. I had really gained an interest in post production and Foley artistry, and I remember I wished I could have interned at Skywalker Sound when it was over. However, with limited placement there and the fact I didn’t know anyone up in the San Francisco area to stay with, I opted for New York instead. I briefly interned at the Soundtrack Group in Manhattan, whose focus was music production, working the graveyard shift of 12-8AM. The highlight, if you want to call it that, was making hot chocolate for Busta Rhymes and his posse.

Meh.

Let’s just say that it wasn’t my cup of tea. I could see myself spending years there, paying my dues, only to finally get the chance to assist on some sessions, and maybe one day become a house engineer. I didn’t think that was the path for me.

I moved back to AZ a little disillusioned and went back to work in printing, for several years actually. Phoenix was mostly a dead town for recording skills. It wasn’t until becoming so impressed with 2002′s Medal of Honor: Allied Assault on PC that I fully realized there must be people with careers in game audio – this seemed like the niche for me.

After spending a year creating a demo and mailing it out, I finally began my career as an Associate Audio Designer at Sammy Studios in Carlsbad, CA in early 2004, working on a fun vampire-western FPS, Darkwatch.

Sammy turned into High Moon Studios in early 2005 and eventually was purchased by Vivendi-Universal at the end of the year, as I began working on the title, Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Conspiracy, as Sound Designer. Part-way through the title’s development, I was promoted to Senior Sound Designer, and once the title was wrapped, Lead (the dev cycle ran a little long).

When the Vivendi – Activision merger completed, High Moon fell under the new Activision | Blizzard parent and began developing Transformers: War For Cybertron. Unfortunately, the merger had stopped HMS’ development of two other projects, one of which I was the Lead of, so I began to feel redundant.

An opportunity arose at Sony Online Entertainment, and I started there in November of 2009 as a Senior Sound Designer, and shortly thereafter I became and currently serve as their Audio Director.”

Selected Works

• Free Realms (SOE – PS3, 2011)
• EverQuest II – Destiny Of Velious expansion (SOE – PC, 2011)
• Magic: The Gathering – Tactics (SOE – PC, 2011)
• DC Universe Online (SOE – PC / PS3, 2011)
• James Patterson’s Catch A Killer (SOE – Facebook, 2010)
• EverQuest – House Of Thule expansion (SOE – PC, 2010)
• Clone Wars Adventures (SOE / Lucasarts – PC / Mac, 2010)
• EverQuest II – Sentinel’s Fate expansion (SOE – PC, 2010)
• Transformers: War For Cybertron (Activision – Xbox 360 / PS3 / PC, 2010 – uncredited)
• Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Conspiracy (Vivendi-Universal – Xbox 360 / PS3, 2008)
• Darkwatch (Capcom – Xbox / PS2, 2005)

Rodney Gates on Twitter

Chris Sweetman, Audio Director at Splash Damage, has published a very interesting article about the sound of “Brink”. Let’s read:

INTRODUCTION

I’m Chris Sweetman, Audio Director at Splash Damage, and this developer diary is all about Brink’s sound design. What does an Audio Director do all day? Well, I’m responsible for the quality of everything that is heard in our games, including music, dialogue, and sound design. This can be broken down into various areas, including in-game gameplay, cut scenes, trailers and tons of other stuff.
I work with composers on music and licensing, actors on dialogue, and myself on sound design. I also have Simon Price – our dedicated Audio Programmer – working with me, without whom none of this would be possible.

SONIC SPACE

Having played many single player and multiplayer shooters, there was one thing that always concerned me – sonic space. In other words, how do you overcome the problem of having too many sounds all playing at the same time? When you have music, gunfire, dialogue, Foley, explosions, and ambient sounds all going off simultaneously, you’re generally left with aural mush. This was a problem we were determined to solve when beginning work on Brink.
I’d made some progress working on BLACK with the Choir of Guns concept, but it was evident early on that with Brink’s focus on blurring the lines between single and multiplayer, we had to up the ante . We wanted every sound in Brink to be heard perfectly, whether it was a Molotov cocktail exploding, a mini gun winding up, or a heavy body-type player coming round the corner to stomp on your face. These sounds were only going to be heard properly with enough space in the audio mix. If you consider that it’s entirely plausible to have 16 players in the same part of a level, all triggering the same sounds, then the true scope of this challenge becomes clear.

Continue reading…

Via @lostlab

SoundWorks Collection has published a fantastic game audio profile, featuring the team behind the sound of “HALO: REACH”.

In this exclusive SoundWorks Collection game sound video profile we feature the talented sound team behind “HALO: REACH”, the blockbuster prequel to the best-selling Xbox franchise of all time.

Bungie Studios Audio Director and Composer Marty O’Donnell and Sound Designers C Paul Johnson and Jay Weinland discuss the creative and technical challenges for creating the ultimate gaming experience.

When I saw the first images of Red Dead Redemption I knew that it will be a beautiful and amazing game. Then, the gameplay confirmed me that not only the visuals were great. The sound work there was fantastic. Clean mix, great sounds, and a perfect sonic experience for any player. So, if like me, you wanted to know more about the sound direction of the game, here is an interview with its audio director Jeffrey Whitcher.

Designing Sound: What were the audio direction meetings about when Red Dead Redemption started? How was communication between sound and the other dev. teams?

Jeff Whitcher: The direction was established right from the start that we were going to cover the life and sounds of the old west as authentically as possible. All of the different departments are meticulous in their research and the audio team was able to glean quite a bit from the art department, in particular. Once we started seeing sketches and other art work, we were blown away with the level of detail and that gave us the impetus to work that much harder on the sound track. Audio had great communication with all of the other disciplines through out the development period.

We were afforded tremendous support in getting the tools and systems in place into which we would tap to hook up various audio behaviors. Our audio programmers are some of the most talented and intelligent people with whom I have ever worked. Often times, the sound editors would present ideas we wanted to achieve and our programmers made realizing those ideas an effortless reality.

DS: Being a sequel to Red Dead Revolver, what did you want to do differently audio-wise?

JW: Obviously the scope of Red Dead Redemption far exceeds what we accomplished in Red Dead Revolver. However, at the core of both games, the focus was always the most immersive and fun experience for the player. This time around, the story, the amount of characters, the music, the open world, everything was grander, to say the least. The interactive score continues to blow me away; that system provides such a fresh experience every time the game is played. The amount of content, and not just audio, that we were able to deliver in this title is unbelievable. The management of information – tracking the flow and implementation of content – was absolutely critical during the design and development phase of this project.

DS: There are some gameplay/engine similarities with the Grand Theft Auto series. How did it affect the sound in RDR?

JW: In developing this open-world game, it was wonderful to have some of the systems and support from other Rockstar facilities; in particular, Rockstar North. Their input and guidance was invaluable to achieving the soundscape we were able to accomplish. The ambience system, for example, is so rich and flexible, it allowed us to focus on a level of detail we never would have imagined. There are unique ambiences for each of the three main regions in the game. Inside those regions, ambiences are further broken down and some things like bugs, birds, and other animals, are further refined to respect things like weather and time of day. It was literally a sound designer’s dream to have that level of flexibility and detail in which to aurally sculpt.

Also, RDR and GTA are built upon Rockstar’s Rage engine, and the Rage Audio component is a tremendously advanced piece of audio middleware. It gives us the tools to create huge and extremely complex audio assets with ease, across both platforms, and puts an incredible amount of power into the hands of sound designers, freeing up the audio programmers to work on custom game features. The same tools being used across studios also means it’s very easy to share techniques and tricks with the other teams.

DS:  How did your team approach designing ambiences and backgrounds for all this amazing wild west landscape?

JW: Every area in the world was looked at from an ambience perspective – what kind of place is this? Is it foreboding? Is it serene? What types of wild life inhabit this area? One area in particular for me, an area I relished crafting the ambience, was Thieves Landing. My instruction was to make this place creepy; the kind of place in which you do not want to be. That afforded me some artistic license with some of the wildlife to think outside the box. You take the staple elements you need at a swamp – insects, frogs, etc – and then you add some off-putting sounds. What was that? Is that a bird? Or a bug? Whatever it was, it freaked me out! That type of audio work is always great fun. George Williamson at Rockstar North did some amazing work with the ambience system. His attention to detail was invaluable on this project. Everything was always organic in the ambience, but it was crafted in such a way to trigger an emotional reaction; hopefully, in the case of Thieves Landing, one that is creepy.

Also, ambiences were used to set the tone and vibe for each area. While there is ambient music, and it is wonderful music through and through, we also wanted to have the wildlife dictate the tone of each place. An easy example is the use of flies around all of the out houses. Obviously, flies sell stench and decay. By putting a rooster in the morning hours at the ranch house, you paint a tranquil audio picture. Venture out a little ways and start hearing crows or jackdaws and you’re not quite sure what to expect….could be trouble. The overall idea was to always have something going in the ambient world to keep a sense of “life” throughout the world.

DS: Being a period action game, authentic weapon sounds are paramount.  How did this affect the way you designed sounds for the player’s arsenal?

JW: When it comes to weapons, you always have to ensure a payoff for the player. From the foley approach, we recorded authentic weaponry actions – holstering, chambering, loading, etc. And, to some extent, certain elements of authentic weapon firing were used as pieces for the composite shots. However, a completely literal approach to weapon firing would never satisfy the player. When the player fires his or her weapon, they want to “feel” something in the shot. Thus, no single weapon is made up of simply one effect for the bang or boom; it’s always a composite of several elements, layered to work together. Early on, the audio team met with some of the designers and talked extensively about the different weapons.

We wanted to make sure that each weapon was unique as well as each “level” of weapon was better than its precursor; again, going back to the “payoff” for the player. As you progress through the game and get better armaments, we wanted the player to be satisfied with each new acquisition. One of our senior sound designers here at Rockstar San Diego, Steven von Kampen, headed up all of the weapons design. Steven always does a lot of research and critical listening, especially in the area of weapons. And with his knowledge and skill, he can take the input of the designers and create sounds that far exceed expectations. Additionally, a good deal of planning went into how the weapons were pieced together – the different components of each shot – and how the weapons behaved in the world.To support this, we had a system that allowed us to tune things like the report of a gun – the echo that travels through the canyons – as well as slap back from an adjacent rock or cliff face.

We additionally focused on ensuring directionality of enemy gunfire. We did not want the player to be frustrated in a gunfight because they could not tell from where an enemy was firing. I am quite pleased with how the weapons are balanced in the mix; they cut through the frequency spectrum yet they do not overpower the listener and create ear fatigue. End goal: it’s simply good fun to fire them guns!

DS: I think the foley production for this game would’ve been daunting.  Lot of movement, different surfaces, horses riding all the time, etc. What was your approach to foley and field recording for RDR?

JW: Foley on this game was an enormous project. It began with a week-long foley session during which time I had two foley artist colleagues come down from Los Angeles. I sent them throughout Hollywood prop houses to gather anything and everything western-related and they delivered. I spent several days with them in the studio here recording thousands of sounds. We built a library of material just for this game comprised of every kind of leather, saddle, creak, snap, break, smash, rattle, you name it. They were exhausted by week’s end. Once we had this enormous library from which to create, we went through thousands of animations to tag up all of the various sounds.

Our focus was to provide as much detail in not only all of the human characters – walking, sitting, standing, interacting – but also the props and vehicles. Our foley artists really came through in their acquisitions as we were able to cover all the jingles and rustles and the myriad of sounds needed to blanket the world. Corey Ross, another sound designer here at Rockstar San Diego, spent a great deal of time sifting through the myriad of material we recorded and constructing all of the props and breakable sounds for the game.

DS: A very interesting in-game feature is The Dead-Eye targeting system.  How did you approach the sound for this system conceptually?

JW: The main approach to DeadEye was to make it cool. Subjective elements are always fun as it allows us the creative freedom to create that which does not naturally exist. The trick becomes to keep it sounding organic and not sci-fi or electronic. Once we had established beds and tones which we felt would meet the objective, the next step was to implement them with behaviors that allowed those tones to be sculpted and manipulated in real-time during gameplay. Also, another very important aspect of DeadEye is what happens to the other sounds in the game.

Thus, various pitching and filtering parameters are employed to help “slow down reality” and complete the effect. I tip my hat to another sound designer here at Rockstar San Diego, Christian Kjeldsen, who was chiefly responsible for the Dead Eye audio. Christian is our resident guru with all sorts of software tools and tricks and never fails to create outstanding sounds.

DS:  Hunting in the game is a great experience, was it as fun to design as it is to play?

JW: Animals were quite a challenge for me as some of them are so complex in their vocabulary. We spent a great deal of time working out the mechanics of the horse footsteps, for example, and it took a great deal to get their different rhythms to sound natural. There is an old adage amongst picture editors and sound editors that the best work will often go unnoticed; you do not want to pull the player or the viewer out of the experience and call attention to your work. You want them to be immersed in the experience. When correct, natural sound happens, it just goes by and does not call attention to itself.

And upon that I focused the design of all the animals. Because horses were so ubiquitous throughout the game, they needed to have the most variety in their vocabulary – knickers, snorts, whinnies, breaths, etc. – and within each of those categories, variations needed to be assembled to work cohesively. Thus, some time was spent equalizing and balancing a vast amount of animal material so that everything blended.

DS: With the huge amount of dialogue in the game, how did you handle it all from recording to implementation?

DS: Great dialogue always starts with a great story and Dan Hauser and his team of writers delivered above and beyond for this project. The team in New York handled the hiring of the actors and the thousands of hours of recording and made my job of implementation such a breeze. Once the edited and named files were delivered, we and the dialogue team at Rockstar North ran everything through a batch EQ and leveling process, to ensure uniformity across the almost 90 thousand lines. Again, the team in New York and I kept a diligent tracking sheet to manage the workflow. When I first heard the numbers early on about the amount of speech material I was, I admit, a tad overwhelmed.

However, once things started rolling in, the New York team made the process so smooth and effortless, that my apprehensions were quickly put at ease. It was a dream system. It really boils down to having a solid story with rich dialogue, uniformity amongst the recording and mastering process, and countless hours updating and managing your excel files.

DS: I loved the sound mix of RDR.  How was it approached?  Also, what kind of audio implementation tools were used?

JW: Our main audio tools are Pro Tools systems loaded with wonderful plug ins, Wavelab, Sound Forge, Native Instruments programs, and a proprietary set of tools developed by our in-house wizards. One aspect that was especially terrific about this project was the support from all of the audio programmers. It’s one thing to create some great sounds on your workstation, but then getting those sounds into the game and getting those sounds to behave properly in the world is a major part of completing one’s design. The designers could mock things up in Pro Tools or Reaktor, for example, and the audio programmers could then adapt all of the various behaviors and modulations within the code to realize our desired goals with different sounds. When it came to the final mix, several factors came into play to get everything balanced.

Throughout a major portion of the development of the project, I spent a good deal of time monitoring on the television set in my studio. I only went to the high-end reference monitors after I had a satisfying playback off of the television set. Secondly, we have an area in our audio department that is set up similar to a consumer home theater system. The audio team, including the programmers, met weekly to play through the game on the consumer surround system as well as the television monitor in that home living room space.

Finally, I worked closely with my fellow lead sound designer Matthew Smith on the final balancing and blending of the three main aspects of the sound track: speech, effects, and music. Matt was able to code up some terrific systems to keep the mix dynamic; this was critical for me. I did not want the soundtrack to be one, flat level throughout the entire game play experience. We were able to give the player a completely dynamic experience that really breathes with highs and lows and nice movement. Games are so interactive, you cannot approach the mix as you would a feature film, which is completely linear. So many things can happen at different times in the game that affect how the sound behaves.

Thus, we had to make sure the audio mix always adapted, at run time, to whatever was happing in the game. This ensured we would never have music step on speech intelligibility or sound effects get lost during critical game play moments. I would be remiss if I did not mention the amazing programming support from the audio programmers. Rob Katz, Corey Shay and Alastair MacGregor in particular were key players in bringing this audio to life. Sound designers can never fully appreciate the value of quality programming support. Without them, our wave files are simply disembodied sound files; programming connects those sounds to be part of the game.

Jeffrey's Studio at Rockstar Games San Diego

DS: Finally, could you tell us something about your relationship with the composers? What are your thoughts on an “in-game score vs full song soundtrack”?

JW: I really love the music in this game and truly feel the musical soundtrack completes the aural experience. A proprietary system was developed in-house to make sure the score was vividly dynamic, spacious, and always complementary to the events in game. The composers truly delivered something incredible. I have spent so many hours with the game and the score continues to knock my socks off. Each of the three main areas has its own unique flavor of music, yet it all works so seamlessly together.

The interactivity of the score was vital, and Craig Conner and Rebecca Johnson at Rockstar North specified and hand-tuned almost 1000 individual musical transitions in the main single-player missions alone, which the game designers would then weave into the scripting of their missions, “directing” musical moments to accentuate the game play experience for the player. The music system was able to cue off of that and then constantly evolve and randomize itself to further keep the soundtrack fresh and interesting. All in all, the creation of this game was an amazing experience and a sound designer’s dream.

To my knowledge, there’s only one game in the world that lets you team up online with three friends playing as super-powered SWAT agents, make a rendezvous by leaping over skyscrapers, pile everyone into (and onto) one car, tear down the street at 100 mph (rendering a road-clogging zombie horde into a messy green spray), then crash that car into a terrorist hideout in an explosion that rips through most of the bad guys inside. That game is Crackdown 2- 1Up.com’s online review

Audio director Kristofor Mellroth took time out to answer some questions about the sound of “Crackdown 2″. Here is what he told me:

Designing Sound: How long was Crackdown 2′s sound in development and how did you collaborate with the rest of dev teams on the game?

Kristofor Mellroth: My relationship with the development team at Ruffian was one of shared history, since I worked with most of them on Crackdown 1. Ross Nicoll (Audio Lead at Ruffian) and I have a very good working relationship and we knew we wanted to work together on Crackdown 2 again. At the beginning of the project I travelled to Dundee and pitched my ideas for creative pillars, staff, and schedule. I got signoff from both sides and started right in on staffing and preproduction. Crackdown 2’s development schedule for audio was essentially 12 months start-to-finish. The bulk of production took about 9 of those months. The other 3 months was spent on building a pipeline, hiring, scoping, planning, testing, and bug fixing.

DS: In terms of sound, what were the most challenging changes in the sequel? What did you want to improve or change?

KM: By far the most difficult thing about doing a Crackdown game is the fact that the entire game is co-op, non-linear, and open world. With this design every system you make must support every game mode and every scenario in every game mode. Player characters can create an enormous scale of sounds in Crackdown and with the introduction of 4 players, the potential for audio mayhem goes through the roof. You can make something sound awesome, but can you also make it sound awesome when 4 players do it side by side?

There are a few things we wanted to improve this time over the last.

#1 Sandbox audio fidelity. We think CD1 has a very cool and unique sound but we could not be satisfied with the past. We wanted to push the sandbox sound design in every area further. This meant redesigning every system from both a technical and aesthetic level. It meant all new field recording. It meant expanding the sandbox and trying to get more memorable sounds into it while not overwhelming the player with repetition.

#2 authoring environment. Our previous tech was cool but very specific. We needed something more flexible and more up to date with things like live update, synthesis, dynamic mixing, etc. Something that allowed collaboration across oceans and timezones. This was an easy choice and we immediately selected Wwise as our environment.

#3 Emotional impact. The last game’s sound was 100% simulation. This helps give the game a very unique sound but also leaves it emotionally flat during big moments. We wanted to give the game more emotion this time and elected to add an original score as our primary solution. This worked extremely well in a game like Crackdown 2. Much better than we could have envisioned. We got such a great score and it’s integrated in very unique ways. The beginning, end, life, death, day, night, height exploration, and races all feel much more impactful this time around.

DS: How does the non-linear open world gameplay and multi-player cooperation changed the way you design/implement sound in the game?

KM: It’s extremely difficult. Any time you want to cheat on a radius for a sound to make it louder or put in extra detail, you find that the scale of 4 player Co-op, memory restrictions, or the lack of linearity makes it exponentially more challenging. For instance, there are many sounds that can occur at any time, but only rarely. Players can drop in and out of your world and bring a completely unique set of weapons, actions, and equipment with them. One can be in a freak lair, activating a beacon while you are gliding off a 100 story building over a firefight. Below is a partner racing in a supercar while another friend is flying a helicopter and strafing bad guys on the street. In each scenario you must ask yourself, “what should the player be hearing here?” and both mix and design your technology to support this.

We are very committed to “full simulation” as a key strength for Crackdown. With this challenge in mind, you cannot simply drop what the other person is doing. You must integrate what they are doing in to the overall soundscape and make sure that it doesn’t interfere with the players’s actions. Every radius and every setting on each sound must be tuned and tested.

For instance, up close you want a missile launcher’s “launch” sound to be louder than the missile trail, but the missile trail must be audible over a great distance. The explosion needs to not only be audible over a massive distance but must also change in character relative to how dangerous it is to the player. It must also have a unique signature so the player can identify what is firing at them, but that sound only needs to be audible when lethal. Now multiply this by 5 enemies with rocket launchers and 4 players with rocket launchers and it lets you know that you must be very disciplined with how you build this out for it not to turn into audio mayhem.

DS: How do you use sound to enhance the player’s experience? What techniques did you use to develop sound design for the sequel?

KM: We use sound design as the basis for the entire game. Music comes and goes based on the scenario, VO gives the human element and a visceral reaction to player input or instructions on how to play. We intentionally gave no vocalizations to the Agents this time. Your interaction with the world and your voice are 100% sound design. This is a difficult and unique challenge to keep unique but one we really enjoy.

Sound design is used for a number of key features.

#1 player identity – each object, each interaction has a unique sound design. this is 100’s of objects, vehicles, weapons, etc. Uniqueness in sound design replaces the voice of the agent. It gives each action an identity.

#2 player feedback. – How far am I from something? What is near me? What am I holding? What am I doing? Am I safe, or in danger? What am I fighting? Is it alive or dead? What is shooting at me? What am I driving? What are they driving? Am I damaging it? All of these bits of information are built into the game through sound design.. Due to unique designs for everything, our goal was for the player to be able to close their eyes and know what’s happening.

DS: Did you use any sounds from the first title? How many new recordings was needed on Crackdown 2?

KM: The only sounds kept from the original game were the sounds of the agility and hidden orbs and the agent level up sound. These were sounds we identified as part of the brand identity. Everything else was based on new field recordings and sound design. This includes weapons, vehicles, foley, missions, ambience, etc. We wanted a fresh new sheen on everything and didn’t want to sound like an audio 1.5. We wanted a full 2.0 experience so we left no stone unturned. This ended up taking a lot of effort, but at MGS we accept no compromises. Quality and achieving our own goals are the only thing that matters. It was an incredible amount of work to accomplish in 12 months but we did it and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

DS: In an interview with Joystiq, you talked about challenges and techniques used on the explosions/weapons sounds, could elaborate more on that process?

KM: Yeah! My favorite subjects! :) We can talk assets and we can talk implementation. First, asset-wise we recorded everything unique for Crackdown 2. This includes a 25+ weapon gun shoot and a class C explosives session. Locations were scouted and tested before hand. We got blown out by the wind during our first gun session and had to book a 2nd at a different location. The end results are very unique, very impactful and very satisfying.

Second, Implementenation. Essentially, there are three things that govern the weapon system. Player VS non-player, player level, and weapon type. Player weapons have 5 layers. Weapon muzzle flash left & right (independent), weapon dry fire, unique sweetener, LFE and rumble. Player weapons change gain and pitch based on player skill level. In short, gain goes up on some layers, pitch comes doen, and the stereo field widens as the firearms level increases.

NPC weapons have muzzle flash and unique distant assets that crossfade over distance. NPCs use only the left set of the player’s muzzle flash as theirs. this lets us not carry all the player detail for every weapon, only the three potential weapons the player can carry (primary, secondary, and turret).

For explosions, there are 10 levels of explosion in the game from small lvl 1 grenade to what we call “NUKE”. Each explosion is 5 layers. 1 stereo “blast” that widens as it’s closer to the player. “boom” that is the deep thud of an explosion that both sweetens up close but also help simulate distance. This has a huge audible distance so you can hear explosions that happen on another island. LFE to give power to home theater users, and an explosive object sweetener to let you know if it was a car, a propane tank, a grenade, or a gadget that has exploded.

Each layer has variation and we have 4 levels for each type of layer that change based on the explosion level. That’s a lot of assets dedicated to explosions! The end result, we really enjoy. It never gets old to blow s*!t up in Crackdown 2.

DS: How did you deal with the different environments and locations in Crackdown 2? What kind of places you recorded? How you structured the different layers?

KM: Because we do so much simulation, we opted not to go too crazy with base environmental detail. The world is carved up in volumes per region and uses a simple ambient loop paired with random one-shots to give flavor to the world. Ambience changes with height as well, with one-shot detail falling away and the base turning into an elevation-appropriate loop. There is a lot of detail put into the reverb design, which is a separate hand-crafted volume based system. Reverbs for underpasses, alleys, forest, streets, etc are all tuned differently and actually pretty wet in mix to help bring everything into a unified sound. One of my favorite things to do is drive a car under an overpass and bail out while hearing the music move from 2d to 3d and switch to the reverb system.

DS: What are your favorite tools for sound design? Is there any special processes or techniques you used for Crackdown 2?

KM: Sound design for this really takes place in two places. First in the DAW environment and second in the game authoring environment. Because of the way we construct sounds, you really have to plan extensively so this process is smooth and everyone is on the same page.

For the DAW environment we all like different stuff. Soundelux and MGS Soundlab both use ProTools. Jeff and Ross like Nuendo. I like Audition. We don’t mandate an environment, we let everyone work in what they like. But they have to finish the feature since we can’t move sessions between machines. This encourages ownership and accountability which we like, but at the expense of flexibility.

One of the unique production techniques we used on the game can be heard in the NPC vocals. The way they sound, like people shouting on a city street, is a combination of recording technique (large room, boom operator) and in-game delay and reverb.

The in-game authoring environment I’ll cover below, but please consider it just as important as the asset creation pipeline for the sound of Crackdown 2.

DS: There is an interesting approach to music and it’s relationship with the environments and moments in the game, what ideas were behind the way music was used?

KM: We have a lot of music in Crackdown 2 and we are really happy with out it came out.
There was a goal of more emotional impact from the original score and a more recognizable soundtrack in the form of Cell faction songs.

We also wanted to contrast areas of ownership through music, so Agency controlled areas play ambient music through the world only in the form of video Billboards and reclaimed strongholds. Citizens only control their own vehicles and folk songs on the street. Cell music comes from both Cell-controlled areas (PA speakers) and vehicles that are loud and can be driven into Agency controlled areas.

Original score, by Kevin Riepl, is designed to reinforce key moments of experience and give the game a more dramatic feel. These include:

• Life/death/rebirth sequence
• Night/day transitions
• Races
• Beacons
• Multiplayer reinforcement
• AU(absorption units) – integration of main theme
• Height based ambient sweeteners
• Agency jingles
• Front end and UI
• Opening sequence
• Final beacon and end sequence
• FMVs for intro, outro, and epilogue.

Each of these are tied together by a main theme that we consider part of our brand identity, alongside the famous Agility orb sounds.

DS: In the first game, there are a lot of cool ways you implemented sound, such as environmental reverb,  psychics calculations, etc. How was this improved in Crackdown 2? Could you tell us more about the tools/system you use for implementation?

KM: For the authoring environment, we choose Wwise because it is the best, most flexible, most collaborative and fully featured toolset out there. There were so many benefits to this… we were able to quickly implement and hear our changes. We were able to trade work units internally and externally. We were able to mix and tweak quickly. We were able to tie almost every sound design into game parameters and really take advantage of morphing and changing sound design based on what’s happening in the game.I really couldn’t see us pulling off CD2 with any other toolset due to the complexity of what we did.

We made some good decisions early on that helped us every time we tackled a new system. Almost everything is based on switches and RTPCs. We have switches for player vs non-player, character type, object type, weapon type, vehicle type, surface type and many more. We have RTPCs for impact intensity, tire grip level, object speed, pitch and roll. Each of these can be used to create a unique sound for an object.

For instance, the player picks up a car that has a co-op partner driving it and throws it into a building, then it falls into the water. We play a unique “pick up object” sound based on the object type (car). The suspension expands, determined by the vehicle type. The co-op player revs the engine, which has induction, engine, and exhaust simulation determined by a switch of vehicle type and RTPCs of RPM and throttle position. The player throws the car, generating a whoosh of SoundSeed Whoosh, which changes based on an RTPC of player strength level. The car flies through the air, generating a wind rush for the partner in the vehicle based on speed. It impacts the surface of the building and creates three sounds. One of the object impact, switching on object type (car) and an RTPC of impact intensity (medium), an LFE sweetener with a tight radius to give the sense of scale to home theater owners that switches on object size, and the surface of the building (stone) before falling into the water creating a splash that switches based on object size (large splash).

It’s extensive, detailed, and a little bit insane, but we’re really proud of it and we hope you like it.

Thanks for the chance to tell our story!

Joystiq has published a very cool interview with Kristofor Mellroth, Audio Director of Crackdown 2.

In the first game, I actually did all of the explosions, weapons, and then my teams here did all the physics stuff. And one thing that I knew I wanted to improve on this one was the fidelity and the punch. We had a very specific sound last time, and the way you would normally design weapons and explosions, we had a real-time reflection system, so it would cast rays out onto surfaces and then filter them off of those surfaces, and they gave it a real authentic, on the street sound, but it also made it so that you had to design your sound types in a very specific way. So one of the things we did this time is we switched to an all-new audio engine. Ripped everything out, and I wanted higher fidelity guns, and I wanted more punch out of everything. I’m a huge online gamer, I play a lot of Call of Duty, I play a lot of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 — those were the games that I set my sights on as far as what I wanted to compete with. So we did a gun shoot, every weapon that you hear in the game is an original recording, all new, only for us. That’s how you get your gun sound is you go to a location. We went to a couple of places — we went to the desert once and got blown out by the wind, and then I had the guys that we were working with on that session go to a specific canyon and they recorded an arsenal, everything from belt-fed machine guns to 8 gauge sawed-off shotguns. And when we worked on the sound design for the weapons, I used almost the exact same design that I did last time, as far as structure.

We do some subtle things over time, so as you level up your weapon skill, the sound design changes. I don’t know if you noticed that on the first one — it stretches out over such a long time. But if you play a level 1 agent’s firearms versus a level 5 agent’s firearms, they sound very different. On this one, we did a few subtle tweaks to that, we added another layer of weapon, we were able to refine it a lot more.

Our distant gun sounds last time worked out really well — it’s all simulated, we don’t fake any of our battle ambiences, so that’s all generated by the game.

Full Interview Here