The video on the top is from a session given by sound designer Steve Johnson and composer Vincent Diamante. In the session they talked about the use of sound design and music as narrative elements in Flower, a game for PS3 developed by Thatgamecompany.

Thatgamecompany’s Flower was an ambitious and unconventional game that saw fruition through an equally unconventional development cycle.

This session features a discussion from the composer and sound designer about the audio, covering how their process, source materials, implementation, and unique method of collaboration came together to convey a narrative without words.

Speaker: Steve Johnson (Sound Designer, Sony Computer Entertainment America), Vincent Diamante (composer, contractor) (March 13, 2010)

There are other 7 videos from the session. You can see all of them here.

The March issue of the Mix Magazine (Digital Edition) is now available with some goodies, including an article about the sound of God of War III with comments of senior manager Gene Semel, sound design manager Philip Kovats lead sound designer Paul M. Fox and sound designer Steve Johnson.

It’s been five years since the first God of War videogame came out on the Sony PlayStation 2 platform and became an instant sensation among serious gamers worldwide. Combining a richly detailed story using numerous characters and settings from Greek mythology with fast-paced and gory ac- tion and sophisticated gameplay, the title won a slew of awards and, not surprisingly, has spawned a franchise that includes God of War II (2007), God of War: Betrayal (2007; a spinoff for mobile devices), God of War: Chains of Olympus (2008; a prequel to the series devel- oped for the PlayStation Portable) and now, on a wave of anticipation and hype, God of War III (GOW3) for the PlayStation 3.

More than two years in the making, GOW3 ratchets up the action to new extremes as we follow the further adventures of Kratos, a mighty Spartan warrior who battles various gods and titans, and is, as we learned in GOW2, the son of Zeus, who has tried to kill him and vice versa over the course of the GOW adven- tures. Along the way, he encounters a plethora of mythological characters and creatures, in- cluding Athena, Gaia, Kronos, Pegasus, Per- seus, Atlas, Ares, the hydra, the harpies and all sorts of bad dudes and beasties who make life rather challenging for our tormented hero. The range of characters and plot points in GOW3 was a still closely guarded secret when I was preparing this story in early February, but from looking at the previews and an online demo of the game, it appears there is plenty of bloody mayhem involving everything from skeleton warriors to a fire-hurling god to frightening flying creatures, centaurs and you-name-it. In what director Stig Asmussen claims will be the last adventure in the series, Kratos’ goal is no less than the destruction of the home of the gods, Mount Olympus!

Continue reading…

Also our friend Damian Kastbauer (Audio Implementation Greats) has an introductory article to Game Audio Implementation, created with Eddie Ciletti.

I have a friend whose busi- ness card reads, “If I don’t know it, I know someone who does.” That’s my sto- ry in this edition of “Tech’s Files.” My friend and fellow geek Damian Kastbauer is an audio-for-gaming insider.

We’d like to provide an overview for peeps like me who are completely un- familiar with game audio, but who might benefit from knowing some of the nuts and bolts of the process. For example, DAW plug-ins are very graphics-intensive and look very much like their hardware counterparts, even though sliders are more mouse-friendly than knobs. By contrast, audio tools for games tend to be parameter-based, whereas a slider is a newcomer and virtual knobs don’t even exist!

On the surface, game development is often compared to the process of making a film, with the need for a storyboard, screenplay, set and sound de- sign. There is a common discipline between film and videogame creation, but some aspects remain distinctly different. While it might seem absurd to reinvent a DAW or a camera each time a new project is initiated, that’s what often happens in the gaming industry when it comes time to improve upon previous technology. For each new game, the logic, visual and sonic program- mers must create a brand-spankin’ new engine. The insider’s coding game is all about “playing well with others”—for example, sharing memory and DSP/ CPU capabilities—so that the behind-the-scenes technology is transparent to the gamers.

Of course, game designers want a great first impression; the new re- lease must look, feel and sound more realistic than the previous genera- tion. Processing requirements, platform variations (computer hardware) and time to market are all moving targets made more dramatic by projected deadlines that don’t account for the nebulous “fun factor” necessary to make a good game great.

Continue reading…

Here is the final interview with Rob Bridgett, about Prototype, talking about the sound of the cinematics, the mixing process, and more!

Designing Sound: First of all tell us something about what was your contribution on Prototype and what do you did for the sound of the game?

Rob Bridgett: In late 2007, the audio director for the project, Scott Morgan, asked if I could get involved and help out with the game mid-production. Cory Hawthorne was working as Technical Sound Designer and Implementer on the project which meant I had the opportunity to cover two areas on the game, one was as cinematics sound designer and implementer and the other was as game mixer. In terms of the first role, I was responsible for the sound effects, Foley, dialogue editing and mix of all the cut scenes in the game. The music was edited and supervised by the sound director for the project, Scott Morgan, and once all the components were assembled I would provide a mix automation pass before the finished file went into the game.

The second role, that of mixer, was one that came into play only during the post-production sound beta phase of the project’s development, in which Scott and I spend four weeks mixing the entire game in Radical’s 7.1 mix room. I always welcome the opportunity to help out on projects like this as it offers a break from being an audio director and allows a lot more time to concentrate more fully on one or two areas in particular.

DS : Can you tell us something about the process for the cinematics sound production?

RB: Sure. I’ll talk you through a typical set-up and process that I use on cinematics. The actual work on the cut-scenes starts fairly early in production. Once a script has been approved for production, placeholder dialogue is recorded here, for this we typically just use members of the team to read out the dialogue. We record this, edit it and give those files to the animation team so that they can begin their storyboarding process. They use these placeholder files to come up with very rough timings and shot lists which really gets the whole process kick started. Usually during this time, the actors are cast for the cinematics and they are recorded which eventually means that after a couple of months you have the real dialogue takes to work with and the animation team can start being more accurate with their timings.

Up until that stage, Scott Morgan, the game’s audio director had pretty much run the process, I was myself at this time finishing up the 50 cent game. I rolled onto the project in January 2008, at this point Scott had all the dialogue recorded and the cinematics team had some very rough avi files of the various cinematic scenes, so this was a good time to actually start building up the sound elements and structural foundations of the cinematics.

The first thing that I do is create a seperate Nuendo session for each scene. I typically do this from a cinematics template that I have created in Nuendo, which basically is an empty project with pre-assigned tracks and folder tracks.

• Dialogue Folder Track containing six mono tracks all assigned to CENTRE only
• SFX Folder Track containing five mono tracks all assigned to CENTRE only plus five stereo LR tracks
• Foley Folder track containing ten mono tracks all assigned to CENTRE only
• Ambience Folder Track containing four stereo tracks all panned LR and slightly LS RS
• Music Folder Track containing four LR stereo tracks and two 5.1 music tracks
• LFE folder track containing 4 mono tracks all assigned to LFE only.

These templates provide very quick structure to the whole project which is easy to navigate and expand upon. I recommend this for anyone getting into a new cinematics audio project as getting organized at the earliest stages like this saves tons of time later on.

As we had the dialogue ready and recorded, one of the first tasks for me to do was to go through all the scenes and ‘worldize’ the voices – rather than re-recording, I used Altiverb VST for each different room or physical space depicted in the scenes. The roomverb was panned mainly to the fronts (LCR) but also to the rears in order to give the sense of the listener being inside the room and surrounded by the reflections off the walls. This is quite a subtle effect, yet it adds a great deal of realism to dialogue that is recorded close-mic in an ADR room. Further to this some low-end was also rolled off the dialogue in order to simulate more of a distant mic / location sound feel. Having done this treatment on each of the cinematic scenes, it was time to move onto the second phase of building up the sound, adding roomtone and BG ambience.

For each scene and for each cut, I added roomtone that I had recorded here in the various spaces at Radical. There is a lot of AC in Radical and it makes for some useful roomtone source recordings, this meant that I had a ready to use library of roomtone beds which I could quickly edit into the scenes. For each camera cut in perspective the volumes of the roomtones were changed to ensure they corresponded to the listener position and point of view of the characters.

Scott Morgan had also been on location to New York to gather exterior ambience for the game, and it is these recordings that I was able to quickly use and edit together for any of the exterior scenes in the game. In fact, in the end I mainly relied on the actual background ambience file from the game for these ambience beds, as this would mean there was continuity between cut-scenes and game. In some of the scenes we also let the ambience present in the game continue throughout the cut-scene in order to maintain complete continuity from game to cut-scene and back to game again, for these instances, it just meant muting the ambience folder track on export.

With all the reverb and backgrounds built up, some effort could be put into sound effects design. An initial pass was done just concentrating on big fx moments like explosions or body impacts, also because the movies were low in detail at this point it could not be seen what materials or detail would be present in the final movies. All of the cut-scenes in the game used the in-game engine, so the full detail could only be seen at run-time in the game.

For the Foley in the cinematics we contracted Sharpe Sound here in Vancouver to cover the movements for all our cinematics scenes. The Foley was returned to us un-edited so the next phase of my work was to edit all the Foley and premix this so it sat well with the other effects and backgrounds. During all this work, the movies were constantly being iterated upon, receiving a lot of editing work and often large sequences would be re-cut and even deleted entirely. This meant lots of rounds of re-syncing dialogue and effects to the latest cuts of the movies.

By the time we reached Alpha and the work on the cut-scenes was locked down, I had two weeks in which to complete the final effects pass and mix on all the movies, matching the vo, music and effects levels for all of the movies. There were around 30 movies in total, around 45 minutes of in game rendered cut-scenes. Scott and I then reviewed all the cut scenes with the rest of the cinematics team and made notes of a few final tweaks before sign off.

DS: Did you record all the sound effects of the cinematics… what are the sources?

RB: We do have our own sound library here at Radical, in which we have archived many of our sources for other games such as Crash and Scarface. This library is invaluable in quickly getting sounds that I know will work. I think the key to good, fast work is actually knowing your library really well and being able to access exactly what you want quickly. The Foley, as I said, was all recorded fresh for this project, but the majority of the effects, the bodyfalls, punches and transformation sounds were all recorded here specifically for the project.

Perhaps the best example of some of the cinematic sound design we’ve been talking about is the ‘intro cinematic’ for the game which can be viewed online here…

DS: How about the mix for the game? Can you tell us something about the process involved for that?

RB: We have a proprietary run-time mixing system that enables us to do this attached to Mackie hardware control surfaces, the same one used on Scarface that I have talked about in depth elsewhere. For the mix we spent a total of four weeks, this time was broken down into a few different phases.

The first week of the mix was probably the most critical because it was where we set the overall output levels of the game. The first thing we did was to bring the whole output of all the channels down by around -6dB. This is because that when we started listening and mixing at reference listening level of 79dB, the game was incredibly loud. What tends to happen during development is that sounds are turned up and up so that you can hear them while you are populating the game with them, this approach is fine while in development, but at some point you have to reset the whole board and start from scratch again. This is what we did in the first few days of the mix. Getting the dialogue to a decent level and then ‘mixing around’ it is the approach we have been taking. So, once we’ve set our dialogue level, the music will be determined in relation to that, as with the effects and so on. Intelligibility of dialogue is really at the centre of most mixes to be honest, I still hear so many games today where you actually cannot audibly hear what is being said by certain characters because guns are being fired etc. This is perhaps one of the many areas where the styles of mixing in cinema is an influence.

Anyway, once the overall listening level is set, it is a matter of playing through the entire game, identifying key mix moments, mainly dialogue or mission related, but often tied to some in-game feature or effect like the thermal vision in prototype, for which we pitch down the ambience and add a low pass filter to many of the sounds in the game. Similarly for Infected Vision, where all sounds are given a muted treatment except for infected who remain clear and unprocessed during this mode. We also tweak every individual sound to make sure it is not too quiet or too loud. This is what takes the majority of time on a game mix, up to two weeks in this case, and all the time being aware of keeping the overall listening level tolerable for the player at home. Another major thing is to maintain the levels of sound, particularly dialogue and music, throughout cinematics and gameplay so that there isn’t a jarring disconnect between the two modes of exposition.

The final week of mixing we used to test how the game sounded on various mixdown configurations, such as stereo TV and all the various output configurations on the various consoles. The mix is tweaked at this point to ensure that users who listen on a tv set only are able to hear what they should be hearing, usually in the form of a few minor tweaks to music levels and dialogue levels but nothing too significant that it will adversely affect the surround mix.

DS: It’s a video game for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360… to work with sound… what platform you prefer?

RB: A tricky question, as a developer of multi-platform games I do have some opinions from a mixer’s point of view. The 360 is certainly the least complicated in terms of outputs, it supports Dolby Digital 5.1 and stereo (via optical and HDMI) as well as an analogue stereo output so it is kind of the easier to work with in terms of options and checking the mix. However the PS3 has discreet 7.1 support as well as a whole host of audio output options including DTS and PCM as well as Dolby Digital, which does make it more complex for checking and testing, but also provides more options for the user, particularly the higher-end HD audiophile user. As for the PC, this is potentially the most complicated of the platforms to mix and test for, because you can have any soundcard on the market connected to your PC which means we have to test on a wide variety of cards but can’t always be sure of what end users will be hearing. Having mixed the Xbox version of Prototype first, we then cloned all our mix settings and did a mix pass on the PS3 – fortunately the mix translated very well and I think we only made one or two very minor adjustments. The biggest difference being the difference between our two different compression codecs used: XMA on the 360 and MP3 on the PS3.

DS: I saw an interview with Mark Tuffy of DTS who said that Prototype was the first Xbox 360 game with 7.1 sound.. It’s about neural surround… what do you know about the implementation of that process in Prototype?

RB: I actually know very little about the implementation of this in the game from a technical point of view. What I do know is that it is running the DTS Neural surround code on the Xbox360 (there is an option in the sound menu in the game to turn this on or off) and that it is outputting a 7.1 mix of the game when listening through a receiver with neural enabled. The receiver then basically decodes the extra two back surround channels from the Left and Right surround channels of the regular 5.1 outputs. We mixed the game while monitoring in 7.1 on the Xbox, while always checking how the sound folded down to both 5.1 Dolby Digital and Stereo. The game also runs in 7.1 PCM on the PS3.

DS: In terms of interactive mixing, what aspects would you highlight as most important in the mixing and implementation of interactive audio on Prototype?

RB: Some of the action gets pretty intense pretty quickly in this game. Strike teams are sent into heavily infected zones, the amount of sound playing back is huge and there is essentially a sound for every event and collision occurring, so the game needs to be able to deal with this. It isn’t really part of the mixing system but it plays into it, there are limits specified in our engine on the amount of certain types of sounds that can be played back at any one time, such as dialogue or gun shots, and there is a priority system which gives precedence to some sounds over others. To add to this, the mixer system allows us to finesse certain events such as the shot from the thermobaric tank, whereby we duck down most other sounds to foreground this one huge tank weapon ejection to make it seem like it is much louder than it really is!

DS: I think one of the best features of Prototype sound are the ambiences, there are a lot of those and too much recording of many places… Why does the sound team gave much importance to the ambiences? What is the importance of these in Prototype?

RB: You know, the audio director Scott, has written a superb and detailed article on the ambiences in prototype here that can best answer your question… I really recommend it as there is quite a unique approach to ambience in this game, which I agree, works really well in conveying the feeling of New York.

Prototype Official Website

Jeramiah Ross sent me nice info about the sound effects creation for the amaizng brick-breaking game Shatter (PS3). Jeramiah was the lead sound designer for the game and he explain the process and techniques used to create the sound effects for the game, let’s read:

Jeramiah :

When I think back on it, It was a really fun job to take on. I had spent over a year creating the music for the game and already knew what things should sound like. And as I was using the worlds and story as reference to make the music, I already knew what things should be like for the Sound-Effects. I didnt have much time, But I am pretty happy with how it turned out. The Music and the game have a Retro feel, So I set about making the sound-effects sound like they belong to the world of Shatter under the guidence of Sidhe. I also had a crash course in FMOD and learning all about events, sound definitions and how much FMOD drives sound-designers and game programmers crazy ! :)

THE BAT SOUNDS

While putting together the sound effects and how the Bat would re-act if he got hit by bricks or attacked by the bosses it became clear that he needed to have some sort of vocal reaction to it. In the music we are already hinting that the Bat has some sort of Charcter. Since he is kinda of a robot I needed something that would sound kinda like a robot but still have some sort of emotion to it. I found the sounds I was looking for by using a freeware program called AnalogX SayIt. Basically you type words into it and it plays it back to you in a computer voice. Instead of words I typed things in like…”Phhhwwwwooo”, and “Owwwhhhhwww”, along with “UddddeeerUddddeeer” because this program uses phonetics (plays things how they sound, eg Computer = Com pew terr) It was alot of fun building up a libary of random sounds that the bat made. Once I had over 50 Bat sounds, I Put a bit of pitch shift over it all, compressed and mixed it and added a slight touch of reverb. Then loaded them into ableton live and edited around 10 different types of Bat sounds.

Here is the audio template I made for all the Bat Sounds. which I called Pure Robotics Test version 1.

The Sound of ball lost was made with a kick drum, a bit of echo and me slamming the refrigator door in my kitchen.

Here is the program I used to make the Bat sounds which is freeware, So you can download it and make Bat Sounds too!

Oh, By the way, as a secret hidden feature that no-one knows about, well, you do if your reading this, At the time, Battle Star Galactica was on its final few episodes, if you listen really closely when the ball is dropped in shatter, you might hear a famous battle-star Galactica curse word in one of the ball-lost events in-game :)

SHARD-STORM & PICKUPS

The Shard-storm is the sound of the Bat, releasing his full wrath on the brick and bosses, Basically, after sucking up lots of fragments left from destroying the bricks, it all adds up as a massive big energy release which you can use to almost destroy a entire wave or Boss. So it had to be Big, not just oh yeah, thats cool, It had to be OH MY GOD THATS AWESOME !!!! in a sound way. So it has about 3-4 different elements that make up the whole event. Ready, Power up, Active, Power Down.Its like a massive ray of sunshine and glass which is what I thought while making that sound. The sound itself is made from Wind chimes, Synths, A vacuum cleaner, and all sorts of audio processing.

The Pick up sounds are very classic, like energy orbs, I referenced lots of old skool sound effects for these. The First sound is the pick up coming out of a brick, like a sonar echo that the bat detects, Then you have the sound of the bat eating it..so to speak…

THE BRICK BLOCKS

I built up some of the brick sounds, Most of the sounds had roughly been made at that point but they were just not sitting right. The main thing was to keep them sounding like they belonged in the world that Sidhe had created. Taking the ideas that Sidhe gave me in that they are like Glass Orbs or objects that the machines had made and using the word Shatter as the main point of reference in creating the brick sounds I set about making all kinds of Sounds for different types of Bricks, The Gusters have Air Compressor sounds, The Indestrucable brick sounds have a more solid sound like metal, The static bricks are more like glass, The fun ones to make were the Rocket and Explosion bricks, I made these louder than everything else in the game, but not so loud that they kill everything else audio wise, but more lower end and bass than any of the other sound effects including the music. I recorded lots of different sounds from around the house to build up a libary of sounds. FMOD Designer which is a program for video game sound design chooses from lots of different sounds for each event (something that happens) , and randomly plays them along with a bit of pitch variation so it all dosent sound the same.

• Anchor – This is the static brick or the brick that holds the others in place. It’s mostly a glass sound.
• Black Hole – This sound dies and takes Shards with it.
• Bomb – It goes bang, Made with slamming a door and layering various other sounds.
• Guster – Air escapes this brick when it’s destroyed.
• Motor – This is a more metallic version of black hole. Just like killing your lawnmower !
• Planetoid crack – Just like a egg full of Air !
• Rocket Hit – When the rocket hits the wall, not the rocket itself.
• Spawner Death – When the machine that makes those red things dies

TRANSITION SOUNDS

Getting the Sound of the Bat flying into the levels, or Moving between waves was really tricky, I didn’t want him to sound too much like a f-16 fighter jet, but I still needed to have that punch, so it was exciting. I think I recorded the vacum cleaner, and mixed it with some sounds of a jet taking off from Wellington Airport. Also as the game field Shatters and you end up flying fast past lots of glass. I made around 3 or 4 of these transition type events. Other transition sounds are mostly Wooshes and simple effects so I wont go into those.

ELECTRIC SOUNDS

Another important set of sounds was when the bat attached itself to the game field, which is in essence, A electric field of some sort. I found a recording of a Tesla coil (Jacobs Ladder) those freaky things that they have in science class or Frankenstein’s lab and mixed it together with some synth noises. I also used that same idea for the Bat’s movement back and forwards across the electric bar that holds him in place. That got me thinking about the sound of auto-launch, As if the Bat draws energy from the electric field and it builds up and causes the same malfunction that got him out of Kentic Harvest in the first place. Here is the Auto launch sound.

THE BOSS SOUNDS

These where all recorded by the guys at Sidhe, To make them sound more robotic rather than people, I used the matrix effect (when neo wakes up from the matrix in his fish tank), Pitched everything up 12 cents and added some light distortion.

VARIOUS OTHER SOUNDS

• Game Over Completely – When the timer runs out and you die completly
• Press Start Assemble – at the very start of it all
• Press Start Shatter – Pressing the button on your PS3 will cause a earth Shattering explosion. :)
• Restart Game – This was a bit of a personal joke, like when you restart a pin-ball game :)
• Ambience – This is mixed so so low in game, its subliminal, its there but not, turn the music off and listen to all the little sounds in the back-ground.
• Zoom Into Wave – This is also a transition sound that happens at the start of each wave.

GAME MENU SOUNDS

These sounds are 100 percent a throw back to classic arcade games, I remember playing that Simon say’s game when I was a kid, It made rather cool tones, So I used Speakerphone, Which is a VST software plugin for Music programs which lets you chuck whatever sound you like through virtual speakers, or spaces. Which is alot of fun when it comes to sound design. I made them all in the same musical key of the Menu Music so it fitted in and sounded cool, I also put a little bit of reverb on them, so they sounded like they are in the space. With the music, which is called ‘Glass Halls‘ It’s like a waiting room, Atmospheric and tranquil. Reverb goes a long way to help sell ambience :)

• Back
• Change
• Move
• Error

Audio examples here…

If you want more information about Jeramiah, you can visit his website and blog. Currently, Jeramiah is preparing his Portfolio website, so stay tuned!

George Spanos has created a new Game Sound Design Website. It has several articles, videos, and a forum. Looks great!

There is an interesting article covering the info about the sound of Dark Sector, a third person action shooter that “thrusts you into Hayden Tenno’s mysterious world”. Let’s read:

Sound Design and Music

The sound design of Dark Sector was also really important to the storytelling. We created a number of ambient sound design pieces that combined traditional musical instrumentation with elements of sound design. It was really effective to infuse the pieces with sounds that made the player feel on-edge. Things like prepared piano scrapes, metal creaks and groans, as well as infusing some of the scarier NPC sounds into the music. These sound design cues allowed us to help the player perceive that the infection was spreading throughout their body through the use of audio. Altering the state of the soundscape to not include what you’d traditionally hear brought about a sense of unease. We would create a list of a few different cues which would play randomly and constantly, but at the same time it didn’t feel like the cues were switching at all. It helped with the immersion factor that there were no jarring and noticeable cue changes. It also helped to avoid creating any musical fatigue by not having to play the same tracks over and over again.

Challenges

The production of Dark Sector wasn’t without its fair share of pitfalls, though. One major obstacle that we ran into with the music implementation was the fact that the timing for our cinematics wasn’t fully locked down before Keith scored them. Quite often we had to edit his score to fit the newly arranged timings. Whole shots would get cut-out and lines of dialogue would be cut. It’s important to have as close to final timings as possible before writing music.

Our dynamic music system is still in its infancy and we have a ton of ideas that we’d like to implement. While we were able to dynamically crossfade music we were not able to mix and match cues together based on gameplay. For example, having the ability to trigger a musical breakdown that plays underscore in response to gameplay changes, then switching to a different melody when the action heats up again etc… would have enabled us to incorporate even more control over the moment to moment feel of Dark Sector.

Full Article here