Dallas Taylor, from Defacto Sound, had a very nice interview with Raison Varner, sound designer of Borderlands, at Gearbox Software. They talk about the music, sound design and audio development in general. Check some excerpts:
Defacto Sound: How long was the Development cycle?
Raison Varner: The development cycle for audio is different than the cycle of the entire project. From the beginning, I believe the project was between 3 to 3.5 years. I’m not sure when the official start date was since I came to Gearbox well into the prototype. The project didn’t’ have an audio lead until about 3 months after I started at Gearbox, at which point I moved from Hell’s Highway to Borderlands as the audio lead once we got that WWII project out the door. I started on Borderlands around June/July of 2008 and it was pretty much a fresh start. There was some early prototype work done, but it was all placeholder material and was built during a time when audio development was focused elsewhere in the company. I was the only sound designer on the project for about 9 months, Mark came on to assist with sound design as we ramped up for a final 6 month push and worked ourselves to the bone to get that game out the door. So overall, I think all the audio production happened in about a 1.5 year period.
Defacto Sound: What was the Sound Design Direction for the game? What Movies and/or Games did you draw inspiration from?
Raison Varner: Hmmm… I can’t really think of anything specific at the moment. I know there are influences there, but I never really think about that sort of thing directly when I’m working. I just think about what the game needs and what kind of character to the sounds will provide the greatest impact. In Borderlands we had an interesting mix of high-tech sci-fi and low-tech sci-fi, so I wanted to mix really basic sounding machinery with really slick sounding “plastic” sci-fi elements.
Defacto Sound: How long did it take to record & implement “87 bazillion” guns?
Raison Varner: I approached the guns as “sets” of weapons. We were able to boil the stats of guns down to a single deterministic value and I would create a “low”, “medium” and “high” power version of that weapon. Based on that one stat, we would do a sample switch that was a very general representation of the power of a weapon. So each weapon type had 3 sets of power. 3 SMGs, 3 Rifles, 3 Sniper Rifles, 3 Shotguns, etc… Towards the end of the game I ran out of time to keep doing that, so I left the rocket launcher and grenade launcher as a single firing sound. I mean… how nuanced can you get with those types of weapons anyhow? So I figured it would be an acceptable compromise.
Every weapon in the game also had a variable firing rate so we couldn’t use loops. In order to try and give the guns a “cadence” to firing I would create an over powered sounding “First Shot,” extremely short “successive shots” and then a tail that carried the rapport of the gunshot’s echo. I also mixed the mechanical elements hotter in the successive shot sounds so that when you held the trigger down, you really heard all that metal working hard in the weapon.
Awww, the link is dead. :(