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.
Via @lostlab
Yeah, they wanted to leave so much space the game sounds weak and bland. The sounds on their own are great, but the mix just doesn’t feel right. Maybe cause I’m a pro game audio designer I was expecting a whole lot more. What a shame, I waited for so long for this game. SAD.
Chris Sweetman, next time you make sounds for a game, make sure the sounds actually bloody work. I got Brink for PC, me and many, many people are having their sound cut out during gameplay and theres loads of posts on the official Brink website forum about this sound problem.
Needs to be fixed. Shouldn’t of happened in the first place really thought to be honest….