Today, I put on a mini game audio workshop at uni. I’d had the idea for a while – as a number of people had asked me to show them how to use FMOD – so I decided to pull together some interested audio people to spend a day learning how to make game sounds and implement them. It went really well, we had a good mix of participants from the 3 years, and despite having a number of drop outs, we still got 6 attendees. Although this isn’t a huge amount, i’m happy with it as a first session. Retrospectively, I should really have thought more about the actual delivery of the workshop, and maybe created more resources/examples/tutorials for the beginners to better understand the concept I was trying to explain. I also came up against first years struggling to use pro tools and zooms (which I hadn’t considered), but they managed still to make some cool noises and implement them.

My hope for the next event is to pull someone in from the industry to not only come and talk to us, but to also give us some hands-on insight into implementation and their role in a game studio. I’m considering possibly asking Jey Kazi – a friend of mine from the Game Audio North meetups.

This evening I met with James to sit down with the game and work through all of the sounds the game requires. James had a relatively recent build of the game and we explored the different levels, looking at the various spaces the player can occupy, the different environments and different terrains.

We put together a list – which I’ve now typed up into a google spreadsheet – so I can begin planning my recording process and think about implementation. We also discussed the mood and feel of the sounds. We tried to get down all of main ones for the moment, and once we’ve begun the implementation process, we will look back in more detail and see if it feels like anything is missing when you play the game.

Not counting variations, we identified roughly 23 sounds (plus two music tracks). This also includes ambiences, which will be made up of multiple loops/randomly triggering elements. I’d like to create a bare minimum of 8 variations of each sound, but as some of the main sounds like the footsteps are so prominent i’d ideally like to push that up to somewhere in the range of 15-20. As this game is being built to play on a PC, there isn’t much need to keep sound events to a minimum (especially as the soundscape is already very limited). Given the implication of delivering at least 8 variations of each sound, the overall number of sound assets could be up to 200 and over.

I’ve made a viewable copy of the spreadsheet:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DC84vjR5_Nn1h17wpXkYER9YMPphEiWZnom8hhenOs0/edit?usp=sharing

(LO3)

Alongside my university work, I am also undertaking an ongoing project to improve my recording skill. This will play a part in my AP2 project, as i’m sure a lot of the focus will crossover. The project is called ‘100 Hours Project’, and the aim is just that; in order to best aquatint myself with the fine art of field recording, I have dedicated 100 hours in my last few months of university recording with the sound devices 633. I’m aware that the 633 is an industry standard recorder, and to boast 100 hours of documented experience with it would be absolute gold for my CV. I’ve begun the process already, and applied the recordings i’ve made to mini-projects, such as practice FMOD sessions. I’m also hoping to put together some kind of sound library from the recordings I make, in order to have something to work with upon leaving university.

The blog can be found here – 100 Hours Project Blog.

(LO1)

So I connected with James on twitter initially, and met him at the Lincoln Indie Developers’ meetup, back in January. He suggested that we proceed by me first playing the game, to get an idea of the concept and a feel for the gameplay. We ended up doing this over the Global Game Jam weekend – and James brought the coffin, Oculus Rift and 2D game out for me to play. It was an experience, to say the least. I was more caught up in playing the game that actually noting what sounds i’d need the making. But I think getting a feel for it as a player is important.

We’ve arranged to meet this week to begin looking at the content specifically – breaking the levels down into all of the assets i’ll need to deliver.

(LO3)

Last weekend I participated in my first global game jam! Global game jam is a international initiate, designed to unite game developers for 48 hours to make games around a set theme. This was my first GGJ but not my first game jam generally (I blogged about my first game jam in AP1), and I was excited to get stuck in.

My last jam was a little disappointing, as, despite making some cool sounds and implementing them, they never actually ended up in the final game build (mostly due to the fact the jam was only 24 hours long, and time was extremely precious). I’d enjoyed working with the developer, and had used the time to explore FMOD in greater depth, but this time I decided to take a different approach to the event, by working on my own:

One of the ‘diversifiers’ (a ‘rule’ to include in the game to make it more interesting to develop) was to make the game entirely with audio – no graphical content whatsoever. As i’m passionate about audio, I jumped at the idea of making an audio-only game. My thoughts turned to.. how. The vast majority of game mechanics (the actual gameplay) are related visually, and the challenge of creating simulating gameplay (more than just an interactive audio-book) was hugely exciting to me. I came up with the idea of a 40s/50s noir detective game, investigating a murder. I chose to keep the game jam concept limited, and stuck to simple player interactions, rather than any complex mechanics. I wrote some lines that I recorded my good friend Daniel Berry performing, as well as minor roles from fellow game jammers. I also created ambient background soundscapes for all of the scenes, any foley/object sounds, and my friend Katie Tarrant wrote some awesome 50s ominous jazz tunes for the soundtrack.

Sadly, the game didn’t come together. I spent too much time making the sounds and not enough time thinking about how i’d put them into a ‘game’. I talked about making a audio-only game on twitter over the weekend – and was amazed at the response of a hoard of blind gamers being extremely interested in the idea, and I had a lengthy twitter discussion with Brandon Cole, who is something of an advocate for blind gaming and accessibility to games for the blind community. This was an aspect I hadn’t really considered – that a complex and extensive audio-only game would be perfect for the blind gaming community – and by the sounds of things, something they don’t really have to date.

I won’t talk too much about my idea in depth – as i’m planning on making it as a personal project in the coming months. But I figured i’d do a quick post on my experience of GGJ as a sound designer.

Below is a selection of the VO I recorded for the game sketch. It’s rough, as the recording environment was far from ideal. But an idea of what I got up to.

(LO2, LO4)