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Client Feedback

I asked James, the developer, for a small write-up on how he thought I worked during the process of creating the sounds for Taphobos. He sent over a paragraph, shown below, about my professionalism and approach to the project:

‘After hearing about Barney from a game developer friend I contacted him to see if he would be interested in working with me on “Taphobos – An Immersive Coffin Experience”. From the start Barney was very responsive and interested in the idea, I needed ambient sounds, specific sounds and some music. He suggested that the base sounds be used as part of his degree work which seemed to be a good solution for both of us.

Over the last few months Barney and I have met on regular occasions to implement the sounds he has created and there have been no issues with any deadlines either of us had and they were all met in good time. The sounds themselves have been very much what I was looking for and add a great sense of atmosphere and immersion to the game, I am very grateful for the hard work he has put in.’

(LO3)

 

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Gameplay Video

This video makes up the majority of my artefact, and demonstrates my sounds within the game in an interactive sense. Unfortunately, due to the software used to screencapture the game, the sound is a little compressed – so please use this only as a reference to the game level and to how the sounds are triggered within the game. It is best to refer to my FMOD walkthroughs for a true high-quality representation of the sounds.

Note the different sections of the church: the main hall, the crypt, the tower and also the candles, doors and the player sounds. I will refer to all of these in my FMOD walkthrough posts.

 

 

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Feedback: Kyle Worral

I also spoke to sound designer Kyle Worral, based in Leeds. He gave me some very helpful feedback to my work:

‘Hey man, a few thoughts on the sound design, it seems like the footsteps are the same for all the surfaces? or they sound the same at least, I’m not sure if maybe the foley layers are different ?

Also, I really like the way you’ve set the tower up, as it sounds different the higher you get, but I feel like maybe the room ambience in the ground floor of the tower and the larger room are too similar, although the door and wind sounds were really well done.So yeah all in all it’s really good, but a surface detection blueprint would be good as it’d add more variety to your footstep sounds (would also be good to add some pitch and volume modulation to them) and maybe try altering the room tones some more as it’ll separate them a bit more but overall it’s really good’.

 

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Feedback: Kevin Doran

I also spoke to Kevin Doran, a game audio programmer and sound designer, and he gave me some fantastic feedback on my work:

‘I quite like the footstep sound, but they obviously need to be randomised a bit, and placed spatially to appear below the player.
 
Candles don’t make a sound, so I would take that sound out to be honest.
 
Definitely needs to play on the reverb, these are well designed spacious places, so as much as the character is generating sounds (i.e. through footsteps), the sounds should interact with their space as well. Walking up those stairs need nice heavy wooden thuds that reverberate all the way up the spire.
 
The ambience is nice, but it’s a little bass heavy. I’d reference it against other atmospheric games to get a better sense of what’s generally accepted. It feels claustrophobic in an otherwise spacious level.
 
Otherwise, I really like what’s going on sonically. Lots of interesting little sounds that give the place personality.
 
Not sure if it’s the compression hiding them, but some higher frequency sounds could be nice too. A few mice scuttlings, and wind howls of the 2k+ range.
 
Most churches aren’t very interesting when it comes to incidental sounds. Your best bet is to have a convolution reverb in your game and feed it plain sounds maybe. I don’t know how complex that is though, but the best thing about a church is not the sounds that happen in it, but how it changes the harmonic content of those sounds.
 
And I’m envious that you get to work on such a cool looking project, haha. I’m still hacking away at the boring stuff. You deserve it after all that study though.
 
If you can figure out the programming, you could make some really convincing spaces. I like how Fallout 4 has handled it’s sound in relation to space. Uses the doppler effect, the way sound travels over long distances with regards to wavelength, and how they handle various acoustic spaces. Of course they have a massive team, but you don’t need to model caves, and warehouses, so you might be able to narrow down to some of the core features. Just great for inspiration in any case’.
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Feedback: Katie Tarrant

I decided a good final step to the process would be to contact some professional sound designers for their opinions on my work. As I personally know a number of sound designers, I sent my work over to them for their advice on my sounds. This has given me some extremely helpful pointers from which to improve my process, approach to sound design in games and the sound in Taphobos specifically.

The first person I spoke to was Katie Tarrant, a composer and sound designer, based in Liverpool. She gave me some helpful feedback:

‘I love the ambience and overall sounds are great, the only thing I’d say is the footsteps have a slight metal clink sound to them? Which might get a bit grating on the ear over the duration of long term play. They didn’t feel too repetitive, it was only the clink sound that prevented it from fitting in. I think adding a weighted sound on the jumps would be cool too.
 
But that’s it, overall it’s great!
 
Really great crafting of the environment’.