Sound Design For Games
When this class first started for the month I expected to be doing more mixing with vocals or beats however, I was really challenged with the task of creating assets for games, which turned out to be lots of fun. We learned about the importance of not only designing sounds for games, but also how to implement the sounds into games for play. This was accomplished by using Wwise which is where we created sequence containers, blend containers, and random containers for the assets that we created. We could also implement a loop, delay, 3D spatialization, and more to create a life-like feature for the assets.
In Week 1, we were to either download or record our own sounds using the Zoom H5 recorder which was provided in our Launch Box for school. With the assets created we were to make seamless loops or one-shot sounds. A seamless loop is a consistent ambience from a sound that doesn't alter it stays the same. An example of a seamless loop will be the sound of a motor or generator. One-shot sounds are basically impacts such as a door opening or closing, grabbing onto a ledge, a jump or landing, glass shattering, etc. The idea was to find various bird calls from different birds to create the illusion of walking through a forest late in the afternoon.
For Week 2, we went through the process of finding 15 sounds that we used to create different assets of a main ambient loop. ambient loops for various spaces within the game (Seamless Loops), and a series of ambient stingers (One-Shot sounds). The whole concept for this particular week was to create the impression of walking through a graveyard. Again, we were able to download pre-designed assets from the site provided by our professor or get creative and come up with our own. I failed to mention in week 1 that we had to edit the sounds. So for the loops we found up to 30 sec. of a sound and cut that section. In order to create the loop without any clicks or pops, you duplicate that segment twice and open up a batch fade (cmd + F). One-shot sounds we began by topping and tailing the stinger by getting rid of all of the extra silence. Once this process is finished you have to add a 2ms fade in and fade out to the beginning and end the stinger to prevent any pops/clicks.
Week 3 we followed the same process but like week 1 and week 2 the environment changed again, this time to mimic a Sci-Fi Facility. The difference between week 2 and 3 is that we used air bursts, and a few other sounds this time around as our one-shot stingers. Also, we had to worldize the assets for this assignment in the week. Worldizing is the process of making assets sound as if it is occurs in the real world of the project. This was done by either recording your sounds in a larger room to create some reverb or just simply adding the reverb effect to your asset.
Finally, Week 4 consisted of us making the correct edits to our mistakes pointed out by the professor. In Week 1, 2, 3 we were to document any mistakes made and corrected for that week in a change log. The change log was to be turned in at the end of the month with all of the proper corrections made. All in all, this was a month of designing assets for a game, which turned out to be more fun than i imagined.