What goes behind Sound Design for Games
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This document discusses the role of a sound designer in game development. It outlines traits to look for in a sound designer, including technical knowledge, creative vision, and good communication skills. It also describes the game development process from the perspective of a sound designer, including pre-production, production, implementation, and polish. The production process involves tasks like recording, synthesis, and editing sounds. Implementation involves integrating sounds into the game engine and setting up systems for sound effects, ambience, and reverb zones.
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What goes behind Sound Design for Games
- 1. ?What goes behind Gwen Guo Co-founder, IMBA Interactive Sound Design for Games
- 3. Excellence in Audio (2013) Dusty Revenge, PD Design Studio Best Game Audio (2014) Dusty Revenge, PD Design Studio Best Game Audio (2013) Amazing Studly Strikes, Inzen Studio Best Game (2013) One Upon Light, SUTD Game Lab Out Now! Out Now!
- 6. Sound Design for Games What goes behind it? ➡What traits should you look out for? ➡Inserting sound designer into the team ➡Pre-production ➡Production ➡Implementation ➡Polish
- 7. Technical Knowledge Professional Gear Licensing Knowledge “Good Ears” Creative Vision Good communicationVersatile You want to hire this sound designer! Game Engines and Implementation Understands Player Responses Game Dev Cycle Knowledge What to look out for
- 8. Insert audio person here Art Audio Code Design QAStory Marketing UI/UX
- 11. Concepts ART PLZ STORY PLZ GDD PLZ
- 13. Kick drum from __________ Short and snappy like _______ Creepy ambience like _______ References
- 17. Asset List
- 18. QA and Testing IMPLEMENTATION Asset Repository Game Engine Middle- ware Sound Asset (SFX, VOICE, MUSIC) Recorded Sound (Ambience, Foley, Voice, Musicians…) Editing/Manipula ting of the Sound Game Audio Production & Implementation Pipeline PRODUCTION Asset List
- 19. PRODUCTION
- 21. Synthesis Source: ADSR Music Production
- 22. Editing Samples Source: IMBA Interactive
- 23. QA and Testing IMPLEMENTATION Asset Repository Game Engine Middle- ware Sound Asset (SFX, VOICE, MUSIC) Recorded Sound (Ambience, Foley, Voice, Musicians…) Editing/Manipula ting of the Sound Game Audio Production & Implementation Pipeline PRODUCTION Asset List
- 24. IMPLEMENTATION
- 25. Sound FX Randomisation Source: basementhum
- 26. Dynamic Ambience Source: Tristan Panniers
- 27. Reverb Zones
- 29. Ambient Emitters
- 32. Bug Tracking
- 33. Optimisation Disk space VS memory
- 34. DEMAND A BUILD or a video screencap
- 35. In Conclusion…• There is more to sound design in games than just churning out assets Game Sound Design Production Implementation Polish Recording Synthesis Editing Pre-production SFX Behaviour Real-time Effects Mixing
Notas del editor
- Quick show of hands, how many in the crowd are game composers/sound designers? Or aspiring to be one? How many are developers who work with game audio designers/composers? (to tailor my talk)
- Intro: Played games from as young as 5, from DOOM to HOMM to Barbie’s Fashion Show. I promise that all of this is somehow relevant later on Never had a formal background in music. However, fell in love with electronic dance music at 14 and tried producing my own music using an old program (then called Fruity Loops, eventually Reason, where I taught myself signal flow). Worked full time as an in-house composer/sound designer for a few years (all this while, I’ve played a whole bunch of games including playing competitive TFC/TF2) and decided to pursue an official diploma in Sound Design, freelanced for a while and eventually started IMBA with 2 co-founders. Now we’re 4 years old! Still play games, more recently Stardew Valley, FFXV and Paladins (the Overwatch clone, but that’s another debate for another day)
- Some of the award-winning titles we’ve worked on
- Games made in the Philippines! Don’t you think the main character in Innkeeper 2 looks like Canadian President, Justin Trudeau?
- Today is NOT about music composition. Today is about Sound Design and the work that goes behind it, or more commonly known as sound effects. Quite a different path from traditional game composing, yet these days, music is sometimes treated as sound design and vice versa, like LIMBO where the ambience is the music score and Rez, where the sound effects are part of the music
- Versatility, usually more applicable to game composers to cover a range of genres, but also applies to sound effects and the knowledge of how to produce for all sorts of games from epic hollywood-style explosions to a gentle UI button in a casual game. “Understands player responses” explains the amount of games which I play, or pretty much how I convinced my parents that playing an obscene amount of games can lead to a career … Also leads to more critical listening in games. For example in Overwatch, calling out an Ulti as a teammate vs enemy is different in a couple of ways — voice in native language for enemy players, and they’re also slightly louder. Or how in NBA Live, the sound of the basketball hitting the ground is affected by which angle and height it’s being bounced from.
- Cannot reiterate enough on why audio people are essential to the basic structure of the team. Even though on contract, we could be outsourced or freelancers, internally, we should be privy and have easy access to game info such as art, design, scheduling. Whether we’re in-house or outsourced, keeping your sound designer in the loop of the bigger picture creates realistic expectations of deliverables and creative contributions… Could be same Slack group, access to Trello, even better, access to build We are not the lost child in game dev that nobody wants/knows how to talk to!
- The first 2 is heavily dependent on who has creative ownership. Some clients would want more say in the audio direction, others would allow the sound team to go crazy. Either way, there should be solutions for both.
- Sound designers, like artists, need time to soak in the game design and story (if your game has any). Ensure that your sound designer has access to all these to better work out a creative solution. This is especially true when you’d like the sound designer to have more creative ownership
- If you’d like to have creative ownership of the sound rather than let the sound designer interpret your game on their own, be specific on what you’d like the sound designer to do. Audio always works better than just words. Tell us exactly what you like about references you’ve provided. This is to ensure efficiency and common understanding of creative direction when we have a palette to reference to. i.e. “I want it to sound jazzy” — what kind of jazzy? Norah Jones jazzy? Snarky Puppy jazzy?
- Always budget for sound! (so that i get to eat) Typically between 10% - 25% production budget *based on research done on Kickstarter game projects Aim to have the best sound for your game, not as an afterthought Music and sound design are 2 separate costs And are 2 separate disciplines Always provide a realistic timeline (avoid asking us to come in a week before publish!). A snapshot of our multiple timelines for multiple projects. Having a realistic timeline helps us block out time specially for your game so we can fully dedicate ourselves to it. Typically at least 2 weeks of production time for about 20 SFX is ideal.
- The asset sheet is the mother of all sound design processes. Without it, there is no organisation or version control. Ensure that the sound asset sheet has all the essential information which both the sound designer and programmer can understand.
- Doing the source
- Remember the good ol’ days where foley artists used coconut husks to recreate horse hoofs? Those days ain’t over yet! Great for realistic, tactile sounds, or collecting a source for an organic sound. Or a mix
- Anyone heard of BFXR? Free browser-based synth for generating infinite possibilities of 8-bit sounds. Lots of game devs low on budget use this, but the sliders can be intimidating. Take the time to understand what each of these sliders do i.e.: ADSR Attack Decay Sustain Release to better customise your sound. Cool for sci fi sound effects like UI
- Sound effects isn’t just about dragging single sounds from libraries and calling it yours. Combining a mixture of source (samples, synthesis, recordings) to make the final sound. Take note of the solo-ing which shows each individual sound, then the last 2 final This is a sewer monster in Masquerada. Because it’s based in the sewers, it’s a little more amphibious than a standard insect. Therefore, think about the biology of how its throat is constructed, how its mouth is like etc. Also for editing, it’s also important to always strip silences. It will be relevant later on in optimisation.
- Getting the source to behave correctly in the game Randomisation, Dynamic ambience Low Pass Filter (muffled tone) Reverb Zones (in the 3D space) Floor zones (for different surfaces) Sound emitters (getting the sound to play in 3D space)
- Some of the basics of sound playback, one of which is randomisation which prevents the repetition of sounds. Others include sequence, a common example on Match-3 games of pitching up
- Using real world as an example, being aware of the sounds which occur. If everyone keeps quiet, there’s actually still a lot of sound going on (air con, crowd outside, chair creaks)
- A sound which occurs in different spaces. A clap in the toilet would sound very different from a clap in a conference hall
- Getting surfaces to change according to collision boxes. Wood, stone, dirt, water, grass etc
- Affects volume and panning dependent on where the sound listener is. Would differ for genres. 3D sounds are sounds physically in location, like a water fountain, people talking 2D sounds are usually for UI sounds, music, ambience — things which aren’t positionally affected as you move throughout the game A common mistake which occurs is the panning which is too hard, especially noticeable when you wear headphones. Adjust the “spread” function in the Audio Source to reduce the panning extremity
- Finally, mixing the volume levels, or affecting the “muffled” (LPF) effect when you’re moving between environments, or where you get to have the “ducking” effect — music volume lowering when dialogue is happening
- After implementation, this is not the end!
- Lots of bug-reporting solutions out there. If client doesn’t have any, craft your own using a simple Google Sheets
- Always refer to the profiler for audio-related spikes. For game audio, it’s often a balance between disk space and memory Typically sounds which are long and triggered once in a scene can be .ogg because it decompresses at the start of the scene and that’s it. Doing so can also save space for long sounds such as music and ambiences Sounds which are easily spammed like short sound effects can be in .wav because if it occurs very often in a short time, the amount of memory required to decompress might affect performance in game
- if you have no direct access to the build… you can’t really polish without actually seeing how the sound performs in-game
- Looks familiar? Art, design all go through similar things. Keep this in mind when hiring your sound designer or if you’re aspiring to become one.
- That’s all for now, if you’re more interested in in-depth production techniques like how to create a roar for a spider monster, or how to make an explosion sound unique, catch me after lunch or drop me an email!