Roles and Analysis of Audio for Game Production

Within the production of audio for the accompaniment of a video game there are a number of roles which are to be undertaken to complete the project. These cover the design of sound-scapes and audio fx and the recording of each, as well as the editing and implementation stages of the audio being loaded into the game environment in pre-production of the game itself, along with the mixing of all audio to consistent and appropriate levels.

Similarly to the previous projects, this game audio accompaniment will require sound design and foley to fill the auditory space within the game. As the game setting is an empty spaceship, sound design for this project will likely consist mostly of backing ambience (including room tones and compositional pieces of background music), spot sound sources of details within the game environment, and finally any interactive elements of the game environment. The culmination of what is required for the audio aspect of this project is - ambience / character movements / sound FX / vocalisations / interactive musical sequence.

As this game is a sci-fi aesthetic and has quite an empty game world for the user to find themselves in, I will take into account similar games that I have seen before that would work as good reference for this project, The game Outer Wilds [1] will fill this role of reference. Within the game environment we have been given the movement of the player in the metal cladded empty spaceship interior directs through the spawn room, to a middle section, and finally to the control room. With the emphasis of the interactive musical element of this project designed to raise tension and increase otherwise in volume, depth and spread, as the character approaches the front of the ship I will work to do this with the musical element as well as with backing ambience in a similar way to what is done in the Outer Wilds game, as the sun nears supernova in this game a similar process to the audio occurs and this atmosphere and effect on the player during this is what I will try to cultivate in my own work.

As well as the eerie atmosphere and tense music sequence within this I will also aim to add the responsive movement audio for the player model (footsteps / movement tracks)

This will require foley recording sessions and the recording role of utilising microphones and recording equipment for spot recordings and the production of room tones. For this I will utilise condenser microphones if I am to go down the path of audio recordings, on the other hand with my approach to this I may go forward with using noise generators and sculpting the backing audio ambiences into a much more interactive element of the game, which will contain more textural information that would accompany the setting such as computational distortion from the spaceships instruments, to hisses and wirrs of pipes and wires.

These would increase out of the room tone as the walls to the room are approached, and fade when stepped away from. These aspects of the project would then come under the role of sound designer, and as this is the focus for myself with this module it may end up being the case that the room ambiences are generated digitally over room tone recordings, however the role of recording engineer will still be filled with the recording of foley for this production and I therefore will plan to capture some room tones for experimentation in this element of the project to see whether blending of the two types of ambience gives a worthwhile effect.

The implementation element of this project will consist of working with the unreal 4 game engine to assign and incorporate the audio elements that I produce into the game environment to be interacted with and heard by the player, through the utilisation of FMOD middleware to inject the audio assets themselves into the engine as well as for the balancing and mixing engineer role of this production and some aspects of sound design work. The majority of sound design work will be done using Logic Pro X as this is the software I am most familiar with when it comes to sound design, but the implementation aspect of the audio accompaniment will be done through FMOD.

Implementation will work with simple distance based parameters for ambience effects, increasing the specific audio track as the player approaches a region will be incorporated using simple logic functions which ping distance checks to the wall boundaries, the volume of audio sources present on said wall will then be determined by the distance of the player to emulate the nearer or further sound source in the sonic field, this will be done to a near point so that audio sources remain tight dynamic within each room. There will also be the interactive music which similarly will increase in detail and instrumentation as the distance from the player to the control room front decreases. Wider ambiences and backing FX will be implemented as directionally imaged if appropriate (pipe hisses will stay positioned from source start to end despite any head / camera movement of player - the sound should then move accordingly) Low room hum and tone will likely be audio bedding and some will be none-directional.

Alongside my own plan for the sound design and composition for this project, as with professional settings of game production there is an audio design document [2] to refer to for aspects of what the game developers are aiming for with the overall atmosphere and audio package. This includes a list of required audio assets to provide -

●  Audio accompaniment for character abilities (jumps / steps in single and variable loop-able groups

●  Multiple versions of assets backing fx and atmosphere for variance

●  Player feedback elements (interactive / responsive to the player)

●  A balanced mix with tracks not competing for space

●  Characterised general aesthetic -

○  Slow build-ups to highlight tension and loneliness

○  Dynamic sections with less repetition (room transitions / approaching console)

○  Use of Synthesisers and strings

○  Low level of perception in opening hanger, increasing music in importance and intensity as player moves forward to front of the ship

● Player Fx to incorporate into the player actor blueprint -

○ Footsteps (Varied surfaces) ● Ambient Sound Effects -

○  Light Sources

○  Gas Pipes

○  Rocket Engine

○  Computer Console

○  Room Ambiences

[1] Outer Wilds - 05/28/2019 by Mobius Digital - Annapurna Interactive

[2] Lost in Space Audio Design Document