New Battlefield 3 Trailer

10 Tips To Make You A Better Sound Designer

10 Tips To Make You A Better Sound Designer | gamesounddesign.com

M16 / M4 - Weapon Sound Comparison In Games

Sound Design Tutorial: Making a Scary Voice Effect (by Jim Stout)

Sound Propagation in Games

'Sound Propagation' in games, is the term given to a system built into the game that allows for sound to be manipulated in relation to the environment. One of the benefits of realistic sound propagation in a game is that it can dramatically increase immersion of the player. The sound propagation's wave interaction effects the following:

Reflection - Absorption - Diffraction- Refraction

Sound reflection is a one of the more obvious techniques used when creating a virtual room, and is often heard as reverb or echo. Absorption is the method of blocking sound by large objects between the source of the sound and the position of the listener. An example of this could be a door, window or even large furniture. Sound travels around obstacles but results in muffling and volume alterations.

Sound diffraction is when a sound is heard that is not insight. An example of this could be a radio playing music in another room to the one the character is in. The sound is still heard even though you can not visually see the sound source. Sound refraction is the natural bending of the sound. Refraction can also add additional sound, which effectively amplifies the sound. An example of a natural amplifier is a large lake.

Limitations of game industry 

Game wants to run between 30 and 60 FPS 

Cannot “downgrade” the game for sound propagation 

Limited memory (2 to 50 MB for audio) 

Limited CPU (around 10% of the total CPU for audio) 

Up to 64 simultaneous sounds playing 

 At 60 FPS, that gives 250 ms per sound 

http://gdcvault.com/play/1015492/Real-time-Sound-Propagation-in

Due to the limitations of technology in the games industry not all game developers include a sophisticated sound propagation system. Here is an example of sound propagation being implemented in a game. The Dunia engine in Far Cry 2 enables sound propagation to be used to add extra depth to the games scenery. Interestingly the gamer is able to start a fire, which changes in sound depending on the position of the character and the addition of different landscape objects.

Another more obvious example of sound propagation is in the weather system for minecraft. The sound of rain changes when walking outside, as the gamer takes cover under trees or blocks, resulting in a much more realistic gaming experience.

Wave Types

Longitudinal Waves - Transverse Waves - Torional Waves

"To further increase immersive gameplay, several recent games (such as Valve's Half Life 2 and Crytek's Far Cry) have added an integrated physics and behavior engine to enhance that realism, as objects interact with one another in a more physically plausible way. In contrast, sound generation and propagation have not received as much attention due to the extremely high computational cost for simulating realistic sounds." - http://www.few.vu.nl/~A.Eliens/research/research/papers/@archive/science/p66-raghuvanshi.pdf

This clip shows how distance sound propagation can be perfectly emulated to enhance the gaming experience.

Below are some more examples and explanations of sound propagation in relation to digital rooms and games

The King of Kong: Fist Full of Quarters

The History of Games

The Discovery Channels

 History of Games

Valve Seek Game Testers

http://www.geekwire.com/2012/calling-gamers-valve/

Techtonic Games Developer Diary

Truly amazing bone crunching sound!

Creating Monsters

Here is a clip that shows an insight into Wabi Sabi and the work they produce. They create sound design for a variety of high profile games, and this short footage shows how they go about creating sounds for a monster in Dead Space.

ENJOY

8-BIT Goodness

This is a great fan made video of some classic games with alternative sound design. Quite an interesting approach to some of the games. The sound design that really stood out for me...Pac-Man! Almost sounds like the cookie monster.

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qukCulDOJzg)

For further information on the creator - biglionmusic.com

Nasa Record Sounds of Space

As the exciting work of 'Curiosity Rover' continues to wow space enthusiast around the globe, a group of scientists have made a discovery of their own. Nasa have recently published an article on their official website, about a recent recording made in space. The article begins to explain how the sound is created and gives details on the satellite that recorded the audio.

Visit the article at - Nasa

Here is another video captured from a satellite in high orbit. This is an example of the sounds produced by the earth and picked up by the satellite. Interestingly I noticed people commenting on how there is no sound in space but the creator of the video points out it is not recorded through microphones on the satellite, but radio waves given off by the earth which were then converted into audio.

None Repetitive Design

Due to the limitations of memory in consoles, only a small amount of audio can be played at one time in a game. Sound can be taken from a variety of places within the games console, ranging from the CD/Blu-Ray, RAM and hard drive. To create none repetitive sound design, the audio integrator needs to carefully plan where each sound will be placed, and to decide whether the sound will need to be loaded or streamed instantly. An example of a sound that needs to be available instantly, would be character voices. These are sounds that usually occur often during both online and offline gameplay and would be required to sound immediately.

Console Sound Data Limitations

Playstation 2 (Released in 2000) limited to - 2MB of RAM

Xbox 360 (Released in 2005) limited to - 512 of RAM

Here you can see how the these two consoles have upgraded over time but even with the modern Xbox 360 there is still the issue of delegating space for visuals and sound. Usually the visuals in the game take center stage as most people seem to be more impressed with sharp pictures and cutting edge graphics, but game developers are now starting to realise that sounds can enhance the gamers experience just as much as the visuals.

Alexander Brandon explained the basic idea of 'File Management' in his book 'Audio for Games':

• Each sound file is like an audio CD. You typically store CDs somewhere different from where you play them. Sound files are stored with the rest of the game's data - usually on a hard drive, a CD, or a DVD.
• For the sound files to play, they must be moved out of storage to a location that is able to play them - the equivalent of the audio device on which you play your CDs.
• The fastest way to play sound files is usually to access them from memory: Random access memory can have sounds placed in it and removed; read-only memory cannot be changed once things are placed in it. The entire file is copied to memory from the storage area, then activated.
• A slower way to play files is streaming. Streaming takes data from storage and copies small chunks of a file into RAM one chunk at a time. When the game code triggers a chunk of data to play, that data is removed from RAM and the next chunk is lined up behind it to play immediately afterward. Understandably, this process is slower. Imagine if the first 30 seconds of a song were on one CD and you had to swap it out for a second disc when you wanted to hear the next 30 seconds. The process of playing a streamed file isn't this cumbersome, but it does take longer to initially load the file for playback.

How to cheat the system

The Playstation 2 has 2MB of RAM. What this means is that no more than 2MB of RAM can be played back at the same time.

One way of getting around the problem of small memory during the era of the Playstation 2 was for the composer and sound designers to save the files in sound banks. This technique allowed only sounds that were needed for what is currently happening in the game to load in RAM and the sounds that are not needed till later are kept in storage.

"Using smaller banks gives greater control because it is a more efficient use of RAM, and lets you prioritize groups of sounds at different points in the game according to the importance of playback."

Sony created a proprietary program for developers called VagEdit, which converts WAV files into VAG files. Using VagEdit, the sound data could be compressed to one-quarter of its original size, this allowed for less memory to be used and to conquer the dreaded 2MB limitation for memory space. This was heavily used on the Playstation 2 console.

How do you avoid repetition?

The repetition of sound in games is something that can grow old very quickly. If a gamer is racking up hours and hours of game time they will start to become aware of repetition in sounds.. resulting in breaks in emersion. For example, if different weapons in the game had the same sound, it immediately becomes unrealistic, as we all know different materials, shapes and sizes will produce a different sound.

Real-Time sound generation can be created through a variety of new and exciting techniques. One of these being the granulation synthesis of sound in video games, explained by Leonard J. Paul, 

"Granulation of sound for games is becoming a more viable tool for sound artists as the processing power of game consoles continue to improve. Granulation is a relatively recent method of sound generation which allows for sampled sound to be modified in real-time to allow pitch to change independently of tempo among other audio effects." GRANULATION OF SOUND IN VIDEO GAMES

LEONARD J. PAUL1

Granular synthesis enables sampled sounds to be cut into very small grains and then played back in endless combinations. It can be used to change the playback speed or pitch independently of another in real-time. Leonard J. Paul suggests the easiest use of granular is to augment existing non-specific backgrounds such as room tones to extend their length without noticeable loop points.

Procedural Audio

"This is also an example of procedural audio as Spore is processing all the incoming data in real time (especially in the creator mode) and making decisions about the sound the creature will create."

http://www.procedural-audio.com/

http://cedric.cnam.fr/fichiers/RC1568.pdf

http://fora.tv/2006/06/26/Will_Wright_and_Brian_Eno

http://fora.tv/2006/06/26/Will_Wright_and_Brian_Eno#chapter_04