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The State of Game Audio
The extent to which a game's sounds and music can affect a player's enjoyment is often overshadowed by other characteristics, such as graphics or gameplay. That said, I'm sure most players have had an experience where the audio really contributed to making the game great, whether it was an epic soundtrack, excellent narration, or just intuitive sound effects. Rock, Paper, Shotgun is running a feature discussing the state of game audio in today's market, discussing how far it has come, and where it's going.
"Games present some unusual problems, like the mix having to adjust itself to suit a situation created by the player, rather than the static vision of a single director. Game designers have to have a flexible attitude towards factors such as the amount of time spent listening to the same piece of music and the potential for sonic overload if too many game sounds are played simultaneously. ... CryTek's Florian Füsslin explained that Crysis' lavish soundscape was defined primarily by what information the player needs to hear. 'We often went for the concept "less is more" or let's better say "important things first." We used a pretty solid priority system which cuts quiet or unimportant sounds in an audio busy situation like combat. Together with the right mix we were able to provide a dense soundscape in all situations players might run into.'"
Where the battle music would follow you into towns and other safe areas for sometimes several minutes before abating. Or if you were still being chased after using fast travel, it would continue until you had saved and exited or cued a cinematic with its own music or entered a dungeon that would cause certain music to play.
That was probably one of the big turn-offs, I enjoyed the world, but even if it was just a crab that attacked me I felt like I should be participating in an epic battle. It was like the game was mocking itself.
Has an excellent sounds track, plus that put it online so you can download it for free. I highly recommend it.
Must music gets turned off after a while. It tends to get repetitive.
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Hey, great sound makes a great game - like almost anything nobuo uematsu has added music to..
As the article points out, Crysis had some really great sound. However, badly deployed sound can be an absolute killer.
Embarrassing confession time: I just replayed Doom 3, the other week. Don't ask me why, I just had these strange urges to.
On replaying it, it struck me that while the graphics are still excellent and the atmosphere is good in many ways, the sound actually acts as a negative. Why? Because sound is too definitive a cue that there are enemies nearby. If you hear a demonic snuffling, it means you are about to be ambushed. By listening to the kind of snuffling, you can tell what's about to jump out. This defuses a lot of the tension. I remember that the excellent Aliens-TC WAD for the original Doom had a fantastic alternative for this. The designers locked enemies inside small, self-contained boxes "within" the walls of the levels. The player could never encounter these, without the use of IDSPISPOPD, but he could sure as hell hear them. Removing the absolute link between monster sounds and monsters actually appearing added a huge amount of tension to the game.
NPR did a nice story on video game music earlier this year.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89565567
My fave part was when one commentator stated that if Beethoven was alive today, he'll be videogame music composer.
Lucas Arts had a music system for the X-Wing and Tie Fighter games that reacted to events happening around you. The music change seamlessly from flying around with no enemies, to flying around with enemies nearby, to being in the thick of battle. The arrival of new ships was accompanied by a little fanfare, with the exact phrase depending on whether the new units were Imperial or Rebel. Besides being bloody cool, it was useful for knowing when you had new enemies to deal with, without needing to constantly watch for notification text.
It was also used for a number of other Lucas Arts games in the '90s, but it was an integral part of what made X-Wing and TIE Fighter great games.
there are a few of these out there for the visually impared, including FPS type games (for surround systems).
got really interested and started working on an audio game engine - I wanted to create a game system so compelling that even sighted people (like me) would want to play it with the lights off.
Gave up in the end, due to a lack of decent 5.1/7.1 reverb enabled mixing engines (havent coded c/c++ for years). thing is what you need is multiple room reverb for that level of immersion. think of yourself being in a small room with a doorway to a hangar. the long reverb from the hangar needs to pan to a 3d point where the door is, then have some local room reflection added.
the only thing i found that could support that was EAX 3 or 4 or something, only supported by creative labs cards. thats too high a barrier,so I gave up.
I'm convinced a good audio only game would be a win for everybody, it could be so creepy.
there is devoted to graphics acceleration, matters might improve.
It's possible to synthesize sound by creating a virtual model of an object. This has advantages like not needing to create hundreds of samples to avoid repetition, and being able to excite the model depending on how it is struck.
Current games mostly change the pitch if the same three gunfire samples up and down a bit. The audio is filtered and processed for direction and environmental reverb to some degree, but it still sounds mechanical and unconnected with the players actions.
Of course, the models would be drastically simplified to allow even a fast DSP a chance of doing it all in real time.
Modeling the sound of water or gas is out of the question. What might be possible are things like the sound of objects striking metal sheets, shell cases, explosions by walls or in confined spaces, shrapnel, tire noise at changing speed, breaking glass etc.
While I don't play w/ Game Music, I am partial to the in game sounds, and the way that full EAX brings about a feeling of how the rocket just hit a wall behind you and to the right, while footsteps are coming from the left telling me that someone is baiting, and hoping to catch me from behind.
I got accustomed to it (I wrap myself in 5.1)
W/o sound, I felt like my performance wasn't there. In TF2, it's just not the same 8'(
Unfortunately no one plays UT3 anymore
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