Liam Thompson's blog

More Sound Stuff

                                                 Sound design & production

Audio limitations of game platforms
As game platforms over the years have evolved, it has allowed games to be bigger and better every way. Sound is one of the things that has advanced over the years, starting off as simple beeps to 8-bit music to having actually soundtracks in games, as well as better, more polished sound effects. There were a number of limitations that stopped the older generation of consoles from having the same sound quality as modern ones. The most obvious limitation was the memory of the console and the medium the game was on. Modern games are sold on DVD or Blu-ray, both of which can hold a lot of data. Single layer DVD’s have 4.7 gigabytes, and a dual layer has 8.5GB. Single layer Blu-ray disks have 25GB, dual layers have 50GB. These large storage devices allow developers to use high quality sound files, which are large in size themselves. Older generation consoles didn’t have access to these technologies. The floppy disk, which was used by some consoles like the Amiga, had a size of 1.44MB. Today you couldn’t even fit 1 MP3 song on that, showing how small it is nowadays. This meant any developer had to keep every file as small as possible, which is why either just beeps or 8-bit music, which is just a series of beeps, was used, as it is a small file. Before DVD’s were used most companies used cartridges to distribute games on, as they were bigger than floppy disks. This allowed bigger files and more information to be put into a game, which meant more memory could be used on the sound. Consoles also have a bigger built in memory and processors nowadays, allowing developers to put bigger sound files on, as they know the console has the power to play all the sounds, whereas older consoles had a small memory and small processors, so smaller files had to be used. A final limitation is sound cards, hardware which controls sound input and output. These have advanced from older generation consoles, and are now much more powerful, which allows more sounds to be used, and also higher quality ones.       

File formats
Sound files can be in many formats, but not all are used in the games industry. The most common sound files are MP3 and WMA, both of which are used all the time for music as many devices can use them. But there are many other, a few examples are: AAC, MIDI, AU, AIFF, SND, WAV and A2W. All are have differences from the others, some small while others have many differences, but they are all types of sound files.   

Audio environment: Audio environments are used to help create atmospheres by making any sounds feel like they are coming from different directions. This is done using surround or 3D sound, with a number of speakers placed around a room. When sounds are played through the speakers they are played through different speakers, giving the effect that it’s all around instead of just coming out of the TV. This give the illusion that the sound is coming from that side, so watching Rambo running through a minefield as they all went off around him would sound like you are in the middle, with lots of different explosions coming out of different speakers. And who wouldn’t want to do that? Both surround and 3D sound are advancements of stereo sound, which is just 2 speakers. With this new sound technology, games and films will become even more immersive, you will feel like you are on the battlefield, in the haunted mansion, or driving the Aston Martin at 100mph being chased by gun wielding goons.     

Audio sampling: Sample rate (measured in hertz) is the number of samples of a sound that are taken per second to represent it digitally. The more samples that are taken per second, the more accurate the digital sound is. The current sample rate for CD quality audio is 44,100 samples per second. Bit depth (measured in bits) is the number of bits recorded in each sample. Bit depth corresponds to the resolution of each sample in a set of digital audio data.

Sound Stuff

                                                                Sound in Games

Psychology of sound in games: The psychology of sounds in games is used in order to make the player/players feel more involved and attached to the game by using sounds to trigger emotive responses from the players. These responses are different depending on the genre of the game and the different techniques used in each one. For example horror games aim to create and build up suspense and an increasing fear factor in the game, along with a tense atmosphere that keeps the player gripped. They use sounds that tend to be very slow and eerie and low in pitch along with sound effects in relation to the environment that are aimed to make people feel something creepy is going on, like creaky floorboards and doors, and other noises. All these are merged together to create the atmosphere, which will then change when something happens, like something could appear in front of the player, accompanied by a loud noise, to make the player jumpy. Sound psychology is also used in films and TV, not just games, but is used to create the same effects and draw out the same emotions from the viewers. Sound is an important part of any good game or film, a horror film isn’t as scary when there’s no sound, and an action packed 1^st person shooter, doesn’t feel as thrilling to play if you turn all the sounds off. 

 

Source of sounds in games: Sounds in games are put in using 2 different methods. The company either buys the sounds from sound libraries, or will use Foley artists to create the sounds. Foley artists recreate sounds using lots of different objects, like barrels or crisp packets. They aim to mimic real sounds, so real that anyone who watches thinks it’s the real thing. Foley artists are used in most areas of the industry; games, films and TV all use them. They don’t use them just because the can though, there are good reasons. For films and TV, recording everything at once wouldn’t work, if the main character goes to a bar, gets out to talk to a guy then drives off, his voice will be drowned out by background noises such as other vehicles, people and even animals. This means that the voices are recorded in a studio afterwards, but if they put the voices straight into the film, there would be no background noises, which wouldn’t sound right. So the Foley artist would be called in to recreate those background noises, like the animals and footsteps, but not any mechanical noises, that’s what the sound effects editor does. Another reason Foley artists are used is make props, like swords, sound realistic. This is because props aren’t real, what looks like a proper sword in the finished film will have actually been a plastic prop. The Foley artist then makes sounds to sound like what a real sword would make during the actions it does, so when 2 swords collide the sound you hear has been made by a Foley artist.       

Game music: Games have lots of music in them nowadays. Music in games is one of 2 things, either its original music made by a company for the game, or as is more common now, it’s licensed music that has been done by a band that is used in the game. Original music was used a lot in older games, as companies had less money to use. But as the industry grew, big companies have enough money to use licensed tracks from real bands, and now games use them a lot, from adverts for the game to in game radio stations packed full of them, in games like Grand theft auto, and even games that are based around the tracks like Guitar hero. Original music still exits though, game companies still make them as they can be good if the game sells well, as the song can be linked to the game, like the music from Mario, which a lot of people would recognise. Whereas if a game used a licensed track it’s not linked as well, as that track could be used for a number of different things.