Roxi's blog

Sound Plan

Script:

Scene 1:

In reaction to trying to leave the room without the phone, said defiantly:

-          “I can’t leave without checking my texts”

 

Scene 2:

On clicking on the mark on the wall, said formally:

-          “That’s not a pretty site”

In reaction to trying to leave the scene without the umbrella, said nervously:

-          “It looks dangerous, I should find something to protect myself”

 

Scene 3:

In reaction to leave the scene without pendant, said with a worried tone of voice:

-          “I should look around, even if I don’t want to”

On clicking the pendant, said also with a worried tone of voice:

-          “This is mother’s pendant”

 

Scene 4:

As scene starts, said in a mortal combat themed way:

-          “Fight!”

When clicking the zombie, said as if fighting:

       First click, Angry:

-          “Argh!”

Second click, Confidence:

-          “Take This!”

Third click, Panic:

-          “Stay away from me”

When one more click is needed to kill the zombie, said again like mortal combat:

-          “Finish him!”

When zombie dies, relieving:

-          “Finally…”

Said like mortal combat:

-          “Overkill!”

 

 

Scene 1 (Bedroom)– Sound Effects

Phone-

Record my phone vibrating on the desk. Do not record the ring-tone going off as it is a music track and recording it may breach copyright laws.

When the phone is picked up I would like a dial-tone to sound this can be recorded by going on my phone a accessing the sound files and recording it this would be less time wasting      then setting the tone for my phone and waiting for a text or a phone call. Alternative I record the tone that is heard when pressing the dial pad on a home phone.

Eerie Wind-

I must either record the wind at the end of the Morecambe Stone Jetty or I can try to imitate the sound of wind using my breathing. I want the wind to be a slow but very strong so if imitating i must try to control the pace of my breathing.

Speech-

Record my voice acting out the text already written in the game, this text is written as a script above and is a guide of what I have to say for each scene and how it should be said. This is part of planning my sound effects.

Scene 2 (Stair Animation) – Sound Effects

Character walking down the stairs-

This sound effect is for the fully animated scene where the is character walking down the stairs and into the next scene, for this I will need to record the sound of someone walking down the stairs, to do this I will record myself going down the stairs in my home, holding the recording implement close to my feet in order to gain a higher quality recording of my feet in contact with the stairs.

Alternatively I could ask another person to hold the recorder while stood at the bottom of the stairs although this won’t be as higher quality recording but it may be more realistic as the sound should getter louder as I walk to the bottom of the stairs, this could also be more effective to the tension as sound gets louder the tension in the games atmosphere should increase which is probably a vital asset to a horror game that builds by tension.

Eerie Wind-

It should be already recorded. If not refer to Scene 1 for information on the recording process.

Speech-

It should be already recorded. If not refer to Scene 1 for information on the recording process.

Scene 3 (Hallway) – Sound Effects

Grabbing the Umbrella-

This sound effect is for when the player clicks the umbrella and will probably be coded into the EvenListener ‘grabStaff’ in the Action Script this will make the sound effect play once it has been clicked. I want the sound effect to be rustling noise, to record this i will mostly likely go for the most realistic approach that being grabbing an umbrella and rapidly shaking it around hoping for the right sound. If this approach is unsatisfactory I will instead do the same thing with a newspaper and/or magazine to give the desired sound effect.

Eerie Wind-

It should be already recorded. If not refer to Scene 1 for information on the recording process.

Speech-

It should be already recorded. If not refer to Scene 1 for information on the recording process.

 

Scene 3 (Outside-Front) – Sound Effects

Moving tree-

This sound effect is for an animated tree that will attract the player to click it. This being a tree i want the sounds to be the rustling of leaves, to get the sound again i will firstly go for the more realistic approach by going in my garden and rustling the bushes with a recorder near by, if this doesn’t give a good enough result i will improvise by grabbing a couple of full crisp packets and shaking them.

Tree animation-

 In this animation i plan for a cat to fall of the tree to do this i will need a combination of the previous sound and a recording of a cat. I can do this two ways, i can somehow convince my cat to meow (this can be done using cat treats) or alternatively i can imitate the cat’s meow myself although not authentic it may be a big time saver

Eerie Wind-

It should be already recorded. If not refer to Scene 1 for information on the recording process.

Speech-

It should be already recorded. If not refer to Scene 1 for information on the recording process.

Scene 4(Outside-Back) – Sound Effects

Zombie-

This will be the main part of game so all effect should be of a high quality. Firstly i am going to need to having a couple of recordings, the zombie’s voice should represent someone a few seconds from death in this way i believe that the zombie can’t really speak but have a heavy breath and a stuttering scream. To record this i am going to imitate what i think i zombie would sound like, holding the microphone about 10 centimetres away from my mouth i am going to slowly inward scream(this is the process of screaming while inhaling), this will produce an out of breath stutter of someone trying to catch their last breathe.

I will produce many different kinds of inward screaming and will perhaps even combine recordings together. Different sounds will represent different things such as the different levels of damage on the zombie this will indicate to the player that they have hurt the zombie and that they must repeat  what they have done to defeat it. I will most likely code the sound into a EvenListener meaning it will only sound once the zombie has been clicked.

I may use the zombie noise through out the game as a background sound to add to the atmosphere, similar to resident evil nemesis when fighting ‘Nemesis’ in the police station you can hear ‘Nemesis’ roaring and roaming around and when you can’t the tension rises further due to the old suspicious thought ‘It’s too quiet to’

Z(Original)

Z(Edit)

Eerie Wind-

It should be already recorded. If not refer to Scene 1 for information on the recording process.

Speech-

It should be already recorded. If not refer to Scene 1 for information on the recording process.

The Use of Sound in Video Games

Why is there sound in video games:

Sound was put into video games to create another sense to react with or for further immersive gameplay in the game produced for the player, it also adds a great depth of atmosphere into the game which is vital for some genre’s such as horror. As this adds another of the players senses (the other being sight) to focus on the game, as our ability to import sound into games became more capable developers in some cases used the sound to alert or warn the player of weaknesses or clues for example Left 4 Dead (L4D) uses different sounds to alert the player of what kind of enemy is nearby and what to expect, in the game this is vital because some enemies will incapacitate immediately, referring to the special infected The Witch who warns the player by crying and in the sequel she is sometimes even heard singing. Using the player’s ability to react to a sound is what makes this game immersive. Being immersive is one of the key assets of most games as it can lead to the player repeatitively returning to the game to play.

Is sound necessary in video games:

It’s not entirely necessary but playing a game without sound in some cases can take the player out of the game, i realized when I played Jade Cocoon 2 on the PlayStation2 that I played the game longer with the sound than i played it without the sound this is because the game didn’t have as much atmosphere or feeling to the game however all the characters within the game are voiced so I was missing out on a lot of dialogue luckily there are subtitles to read; however after about a hour of gameplay they are really quite annoying especially this terribly voice acted girl named Vanilla seems to completely ruin the atmosphere, so in some cases having a game without sound can be alright but it seems that mainly level-theme music is a must have for setting a immersive atmosphere into the game . But sound was not necessary in video games if we go back about twenty years but if a developer wants to make money in the competitive market of the games industry then sound is definitely a must have asset of a game.

Comparing the sound to the gameplay and the graphics of a game how important is sound:

Constantly within the gaming community there has always been a debate about which is more important in the  game, graphics or gameplay. Is it a game made with the most recent graphical enhancements that sells better or a game that interacts with player intelligently and successfully? But now I have told to add yet another asset of a video game to the debate; sound, like the graphics of a game it interacts with the player by being immersive to player of the game. In my opinion sound isn’t far from being as important as graphics but still its not quite there this is most likely because unlike graphics and gameplay you can play a game without sound. However over all gameplay has always been in my opinion has always been the most important part of a video game, this is  because it is the gameplay that makes it a game instead of a lot of pretty animations.

The psychological effect of sound in video games:

Sound in general not just in video games has always had an effect on the mind, everyone has songs that makes them happy and songs that make us sad, it doesn’t just range to those two emotions either music has the ability to change our emotions depending of the song, this is because of many contributions and is based on the characteristics of the sound, psychoacoustics ( the psychology of sound) has interconnections of hearing which have proved the more natural sounds have the ability to interact with our emotions and of course some of these sounds are put into video games that want to immerse the player into a world of a virtual nature put in with the right harmonics of a orchestra it can make the player feel motivated and appreciative of the game, but games must not rely on this because if the gameplay of a game can’t reach the level motivation in theory if a game is too easy, the players game will go to waste and if the game is too hard the player may get frustrated this was the problem I had playing final fantasy XIII when I found it got too hard I went into a complete rage. It’s frustrating to have a beautiful game constantly show off its beauty when you know you can’t continue to see the rest of the games world. One video game genre using the sound especially to their advantage, this is the horror genre such old time classics such as resident evil and silent hill that didn’t have the technology to produce the scariest graphical infliction on the player used sound to counter-balance this disadvantage. As a kid there was nothing scarier than hearing an occasional zombie scream between the constant eerie wind of the empty racoon city of resident evil. Another example of sound effecting emotion through fear is listening to film soundtracks  such as the sleepy hollows (danny Elfman)and the ring(Hans Zimmer) just sitting in my room listening to the music caused me to suddenly out of nowhere I jumped off my bed out of fear, consciously knowing nothing was in my room. In conclusion all sound has a direct infliction on emotion some a lot more than others, this infliction effects our track of thought which in turn decides our mood.

The source of the sound in video games:

The first generation of video games emerged in the 1970’s as their own hardware, music at that time was nothing but analogue waveforms stored on hardware such as cassettes and records. Components to play those hardware were expensive and were easily broken under repetitive use, this made the idea of putting them inside an arcade not too intelligent however there are occasional exceptions where they were used together.  However there was a more affordable way to give a video game sound, this being through the use of computer chips that changed the electrical impulses from a computer code to a analogue sound wave that are heard from the speaker. This applied to all sound in a video game.

The sound from this era of arcade video games was most of the time monophonic, looped, changed between stages and game menu’s an example of this is Pac Man however the first game to use a continuously looped background soundtrack was Space Invaders which had four bass notes looping although it was interactive with the player as it increased its pace with the progression of the enemy space ships. Most video game music of this time was coded by programmers with little musical knowledge or experience however this changed with the development of video game music in the 1980’s where chips had been developed to produce more tones and channels of sound and by the mid-to-late 1980’s video game music had been developed by people with more musical experience than before, leading on to some of our most well known theme songs that have lasted throughout the years as famous and representative soundtracks.

Video game music (summary):

What is video game music; well it is the background music, the soundtracks, it’s those small beats in games that give the player a sense of atmosphere within the game. This can range from the tune that plays when you win a battle to the introduction soundtrack of the game and as video games developed so did the music developed for them ranging from the Gameboy colour’s simple 8 bit chiptunes to the more recent game’s complicated orchestral pieces, composers developed as well, starting as programmers with little knowledge and experience of music to the big composers dedicated especially to creating game orchestral soundtracks. As a video game is in itself a interactive media and in some cases so is the music within a video game which usually changes to create in order to create an atmosphere, changing on what the player does. It is also common for soundtracks of games, being sold in this way they are also similar to movies but unlike movies video game music has become its own genre and have live concerts dedicated to playing it. In some games such as Elite Beat Agents (EBA) or Guitar Hero that music can be a essential gameplay element and can be impossible to play without it, these game at first successful have now become over commercialized and recently have shut down in the gaming industry. However most games to not have music as such a high essential and in some horror games can be the cause of why the player becomes so afraid.

example of an orchestra

Mario Bros.

Legend of Zelda NES

80’s memorable chiptune to the latest orchestral soundtracks.
First of all I’ll give you a quick explanation and some examples of what I mean by ‘chiptune’. Developed in the early 1980s small groups of musicians picked up a couple of out-dated hardware and created their own style of some audio and visual art. Being a blog based around sound we’re focusing on the audio side of the story. The audio work is known more commonly as Chiptune. Chiptune was massively produced in the 80’s to the mid-early 90’s and were a part some of our most classic gaming systems such as the Nintendo Game Boy and the NES. Here is a couple of our most well known game soundtracks themes from that period of time, Final Fantasy, Super Mario Bros. , The Legend of Zelda… Etc. Now due to limits of the technology in the 80’s the video game systems (game consoles) could only produce three notes which luckily is just enough to make a chord, so developers could make at least a simple tune. However the music developers were still very limited with what they could do, knowing this they based their work on simplicity. This also happened to work in the game industry and the game developers favour as because of the simplicity in the songs they became easier to remember than an entire orchestra, also because the song was memorable so of course was the game it was composed. Those first game Chiptune theme songs are now nostalgic s icons to gamers.
It is rumoured that video game music got worse as time passed but that is simply untrue listening to the recent versions of the old arcade games still give the beautiful nostalgic feeling and in fact improve the song greatly. What I would criticize is that the music is nowhere near as memorable as it used to be, this is most likely because there since then we have more to work with, we have specific software and hardware designed purely for recording, synchronizing, editing such as NI Massive which unlike most editing software which remove noise from the sound file this software creates noise. However it is not only reason recent video game theme song have become less memorable it could also be because of the limitless capabilities we now have, we’re not limited to three notes anymore we can use as many as we like and import it into the game perhaps it is that because the music developers don’t work around simplicity is why it is less memorable. Although not just the fact that we have more to play with a produce with but also these days at least for our most recent games have a much higher budget for developing music then they used to back in the 80’s especially for video games meaning that the producers can really stick their hands into their pockets and hire professional orchestras and composers such as Hans Zimmer and Danny Elfman who recently been composing for games for example Hans Zimmer composed the music for Crysis 2 with which he did a beautiful job.
So in music from the 80’s to the present has developed by far, many of our limits have gone and we are still researching our technology in audio for an example recently people have developed immersive sound which could be a key asset for games in the future. Immersive is also known as 3D sound and using different layers within the audio file the listener can hear where the sound is coming from, its quite manipulative as it can sound like some thing is behind you to a far distance away, this could be very useful for including the player and making them feel within game.

Testing, testing, one, two, three.