iBand

After being mesmerized by electroplankton earlier i wanted to see more and found this little gem, an interactive audio group. Shame they lie about there name, using a DS that's not very Mac.

Guitar Hero World Tour is the Nuts!!!!

So we all know the Guitar Hero (GH) franchise and either you love it or you haven't played it yet. The new GH coming out this month will not only include a full band mode using drums, guitar, bass and mic but more impressive it will have the feature to record your own tracks live in using the GH music studio and then also edit them in GH Mix. This is a basic sample that I made in about ten minuets. (sorry about the crappy camera it was the only way to do it)

They have integrated a version of Line 6 POD into the game give the user a multiple of guitar effects to choice from, as well as this there are several drums, bass and lead sounds to select. Sadly you cannot record your own vocals into this as this would vastly increase the file size and i don't know about you but I'm not the greatest singer. Another reason to keep the file size down is that players will be able to upload there own tracks to GH Tunes which is like iTunes for GH, where players can download and rate each others songs giving you like a top 10 hit list.

This is a massive step for interactive audio in games not only can you write your own music but you can play it in live.

This is something I found on youtube that was well funny.




Here is the professionals at work demonstrating there what they have made.

PES 2009

Just got the Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 demo off Xbox Live and was looking forward to seeing what the game had to offer compared to there last two games on the next gen market. Well I got into a game, Manchester United vs Liverpool and boom the sound was disappointing, being a demo it did not have any commentary which I can understand (maybe to keep the file size down) but this made everything else standout so much more. The crowd chant was constantly being repeated and became annoying within twenty seconds of the half, the kick of the ball seemed to have the same pitch and volume no matter how hard or soft you hit it and also if the ball hit against the post or crossbar of the goal it would make an over enthusiastic twang which was very unrealistic. I will hopefully be showing a video clip of this soon I just need to find a cheap way of getting my console hocked to my pc ,if not it may just have to be a sound clip.

Types of Game Audio and its Roles

There are several types of audio within games, these include.

Dynamic Audio

Sound that reacts to changes in the gameplay and/or in response to a user.

If the sound occurs in the game environment reacting to the gameplay rather than responding to the user it is know as adaptive audio. Examples of this are, when playing Grand Theft Auto 4 during a multiplayer deathmatch, the music changes to a fast paced beat when there is thirty seconds left in the game to let the player know there time is running out.

When a player presses a button to jump, run, fire a gun for instant the sound made from this action is know as interactive audio. It is a sound that reacts to gameplay responding to the player.


Diegetic Sounds

Sounds that occur in the character's space

"In non-dynamic diegetic audio, the sound event occurs in the character’s space, but with which the character has no direct participation". [Karen Collins. (2008). Glossary of Game Audio. Available: http://www.gamessound.com/learning.htm. Last accessed 3 October 2008.]
These sound occur in cut-scenes but also appear during gameplay. In Half Life 2 when Gordon Freeman meets Eli Vance for the first time Eli interacts with his computer, the sound from the computer is non-dynamic diegetic audio.


"Adaptive diegetic audio. In Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, at dawn we hear a rooster crow, and in the “day” sequences of Hyrule Field, we hear pleasant bird sounds. When the game’s timer changes to night-time, we hear a wolf howl, crickets chirp, and various crows cawing. These sounds are diegetic and adaptive." [Karen Collins. (2008). Glossary of Game Audio. Available: http://www.gamessound.com/learning.htm. Last accessed 3 October 2008.]

When the player makes and action like walking, shooting, kicking of a ball for instance the sound made from these is know as Interactive diegetic. The sound is from an interaction of the player in the characters space.

Non-diegetic Sounds

These sounds are triggered in reaction to gameplay there are both Adaptive and Interactive non-diegetic sounds. They are sounds or music that occur outside the diegesis. These are in the same way triggered like there diegetic counterparts.

With Adaptive non-diegetic the sound is unaffected by the characters direct moves

With Interactive non-diegetic the sound reacts to the player directly. An example of such is if the player would get near to an enemy the music would change after passing the trigger point, if the player then moves away leaving the trigger zone the music would return to normal.

Non-dynamic linear sounds are mostly found during cut-scenes of games, the player has no control over these sounds making them non-dynamic.

From the short description of these different types of audio in game it is clear to see there is a lot going on that many people take for granted when playing games. I think that if we didn't have these sound in game they would feel shallow and unentertaining, there are always new ways of get the most out of sound in games one of the newest is Kinetic gestural interaction which is used in such games such as Guitar Hero where the player physically interact with an object (the guitar controller) to trigger the sounds.

Very exciting stuff.

A New Start Again

So this is it a start to a new year, time to go to the crunch and I don't mean just a little day trip. Should be fun. I'll be updating this blog with news about computer game audio and other interesting things that I am interested in that I think other people should be as well. So yeah I don't think anyone will read this apart from us when we have to in our lessons. Unlucky for us.