Saturday, June 8, 2013

Surveying Literature: Audio for Games (Alexander Brandon)

Over my recent trip up north I finished reading Alexander Brandon's Audio for Games: Planning, Process, and Production.  I have to say that out of all the things I've read, this book was one of my favorites.  For one, it's written by an industry professional who can give insight that only someone who's lived and worked in the field can.  For another, the writing is in a clear, easy to read style, and the book has a great flow overall.

I was struck by how much space/attention the book gives to organization and workflow.  Of course, this process development is useful knowledge, but not what I'd think would be such a large focus of a book on audio.  From that I deduce that the game audio process needs better organization.  Really, no matter what your industry, if you're in management at all, this book would be a worthwhile read for how to work as an efficient and organized team.  I read this book at exactly the right time considering that I've been playing around with The Game Audio Tutorial and integrating audio, which is a process this book explains methodology for, but gives no practical exercises.  This book and GAT would pair well together in an audio integration class.

Any portion of this book is worth a read if you're interested in game audio, but I easily had three favorite chapters in the book:  The fourth chapter, "Design" presents a really interesting historic discussion of the use of audio in games.  I'm sure I've read most of that information elsewhere, but at this point, the repetition is making everything click and Alexander's writing style is really easy to follow.  Since I'm interested mainly in the creation of game audio and those who create it, chapter seven, "Ideal Production," resonated with me.  Although certainly dated now that it's eight years old, this chapter is an important historical documentation of what has happened, methods, prices, licensing practices, etc.  (Actually, early in the book, Alexander says that if you're reading the book in 2015, don't discount all the info, just up the technological requirements!)  Finally, I loved the last chapter "Looking Ahead" where interviews with Guy Whitmore, Tommy Tallarico, and George Sanger present some contrasting views toward the future of game audio.

While I'm also hoping to better understand how game audio functions in smaller productions as well, this book gives insight into how game audio is produced in the larger game companies.

Other short reactions through the reading:

As someone who's played a lot of RPGs, I love that the book states that RPG audio is pretty much as complex as it gets and if you can do that, you can do any of the other styles/genres of games.

I love the emphasis again on creating prototypes and sharing them with the development team.  Almost all game audio creators write or talk about the importance of that task.  Certainly, it's the absolute clearest way to communicate about game audio to non-audio folks.

In the Workflow section of the book, Alexander describes the follow Operational tasks:
-Lead time (scheduling, budgeting, staff meetings, documentation, programming/design meetings)
-Purchasing: software/hardware
-R&D: reference soundtracks, field recordings, Foley work, experimenting with sound and instrumentation, and most importantly: playing games that relate to yours!
-Prototyping:  Everyone says this is important and much better than text descriptions of audio!

I hadn't considered that games have Quality Assurance staff to play-test games (here focusing on game audio), but the book lists tips for the best ways to get the most out of game testers for game audio.  Bug databases, for instance.  

Who knew that game audio designers used metric tools to gather information about how many times music/sound occurs in a given area?  What are these tools?- the book doesn't go into detail.  Wonder if these can be applied to retrospective gaming studies as well as games in development?  It'd save me a lot of post-its and ink pens....

Ever wonder why turning on your console/starting a game is so loud?  "A lot of developers use their highest volume in the game as the same volume played when the turn on the console and the console logo is played... From there, you need to figure out how voice, sound effects, and music will all interact."

Hierarchy of game sounds: Voice (loudest), sound effects (next loudest), music (softest)-- exception might be a musical stinger.

"What makes an audio asset final?  When it's produced?  When it's integrated?  When it's integrated and mixed?  When the leads sign off on it?  Yes to all."

As usual, here's a list of games that are mentioned in the book:

Pong
NBA Live
Mortal Kombat
Madden
Doom 3
Halo
Tiger Woods 2004
Links
Wipeout XL-- prime example of music licensing
Warren Spctor: Ultima 6, Ultima 7: Serpent Isle, System Shock, Ultima Underworld, Deux Ex
No One Lives Forever and No One Lives Forever 2
Deus Ex: Invisible War-- one of the first games to fully feature a physics sound system
Parappa the Rapper and Rez-- music influenced the game design
Knights of the Old Republic-- LucasArts/iMUSE
Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge-- first title to use iMUSE
The Dig-- iMUSE with streamed stereo audio files-- incredible audio/soundtrack
Castle Wolfenstein
Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss-- first FP perspective to use an interactive soundtrack
Fade to Black-- adaptive soundtrack (not great integration)
Thief-- ambient sounds make an overwhelming impact
Dungeon Master-- occasional ambient sounds from an early title (1989)
Total Annihilation-- 1997, live orchestra work (Jeremy Soule)
Secret of Evermore-- Jeremy Soule's first sountrack
Russian Squares-- subtle changes to music in a puzzle game
Thief: Deadly Shadows-- audio engine was Ion Storm
Halo: Combat Evolved-- Marty O'Donnell
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City--  players listen to the radio, Madonna/Michael Jackson, etc
Frequency, Amplitude: use licensed pop songs where your goal is to mix and remix the songs
Star Wars and MLB Slugfest: Loaded-- use non-top 40 licensed music
The Legend of Kage-- upbeat pop soundtracks with too loud sound effects for the Ninja Stars
Earthworm Jim and Cool Spot: examples of Tommy Tallarico's composing work
7th Guest and Wing Commander-- examples of George Sanger's cinematic sounding work

As a teacher of technology, I understand that technologies change through time.  Many various ones exist that do similar work and the ones we come to use are the ones we like the most.  Any list is thus incomplete and dated.  However, one thing I was wondering when I started this project is what game technologies audio folks working in the industry use.  Finally, here's a book that really lists many technologies and what they're good for in game audio.  Thus, complied from the book, here's a list of all the software that's mentioned, in some cases with notes about what one might use it for:

mSoft-- sound effects
Hollywood edge (FileMaker)-- sound effects
Pro Tools, Cubase SX, Nuendo-- multitrack SFX (or music) production
Renderware Studio-- audio engine for real time mixing, simple GUI, map editor
Unreal Engine-- map editor for integrating sound
PerlScript-- running batch script
DirectMusic
Sound Forge
Microsoft Project/ Visio-- for making a Gantt chart
Absynth/Reaktor-- among top synthesizer programs on the market
Bugzillla, BugCollector, TestTrack Pro-- bug databases
DirectSound, DirectMusic-- first freely available software to create adaptive soundtracks
Miles Sound System-- middleware
Direct X
GameCODA-- an engine sufficient for simple titles and most more complex projects
Creative EAX-- creates decent reverb for free
SoundMax-- middleware to synthesize sounds in real time
Galaxy Sound System (part of Unreal)-- an example of a custom made tool
Xact-- Xbox Audio Content Tool
Scream-- Scriptable Engine for Audio Manipulation (Sony)
Alienbrain-- file management system
iMUSE-- Interactive Music Streaming Engine
Gigastudio
Visual SourceSafe-- file management for Deus Ex: Invisible War
Logic
Xbox ADPCM (adaptive differential pulse code modulation)-- file type used by Xbox
PlayStation 2 VAG-- file type used by PlayStation

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