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Thursday, March 10, 2005
I signed on as Sound Designer for this Historical RTS currently in production at WildFireGames called 0 A.D. ("zero ay-dee") in March of 2005.
This freeware project is made up of a dedicated staff of volunteer individuals who have been working on the project for sometime, and involves every aspect of game development.
The scope of the project is massive in comparison to the smaller titles I have worked on and completed, so it has opened my eyes to some new ways of looking at the process of Asset Management and Audio Implementation.
It is my hope that through my process there is something to be learned if you are just starting down the path of interactive game audio, and that through the painful process of cataloging my experiences and discovery you too can make an attempt at sorting out the black-art of implementation and push the audio boundaries into the future.
When I first joined the project there was a huge pile of well defined information to sort through with regards to the gameplay and the work that had gone on already.
The previous sound designer had done a good job pulling together the preliminary Sound Doc outlining the different sounds that were expected to be needed based on (what was then) current concepts of the features expected to be included. I like to refer to this document as the 'Fuzzy Sound DesignDoc', in that it is imbued with pure emotion and conveys the basic arc of what is expected in plain English.
But that is as far as it had gone.
There was no strategy in place as to how to manage the Audio Assets, Naming Standards, or Audio Implementation.
The preliminary audio programmer on the team had made great strides in implementing the OpenAL framework, as well as some low level sound code, and was off and running with the basics for what it will take to get the audio off the ground. But there had been very little discussion on the needs of the Audio department, but this was due more to the lack of a proper sound team than anything else.
The journey begins!
I'll try to outline some of the thinking's that I have gone through in the process of wrapping my arms around the scope of the audio side of this massive project.
As this is a work in progress, I encourage anyone with ideas to pipe in and join in the rich learning experience that this has been. and will continue to be.
Hopefully this will shed some light on the deeper thinking that goes on with regards to audio pre-production.
(as well as revealing some of the stumbling blocks along the way in my learning process)
Stay Tuned True Believers!
LCL
This freeware project is made up of a dedicated staff of volunteer individuals who have been working on the project for sometime, and involves every aspect of game development.
The scope of the project is massive in comparison to the smaller titles I have worked on and completed, so it has opened my eyes to some new ways of looking at the process of Asset Management and Audio Implementation.
It is my hope that through my process there is something to be learned if you are just starting down the path of interactive game audio, and that through the painful process of cataloging my experiences and discovery you too can make an attempt at sorting out the black-art of implementation and push the audio boundaries into the future.
When I first joined the project there was a huge pile of well defined information to sort through with regards to the gameplay and the work that had gone on already.
The previous sound designer had done a good job pulling together the preliminary Sound Doc outlining the different sounds that were expected to be needed based on (what was then) current concepts of the features expected to be included. I like to refer to this document as the 'Fuzzy Sound DesignDoc', in that it is imbued with pure emotion and conveys the basic arc of what is expected in plain English.
But that is as far as it had gone.
There was no strategy in place as to how to manage the Audio Assets, Naming Standards, or Audio Implementation.
The preliminary audio programmer on the team had made great strides in implementing the OpenAL framework, as well as some low level sound code, and was off and running with the basics for what it will take to get the audio off the ground. But there had been very little discussion on the needs of the Audio department, but this was due more to the lack of a proper sound team than anything else.
The journey begins!
I'll try to outline some of the thinking's that I have gone through in the process of wrapping my arms around the scope of the audio side of this massive project.
As this is a work in progress, I encourage anyone with ideas to pipe in and join in the rich learning experience that this has been. and will continue to be.
Hopefully this will shed some light on the deeper thinking that goes on with regards to audio pre-production.
(as well as revealing some of the stumbling blocks along the way in my learning process)
Stay Tuned True Believers!
LCL
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