I now have up to date sound design and dialogue reels for your listening and viewing pleasure. Mostly focused on Murderous Pursuits, but a few other things in there too. I’ll be doing a few more detail blogs on some of the work and systems in the games I’ve worked on so do check back!
This was originally posted in two parts on the Blazing Griffin Website: Pt. 1 | Pt. 2
It is also available on Audiokinetic’s Wwise Blog in English: Pt. 1 | Pt. 2 and Japanese: Pt. 1 | Pt. 2
We released Murderous Pursuits a few months ago, and I wanted to share a bit of info on what I was working on. This blog post will look at the audio solution for one of the core features, the “Vignette” system. This will cover:
– What the original concept was and audio requirements were
– How we handled the dialogue recording and editing
– The systems design and implementation using Wwise and Unity.
If you haven’t played or seen it yet, Murderous Pursuits is a kill-or-be-killed Victorian stealth-em-up for 1-8 players in which you must hunt and kill your quarry before your hunters do the same to you, all while avoiding witnesses. You can buy it on Steam right now!
I may have left this as the last place to get updated. Whoops.
Anyway, earlier in the month I left Team Junkfish to join those fiery catbirds Blazing Griffin as an Audio Designer. Woo yay! They’re working on [REDACTED] and I’m looking forward to getting stuck in about it.
It’s a big shift, leaving a group of folk I’ve been working with for over five years on a number of different projects, but sometimes opportunities arise and situations change and you have to adjust course.
So do keep an eye out on what they’re up to, and I’ll keep you up to date on the BG stuff.
…and the 500 words thing.
…and generally updating the site.
Ahoy!
One afternoon a few months ago I was kinda bored and had an hour or two going spare, so I decided to see what type of sounds I could get out of my Volca Keys. After some fiddling I managed to knock out a few… beeps and boops and other lo-fi assorted noises! In the time honoured tradition of giving back, I’ve decided hand them out for free, so you can grab them here!
You’ll find some laser-esque sounds, some drones, some short pulses that could work for UI or percussive sounds, a fair mixture of stuff. I recorded different patches and effects at each octave interval (1′ – 32′) and across a few different oscillator setups (Unison, Octaves, Fifths and Unison Ring Mod) for a few different flavours too. Hopefully you’ll find something handy in there!
Some caveats:
So there you go! Please share them about and let me know if you find a use for them. Best way is on Twitter: @speedyjx
Cheers!
In July I had the pleasure of chairing a game audio panel at the IGDA Scotland meet up. The panel featured Will Morton of Solid Audioworks and Matthew Smith of Square Peg Games, both formerly of Rockstar North, and Orfeas Boteas of Krotos, makers of Dehumanizer.
We covered a few different topics, such as how they got into game audio, advice for fledgling sound designers and composers applying for positions, and how the transition from AAA games to indie and freelance has been. Or in Orfeas’ case, how scaling up from a Masters project to renowed sound software production company has went!
Obviously the proof is in the pudding, and we discussed a lot more in a fair amout of detail, so do give it a whirl!
So I’m happy to say that I’m helping out with Edinburgh Game Symposium’s AWEdio Jam! It’s being organised by Luci Holland of EGS with some help from Sam Hughes of The Sound Architect and myself along with IGDA Scotland :). We’ve got a few other things in the pipeline that we’ve yet to announce, so do keep an eye out! The current schedule is on the EGS website here.
You can also join the Facebook event here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1198225880221374/
Here’s the blurb:
Are you a composer? Are you a sound designer? A voice actor? An instrumentalist? Are you working in or are you interested in working in game or film audio in some way? Or are you a games designer looking to collaborate with musicians/soundies?! Ever wondered if you could do a game jam with audio??!
Then come and get creative at our AWEdio JAM on the 21st, 22nd and 23rd October in Edinburgh – a weekend hands-on hub for creatives interested in sound, music, media, and design!
Sign up either as teams or individuals, and collaborate to make amazing sonic artworks over the weekend (inspired by a secret theme to be announced on the first day!), share and learn new skills, network, and hear from professionals in the game and sound world. We’re thrilled to be joined by Will Morton of Solid Audioworks on the Friday night, and hope to announce another speaker soon!
What’s more – early bird prices are available until Fri 30th September. We’re looking forward to an amazing creative weekend!
More info on how to book on our website – and any questions, please just give us a shout.
http://www.edingame.org/awedio-jam/
-INFO-
Fri 21st, Sat 22nd, Sun 23rd October | Roxy Assembly, Edinburgh
With a talk from Will Morton of Solid Audioworks
Take part in a weekend hands-on creative jam for composers, musicians, sound designers, voice actors, and other audio professionals!
-TICKETS-
EARLY BIRD (available until Fri Sept 30th): £20 per person
Full price: £30 per person
Friday only (for social and talk – limited tickets!): £5 per person
PURCHASE TICKETS HERE (please make sure to also read the ‘Registration Info’ section on our website): http://awedio-jam-tickets.eventbrite.co.uk/
Early bird pricing available till Friday 30th September!
Registration closes midnight, 20th October.
Ahoy!
So I want to do some follow ups on the Room To Play exhibit I had a hand in and briefly go over some of the concepts and sound design for what we eventually came up with. As a sneak peak, here’s a little loop with a few of the sounds that I’ll be discussing in the next few posts:
For more info on Room to Play and some looks into what we go up to in the workshops check out this blog post. This post is obviously from my own perspective, but a lot of other people’s work went into creating not only this exhibit but the others that went on display, so do check out who else was involved :).
But veering back on topic: the main concept for Room to Play was combining aspects of music and sound with “play” and “games”. As a sound designer in digital games you would think that a lot of the processes would be similar and easily carried over, but with Room to Play on the whole I wanted to look at the tactile side of things, how people interact with objects that generate sound and how they react to the sounds the objects made.
So with that in mind, one of the ideas for an installation was to use trampolines in some fashion.
Ya know, these things (made to look good by people with art skills!):
After a few ideas (including bouncing musicians!) the basic concept the group came up with was what would happen if a sound played when someone jumped. But we took it one step further.
Team Trampoline had an plan. That plan involved Dance Dance Revolution. Well, the dancemats anyway.
Ahoy!
Quick heads up, but I’m working on Thermodynamic Games’ upcoming title “Echoes”, providing sound design, implementation and a bit of consultancy stuff too. Also on the project is Luci Holland, composer and organiser of the Edinburgh Games Symposium and Tinderbox Project :).
I’ve stuck a little post in the Portfolio, but you can also check out the website too!
Ahoy!
Recently I’ve been invited to take part in the Tinderbox Orchestra’s Room to Play programme, a collaborative effort between a mix of musicians, game developers, visual arts and other creative folk working to develop a series of interactive musical installations. It culminates in a showcase at the Hidden Door Festival on the 30th of May in Edinburgh.
You can read more about the project and the people involved here.
Oh, you can also get tickets for it here too.
So far we’ve been looking at a few different ways of interacting and playing with sound, and I wanted to share some videos from one of the nights from a few weeks ago. We were looking at sound generators and electronics, building basic synthesizers and what methods can be used to control and manipulate them. This is something I’ve been interested in for a while but not had the chance to jump into, so as you can imagine I was pretty keen!
Here’s one that involved a joystick to trigger a synth on and off, with a light sensitive capacitor controlling the pitch:
We also wired it through some basic delays and added a lot more light to the mix, which resulted in this:
Joysticks weren’t the only thing we used to trigger the synths, we also had buttons too! These acted in a similar fashion, serving as a basic gate or switch that opens or completes the circuit when pressed:
Switches and light sensitive capacitors weren’t the only things either. In this instance while the two metal parts (the copper tape and the spoon) separated the circuit is in complete. When a person touches both parts the circuit is complete, and a sound is generated. When the surface area touched is increase, the resistance that person provides drops and the pitch increases, giving a degree of playability. Physics is fun!
And those were only the things the group I was in worked on, others used servos and moving parts to generate sounds, or made collaborative synths! So it was a pretty interesting session :).
A later session went a bit deeper into using different types of triggers. This also happened:
So yeah, it’s been pretty interesting and the final results should be really cool. If you’re free on the 30th and in Edinburgh then please drop by!
Cheers!
I haven’t updated this in a while for a number of reasons and holy crap it’s been 9 months since the last one sooooo a quick recap:
August 2015 – Edinburgh Games Symposium: Protoplay Edition
The 3rd annual Edinburgh Games Symposium was hosted as part of the Dare To Be Digital festival. I was on a panel on game audio with Joanna Orland, Ryan Ike and Chipzel discussing a load of audio related things. Then Steph and I gave a talk on Monstrum, with her covering the VR implementation and me covering the audio work. These were film and I’ll chase them up and cover them in more detail later!
The Mantra Collective also did a cover of Bad Happenings from the Monstrum OST and it’s super cool. You can check it out here:
November 2015 – Got elected to the IGDA Scotland board
The IGDA Scotland board elections happened in November and I managed to get elected some how, so yay! Got lots of stuff in the pipeline and we’ve just hosted three play parties for this year’s Global Game Jam with thanks to a number of local partners. We have plans for the rest of the year too, so keep an eye out!
November 2015 – Award nominations!
Monstrum also got shortlisted for a few awards in November. Firstly it was shortlisted for Best Debut Game at the TIGA Awards, then later in the month for Best Game at BAFTA Scotland (shout out to Blazing Griffin who got the win). Not bad!
January 2016 – I got a Neo Geo Pocket
And it’s the coolest wee thing. I mention it as I kinda wanna talk about limitations in games at some point. It also is home to the 1st non-Sega hardware Sonic and it’s amazing remixes of the Mega Drive games’ soundtracks. Case in point:
Also been playing a lot of SNK games on the Sega Saturn as well for that additional crossover bonus.
There was a lot of other things that happened in the past few months too that I’ll unpack at a later date, but will hopefully have something a bit more interesting to talk about soon! Busy busy!
Jaime Cross - Noise Maker General 