Rather than dishing out between £100-£200 on a vocal screen i decided to build one myself. Using some wood that came with my house some packing foam, various length screws and nails and my (as you can see) excellent joinery skills i bodged together this.
It may not be pretty and it may not be as adjustable as some of the off-the-shelf models but it is cheap and it works.
Estimated cost; £0.20 (for some tape and glue)
Photos By Heather Donaldson Car Provided By Charlotte FotheringhamRecently a friend decided she was scrapping her car, i managed to persuade her that letting me record the sound of it being smashed into several pieces would be a good send off for the old girl. I got in contact with the local scrapyard who were happy for us to destroy the car on their premises if they got the remains.
For this excursion i brought a long my old friend and fellow sound designer Matthew Denman who assited on both the recording and the smashing.
I took my usual set up of a Fostex FR2 and a Rode Ntg-3 with the addition of a borrowed Ntg-2 and a bag of various tools and bits of wood.
One thing i hadn't counted on was how hard it is to smash a car window if you don't know what you're doing. It took a while to work out that the weak spot is right where the glass meets the frame.
We recorded everything from various bodywork impacts/scrapes to the breaking of all the windows/lights.
One saftey tip to remember for the future is that when the windshield is cracked any other impacts or movement of it causes tiny glass fragments to fly everywhere so goggles are a must. I would also advise a face mask as well as the fragments are so small it would be easy to breathe them in.
Everything was recorded at 96k/24bit and we came out with some nice results, a particular favorite was the sound of a wheel being thrown through the allready broken/cracked window.
A layered hit made from some of the recordings we made;
Today i spent some time recording various shells and bullet casings impacting a rock for the casing physics impacts found in the game i am currently working on.
Casings and bits right to left ; 12 Guage Shotgun Shell, Big Fat Brass Slide, Really Thin Brass Slide, WW2 German Mauser Replica Casing, WW1 German Mauser Casing (Actually fired in anger and picked up from a feild in Verdun, Belgium), WW1 German Mauser Bullet (agian from Verdun), Bullet from replica casing and a WW1 allied bullet collected from the Somme
The impacts on the rock from the various casings was recorded using a RODE NTG-3 and a sE Electronics 2200a.
As described in a previous post im currently working on an independant game, the game features a jeep and motorcross bike as two playable vehicles. As a bit of a test to see the results i could get i went out and recorded my 13 year old Audi A4. Il be using some more suitable vehicles for the game. After reading some tips on recording cars from Tim Prebble's exelent blog (Shamless Plug--> The Music Of Sound) I decided to use two dynamic microphones, a Shure SM57 and a Shure SM58 Beta. I covered both of these in a condom and then wrapped them in two old tea towels to reduce vibration.
Word of warning! don't use lubricated condoms, (as i did initially) as you end up with slightly lubed microphones. I can't yet see the advantage of having a lubricated microphone, unless you're trying to insert it into someone.....
I placed the SM57 in the engine bay pointing diagonally at the engine, initially i had the cable routed through the passenger side window but this left the mic cable running right past the battery which introduced some interesting interference. So instead i routed the cable through the driver side window and taped it over the dashboard.
The SM58 was put over the exhaust and the cable was routed over the boot and in through the rear passenger window.
I have been working on an as of yet unnamed game project that has recently required some bodd falls/impacts. Step in Norbert. Norbert is several phonebooks an argos catalogue and some rolled up newspapers wrapped in a faux leather jacket. The arms, neck and bottom of the jacket have been taped up as well as the zips. This was done to try to deaden the sound and stop any unwanted paper/zip rattles.
Norbert has so far survived being thrown down the stairs and into a wall with some interesting sound results.
He has yet to be thrown out of a third storey window.... but he will be.
All round sound legend Ben Burt has been talking to the Motion Picture Guild about his role in Star Trek Read Here
Just found something quite amasing ive been looking for something like this for some time... http://soundworkscollection.com/
I really wish i had this 12 months ago..
Heres an interesting little video on the audio in operation flashpoint;
Writing interactive music is a complex operation because the player isn’t forced into hitting beats and bars. There has to be a system in place that makes sure that the music either cross fades in certain positions or the music has been written in such a way that means it can cross fade at any point. The music is able to adapt to the player movements by using two techniques. Horizontal re-sequencing is the method where pre composed segments of music can be re-shuffled according to the player’s position in the environment. Vertical re-orchestration is the technique of changing the mix of separate instruments in an on-going loop as the player moves round the game environment. Games such as Crysis, Far Cry, FarCry2 and Halo 2 use a combination of these techniques.
End war is a new voice activated RTS. Speech recognition is so good it can understand parrots, next test Glaswegians.
Grid is a racing game for the PS3 Xbox360 and PC, the throttle is velocity sensitive and can be "feathered" and "stabbed" producing different sounds. In the video there are examples of both these.
When the throttle is applied smoothly the sound is smooth and progressive. when the throttle is applied in stabs the sound seems more throaty and harsh. weather this is just an imagined effect or this is true is unknown.
Here is a possible sub system that could be used to implement this sound;
The resulting engine sounds in grid make the game experience very realistic
Singstar 3 is a 1-8 player competitive singing game for the PS3. Essentially its a karaoke game. The developers wanted to create a proper studio sound for the vocals, in previous versions of the game they wrote their own real-time processing algorithms these worked but were not to professional standard. For the new version of the game the developers decided to use Professional VSTs from sound forge, these VSTs are run nativeley on the PS3 in real time, all the developers had to do was optimize them for the PS3.
Your singing can also be recorded and post processing added later in another part of the game. This is the first time that real studio quality plug ins have been used in realtime in a a game.
oh and does it make a difference ? well a large one so much so that people thought that sony had changed the microphones for singstar 3, in reality they were the same mics they had always used.
Firstly Dead Space is terrifying and its all down to the audio it's superb. However whilst playing the game i noticed a small problem with the sound propagation, watch the video and take note of the way the sound changes as the character moves away from the fire and into the other room. If you watch the video further the character moves back into the main room, again take note of the sound. The two changes occur at completely different places. This leads me to think that the sound changes are triggered by the door moving rather than using occlusion. this leads to some weird effects during the game.
This is an example of some non-repetitive game sound in COD4. It appears to be made up of several different elements that play out at random intervals. As the sounds are sounds of an ongoing battle the pitch isn't varied but because there are enough different sounds and volume is varied, the ambience doesn't become repetitive.
As game audio has become more popular and widespread several professionals and commentators involved in the gaming industry have tried to define the different elements which make up sound in games. Karen Collins in her new book Glossary of Game Audio Splits Game Audio into four groups within which are several sub groups;
Dynamic Audio is sound that reacts to changes in the gameplay, environment and input from the user. Within Dynamic Audio there is Adaptive Audio and Interactive Audio. Adaptive Audio is sound that occurs in the game environment reacting to the gameplay rather than input from the user. Interactive Audio is sound that is reacting to gameplay but is responding to the users input.
Diegetic Sounds are real sounds that occur within hearing distance of the user, this includes sound effects and dialogue. Non-Dynamic Diegetic audio is sound that occurs within hearing distance of the user but the user has no direct involvement in the sound. Adaptive Diegetic Audio is sound that reacts to changes in the environment but not the player directly. Interactive Diegetic sounds are sounds that occur in the players space that the player can directly interact with, these include footsteps and weapon impacts.
Non-Diegetic Sound refers to background music and sound effects. Adaptive Non-Diegetic sounds are sounds that occur in reaction to gameplay but aren't affected by the player and aren't part of the environment and cannot be heard by the game characters. Interactive Non-Diegetic Sounds are sounds that can be affected by gameplay or the player but cannot be heard by the game characters. This describes interactive music or sound effects reacting to gameplay. Non-Dynamic Linear sounds are sounds that are unaffected by the players input or gameplay, these sounds are usually found in uninteruptable cut scenes.
Kinetic Gestural interaction refers to Diegetic or Non-Diegetic sound which the player and typically character participate physically with the sound on screen. this can be as simple as using a controller to play an instrument on screen or using a Wii controller to control the velocity of weapons or perform actions that produce sounds.
Sander Huiberts and Richard Van Tol from GamaSutra.com take a simpler view splitting game sound into four parts Zone, Effect, Affect and Interface
Zone Refers to environmental sound, these sounds are diegetic and set the game ambience.
Effect refers to diegetic sounds during gameplay that are produced: ie footsteps, gunshots, explosions. these sounds can be on or off screen.
Affect refers to non-diegetic sounds that set the mood of the game, these range from orchestral music to moody low tones
Interface refers to non-deigetic sounds these can be menu sounds or sounds related to the HUD, the main use of these sounds is to convey information that isn't setting the mood.
These two examples both describe all the main types of game audio however i think that Karren Collins description is over complicated. There are too many sub sections and the descriptions of the sub sections are too diffuse. By having this many catagories i find that i cannot get some audio to sit in any one catagory, weather this is due to the language used in the description or just my mistake. GamaSutra's IEZA framework is a much better breakdown of game audio types because it is simple, complex audio can easily be divded into the different catogories. I have found some examples of the four major groups from GamaSutra's IEZA framework.
Zone This clip shows some ambient passes of Unreal Tournament 3 each level has a different feel because of the change in the background sounds used.
Effect This clip shows a short clip of Call of Duty 4 it features allot of diegetic sound effects from weapons, enemies and the plane this makes it to be a very immersive realistic experience. Affect This F.E.A.R clip is a good example of how Non-Diegetic sounds can affect the feel and mood this game in particular relies on discordant sounds and stabs throughout to make the game allot scarier.
Interface This Metal Gear Solid 4 Clip has some good examples of information sounds via the HUD and the radio menu. for example when Snake enters the radio and also when he is flicking through the inventory.
I am using this short video of the original Carmageddon as an example of some ugly sound design. The first thing that is noticeably bad sound design is that some of the time major sounds are missing, for example at 0:53 the player crashes hard into a lamp post and no sound is triggered. This problem occurs constantly throughout the game, it doesn't seem to matter what the player is hitting. See (0:53), (0:55), (1:00) and (1:08).
The second major problem is the repetitive nature of all the sounds. There is only one splat sound for hitting pedestrians and only 2-3 screams, as hitting pedestrians is a major objective in the game i would expect more sound to be attached to the pedestrians as it makes hitting them very repetitive.
The third major problem is the complete lack of ambient sound, this makes the envronments unrealistic.
Also at random intervals during the game for no discernible reason the phrase "i've hit the wall" is played. (1:17)
I am aware that this is a relatively old game (1997) and processing power and memory was probably diverted to the game's at the time ground breaking physics, however because the sound is quite bad and repetitive it ruins parts of the gameplay. This doesn't have to happen, other games released at the time such as MDK and Dungeon Keeper managed to sound great as well as pushing the envelope as what graphics could do on the hardware available.
Its probably best if you don't read this.
