New Brink Dev Diary Sounds off on Audio Design

(badman) #1

A new story entry has been added:
[drupal=740]New Brink Dev Diary Sounds off on Audio Design[/drupal]


Splash Damage’s Audio Director Chris ‘peaceful warrior’ Sweetman tackling sound design in a brand-new Brink developer diary. Chris reveals how Brink manages to keep its myriad of sound effects readable even when there’s tons of them going off at once. There’s also a lot of information about how Chris approached weapon audio for Brink and why it’ll sound like nothing you’ve heard in a Splash Damage game before. Here’s a slice:
<blockquote>
Having played many single player and multiplayer shooters, there was one thing that always concerned me - sonic space. In other words, how do you overcome the problem of having too many sounds all playing at the same time? When you have music, gunfire, dialogue, Foley, explosions, and ambient sounds all going off simultaneously, you

(light_sh4v0r) #2

That was a great read, thanks :slight_smile:
Being a hobbyist composer I know how hard it is to play much at the same time and still keep it all very distinct and clear.
It sounds promising!

(LyndonL) #3

That was an exceptionally interesting piece. I had no idea so much effort went into the sound, but after reading it I can totally see it.

Well done guys :smiley:

Chris, You mentioned in there that each shot has a start, middle and end. Is that why in the gameplay video Rahdo is narrating (Bot escort/bomb diffusal mission from PAX) a single shot is fired but 3 sounds are heard? Was that early days of the sound coding?

(Maawdawg) #4

Really good read.

The “check out the full story” link at the bottom of the splashdamage.com story goes to the wrong blog post. It links to the preorder bonus story here instead of the new blog here.

just needs a story ID number change.

(badman) #5

…that’s interesting. The fixed link you posted comes up empty for me whereas the link in the news story is correct. I wonder if that’s a website localisation issue? Out of curiosity, what language do you have the site set to?

(Maawdawg) #6

My language is set to English as I would be hopelessly lost in most others. :smiley:

If I follow this link…
http://www.splashdamage.com/node/740

The embedded link at the bottom is this for me…

Instead of the new story…

Really weird if you are also in English, unless you have a separate US localization?

(badman) #7

I’m using English (UK) and http://www.brinkthegame.com/community/blogs/detail/?id=5 is the correct link there. The correct URL for English (US) is http://www.brinkthegame.com/community/blogs/detail/?id=6, however.

(General Wolfens) #8

nice, interesting Diary btw, and good to see some news action here :slight_smile: Waited over a month for some new informations :wink:

(Mad Hatter) #9

Cool. The attention to detail is astounding. Quite refreshing, really, this level of quality.

(engiebenjy) #10

Yeah knowing this much effort and attention has gone into the sound design (which sounds ace) makes me appreciate it more. I think ETQW struggled with its sound, glad SD have stepped it up a notch for brink.

(light_sh4v0r) #11

I’m not entirely convinced by the new video though, the guns don’t really sound as punchy and powerful as I’d like. Could be due to the recording though.

(Jess Alon) #12

I had a feeling last night that we would hear something soon.

(LyndonL) #13

Really?! What were you listening to it on? Laptop by chance? I had it playing on my media centre through amp/loudspeakers/sub and it sounded freaking awesome :smiley:

(3Suns) #14

If you are serious about hearing the game, watch that vid off the Bethesda site, NOT the Official Youtube from Bethesda. There is an incredible difference in quality between the two.

The game sounds AAA top shelf! Outstanding work!

(LyndonL) #15

Ah that might be the difference. I downloaded it off the official site too as per the recommendation between the difference up above.

(light_sh4v0r) #16

I was watching it with my headphones on, and I thought it sounded a bit thin. Was watching the brinkthegame.com one.

(tokamak) #17

What sound format are game sounds anyway?

(DarkangelUK) #18

Generally .ogg I believe.

(tokamak) #19

Yeah most of them are, but I rather meant what quality they’re being used in, ogg has no fixed quality does it?

(light_sh4v0r) #20

No, it’s much like MP3 with a broad range of available qualities. Biggest advantage is it also has lossless quality available while still using some sort of compression to keep filesize acceptable. lossless .ogg is usually smaller than .FLAC.