Audio BreakDown: How I approached the Audio for Augmented
What is Augmented?
Augmented is a game project made by my partner for a final year games art project. The game is an arena style fighter with rounds similar in style to Smash Brothers Ultimate or even Dragon Ball Fighters where the characters are cyborg type characters being mostly human but part robotic. The main weapons used are a bow, canon and missile and the characters also have a shield at their disposal.
My role on the Game
My role on this game was not only music but to provide the sound for the game as well as implement all of this into the game. This was my first time doing a game project where I could explore sound design as well as music and I had a blast being responsible for painting the soundscape for this project. I had dabbled in sound design and implementation a little using different online tutorials but never in a full project. This was a new experience for me in a lot of ways.
Planning Research
In terms of initial planning and research for the project I first asked the developer what they envision for the game especially in terms of audio and to provide some reference tracks for the music. I think this helps to clarify their aim for the project and helps me to produce work that fits the style they want. It also helps me to form a good basis of inspiration as well as direction on how to achieve the desired. For the music style the developer wanted a dubstep electronic style of music. This was really interesting because I had never made music in that style before that. In terms of sound pretty much keeping to that electronic style mainly synthesized glitchy sounds. In addition to this style adaptive music system was desired where the music would ramp up depending on the round the fight was in. prior to this I had some experience implementing with simple FMOD tutorials but never a developing my own interactive system.
In terms of planning to keep track of everything I made an asset list with details and ideas about all the sounds and tracks needed for the game.
Music
Genre Research
Again, the style was dubstep which is a genre I never explored so it was an amazing experience. For me I enjoy doing new styles. So in order to create the genre I listened to and studied the references but also studied how to make the genre from a multitude of videos.
From this I found a couple things stuck out:
· It’s all about the build-up to drop — Dubstep requires high energy shifts and big dynamics in the music by making good build ups and good pay offs to those build ups. If I’m honest I think my build-ups especially in intro and beat break points were good however the drops that followed could have been much more exaggerated and crazier and really push the track. However, I think the track still have good energy just the same.
· Heavy and Evolving Aggressive synths and synths bases — In order to get a kind of inorganic and electronic sound synths are usually used. In addition to make the music sound more dark aggressive being part of a fighting game and being dubstep in general I used a lot of dark synth present patches to capture the sounds. This also extended to the bass using subby again very dark synth basses to carry the tune. I think the base presence in electronic music is a lot heavy compared to other genres (orchestral) so I really tried to push this to achieve the electronic feel.
· Pumping bass and drums that sound characteristically synthy too- Again this genre is very bass heavy but also the drums can very much help to shape the track. I think importantly in this genre is the sound selection for the drums to ensure they are unique samples and sometimes even adding my own processing (chorus, flanger, weird verbs) can help to turn a fairly plain snare or kick into something more.
· Arps can really drive the track — Arps (Arpeggios) are like chords played as their separated notes in a pattern or sequence. I don’t think this is a dubstep specific thing but I feel like they especially in electronic music can carry the foundation of the track and really give a melody for the listeners to hook on to in a sense. I also find them really fun to make and think they sound cool so there’s that.
· Breakdowns can bring the track to the next level — In Dubstep specifically a breakdown section of music can really add that energy shift that’s needed in this genre of music. This is a section where the music may change to a cohesive but different sound, this could be different chords, a different beat or just anything which makes up a change of pace.
Main Menu Theme
The main menu theme I titled wavelength was not the first track I worked on, but I think it very much represents the style of the game and really electronic music channelled through my own personal style, a drum heavy track with padded elements making up melodies and an arp forming the main foundation of the track. I actually made this track without the padded elements and the final glitchy melody first so mostly just the drums, arp and bass but thought it needed something to make the track more interesting as things went on and added those in quite a while after.
The Music System
The desired music system for the game was as follows:
· Menu Track Plays as is and main part will loop until player selects play. This this is that the menu track will basically play almost as normal on startup. However, in order to account for how long the player may spend in the menu the main part (basically where all of the elements are in) will play on loop until the play or exit buttons are selected.
· When the game starts the track will be randomly selected. After the play presses play and the menu music is done the system will select a random track from the selection of main game tracks.
· Track will ramp up as each round starts. Tracks have the intro ramping up until the first round actually starts. Then at each round the tracks will ramp up and loop this section in each round until the match ends where the outro will play.
In order to develop such a system, I used FMOD for the main integration tool in handling this specific system. This allows for the control needed in making the music operate in an adaptive way. So how does this work. Well, it’s through the following:
Music Composition Process for this Project
I took a mostly staged/staggered process towards creating the music for this project and I think this definitely helped in not only the creating within this project but within my whole approach to Game Music. Breaking it down into stages helped me focus on really constructing complete tracks and finishing things but also letting ideas flow.
Idea Stage
I gather sound packs here and played around with them making different loops in the aims of going for the style of the reference. This was sections of arps, drum loops and stabs that I made just to see what things would sound like and get practice and making that style of music. I had a lot of fun just putting loops together and I think it helped me to form a good foundation for a lot of the tracks.
Putting It Together
For most of the tracks I took some of these ideas and tried to develop them into full tracks. I combined different sets of the arps and drum loops that I mentioned in the previous stage and also got some synth patches for serum and played around with that. I find arrangement particularly difficult personally because its sometimes hard to figure out where a track could go with all the endless possibilities. Still trying to develop this but enjoying the process of learning to create deeper more fleshed out tracks.
Mixing and Panning
I then took the tracks and mixed them the best I could. This was a long while after the original project to be honest because I like going back and improving things. I overhauled my mixing process at this stage by trying to learn more through tutorials. I learnt a lot more about how to mix better and I would say this is the first time I feel like I had even a little bit of a grasp on mixing and creating a clear sound.
Ear Candy
After getting some feedback on the tracks from my mentor he said it would be good to break things up more by adding little elements in order to make the tracks less repetitive and monotonous. I completely agreed as well and again I believe arrangement and details like this weren’t my strong suit. I spent a bit of time adding little elements on the off beat and adding more counters to mix things up. I don’t think at the time I fully achieved making these extra elements as cohesive as they could be but again I learned about making tracks more complete and this is where I started thinking more about how to arrange things and how to add cohesive variation this then allowed me to grow a lot as a composer.
Mastering
Lastly to polish off the whole track I once again overhauled my mastering process by tutorialing. I learned about adding width and warmth to a track to make it sound fuller instead of just turning it up or down lol.
Sound Design
Sound Research
Like the music I wanted have as much information on how to deliver the sound. The developer did not have any sound choices for the game as a whole however based on the style of the game and the general basis of it I gathered a synthetic sound, but natural elements would be a good direction to take it. In order to do this, I researched by tutorials but also through asking people in the industry. I think it is especially good to get advice from people who’ve done it in a professional capacity. A particular example of this was with the crossbow. When designing it I couldn’t figure out how to make it sound synthetic but still have that stretchy bow characteristic. The developer gave me an example of the crysis bow so I emailed the sound designer on the project Julius Selbach and got really direct advice on how to deliver the sound. It was really nice as well to talk to someone who was doing what you want to do at a professional capacity.
Making the Sounds
Being my first game project (I had done a couple of redesigns before that) that I was making sound for I used a lot of experimentation and trial of error to make the sounds and learn what might work best. For this particular project in order to get that augmented sound (robotic but human) I liked meshing natural elements from recording with complemented synthesis sounds. The bow and arrow example above was a good demonstration of that but so many other elements incorporated this. In order to achieve this recording were made from things around my house such as a grenade launcher sound being made from locking the door of my microwave. I think what really captured the synthesized aspects was the use of the effects. Effects were of course done on a case-by-case basis but some of the common plugins used were chorus, flanger and phaser in order to form that synthesized sound. Also stretching the sounds and leading into the usual aliasing that occurs when things are pitched and stretched to add an interesting texture.
Listen
Like before there’s no complete version of the game but if you want to check out the soundtrack the link is here: https://tr.ee/5KVEsb9bhN.
Closing Remarks
I really enjoyed this project becuased it opened me up to one of my favourite things about game audio. Building strange , new and different worlds through sound. This experimentation and trying new genres and styles makes things infinitely fun for me because you can have a post apocalyptic game about a character exploring this wasteland to find the rest of his species to or a game about an arena fighter with cyborg like characters. The possibilities are endless in the games industry and I can’t wait to continue to design sound more crazy atmospheres.
