(or Biff! Bang! Pow!)
Before I get to the audio I've been making, I'll talk a little about the music w're using in AIM<. AIM< isn't being made for profit so our studio is going to be using Creative Commons tracks. Unique music would be ideal but I've not had the time to compose any during development.
The menu track is "Prologue" by Alex Mason from an album called "Return" and is licensed under creative commons (CC BY-NC 4.0). Give it a listen!
"Prologue" fits AIM< well and plays after the game starts while players navigate menus. There is also an awesome in-engine scene that plays out in the background in time to the music.
Game play music is "A Moment" by Scott Gratton and is also licensed under creative commons (CC BY-NC 4.0). Here it is!
At first, I had picked something a bit more percussive and slightly more high energy, a track called "Overflow of Time" by Artofescapism (also CC. BY-NC 4.0) But as awesome as the track was, the music overwhelmed the gameplay audio and just didn't sit right as we play-tested with it. Here's the track for comparison.
"A Moment" works far better with the game play in AIM< establishing some good ambiance without overpowering the other audio.
Besides researching music, I made more sounds. The first set I'll share is audio created to give feedback with player/environment interaction and a walk sounds for the mech. Click the play button to hear them!
When I started this particular set of sounds, I thought the impact audio would be the easiest but quickly found I was mistaken. The difficulty in creating believable, satisfying impact comes back to what I mentioned last week about reality vs fantasy. I found that what I expected to sound like impact was quite flat and lacked character. I discovered that layering the "swoosh" and impact of bamboo pole impact with other foley audio created the sounds I was looking for.
I made only one impact sound per material for now since to create more to cycle through and vary the sound takes time and I had more audio to make before creating alternates.
The mech walk loop features some interesting foley, layering drills, miniature servos, drums, and other sounds to convey weight and large, mechanized movement. it took a few passes to make something I was happy with and felt would be convincing.
The last set of audio I made for the game elaborated on the player/environment interaction, a couple ambient loops, enemy shooting, and near miss feedback. Give it a listen!
Creating looping audio that doesn't sound too repetitious was challenging. I mixed up small audio segments, randomly dispersing them so the loop would be less noticeable for both tracks. Avoiding any sounds that are too rhythmic helps trick the ear into missing the repetition, a lot like working with textures. The less patterns, the less obvious the looping will be.
For the enemy laser sound, I drew inspiration from unusual weapons fire sounds like the WWII German nebelwerfer artillery. The enemy fire had to be distinct and evoke a similar fear response in the player as my sources of inspiration. I also needed the audio to stand out over player weapon fire but not get too annoying when multiple enemies fired simultaneously.
The other tracks were created in a similar manner as other tracks I talked about here and last week.
I hope you enjoyed using some different senses to interact with the past couple blogs. Future posts will most likely return to visuals.
Next week on May 4th is the premier of AIM<! Click on the link for event details and come check out the game if you're in the area.
Have a great weekend and I hope to see you next week!
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