{"id":1511,"date":"2012-11-10T18:05:23","date_gmt":"2012-11-10T18:05:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/?p=1511"},"modified":"2012-11-10T18:05:23","modified_gmt":"2012-11-10T18:05:23","slug":"game-audio-requires-innovation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/2012\/11\/game-audio-requires-innovation\/","title":{"rendered":"Game audio requires innovation"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Notice that the instrumentation takes up the entire spectrum of sound at the beginning, but then right as the vocals enter at 18 seconds in, they part. The strings become higher, the bass gets a bit lower, and everything that was in between the two drops out. It’s a virtual parting of the waters to make room for the voices in their proper register. Just to show it’s not a fluke, it does the same thing at 0:43.<\/em><\/p>\n

I can’t think of a single game that really nails this concept, which surprises me.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There<\/a>. It\u2019s not surprising if you understand how game audio works and worked on different platforms. To do what the author wants in a game means having individual control of each instrument in the music.<\/p>\n

Technically, no problem. In a game though with constraints of I\/O, RAM and CPU usage and things more important than music, it\u2019s impossible to dynamically mix individual streams of audio. We\u2019re talking about let\u2019s say 8\/16 minimum individual streams fading in\/out, just for one track. It\u2019s overkill. Sound is already taking so much space on install. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s why to introduce this much beloved dynamic in a technically much lighter way, we need MIDI. Like it or not, it solves all the issues at once if you\u2019re willing to sacrifice some sound quality. The created dynamic is worth it.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t solve that through discussions between composers and designers about emotional goals in a game and its music, we solve that early on by trying, iterating music over a custom audio system allowing the depth wanted while staying in line with the rest of the game development. It\u2019s a fucking huge task that\u2019s been solved in the past here and there but never spread. 3D graphics took the priority.<\/p>\n

Looking forward to another article wondering why we don\u2019t do game audio like we do audio for films on a website for professional game developers that I\u2019ve been reading for ten years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Notice that the instrumentation takes up the entire spectrum of sound at the beginning, but then right as the vocals enter at 18 seconds in, they part. The strings become higher, the bass gets a bit lower, and everything that was in between the two drops out. It’s a virtual parting of the waters to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1511"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1511"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1512,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1511\/revisions\/1512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}