The Audio for Ambient Pressure
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The game that our group chose is called: Ambient Pressure. In summary, this is a game about a diver that explores shipwrecks in order to find samples while he is hunted by mutated fish. My main area of responsibility is the audio. These last couple of weeks I have been working on the soundtrack along with other sound effects for our game. The soundtrack consists of different sounds that I have put together in order to create an atmosphere that fits our aesthetic goals. The game contains no music and is only based on different sound effects. The reason for this was that the group agreed on that it would not contribute to our aesthetic goal if we had music in it. By removing the music, we thought it would give a more tensed and thrilling atmosphere. When I started to work on the track, the first thing I did was to imagine what it would feel like if I was the one in the game. Questions like What do I feel, what do I hear?etc. Where answered during this part of the brainstorming process.
The Program that I created the track in is Pro Logic X. The main soundtrack consists of: whale moaning, breathing, atmospheric synths, bubbling, base impacts, percussions etc. By putting all of these together it created the atmosphere that I imagined during the brainstorming. A key principle that I always had to follow during the creation was that the other sound effects would stand out from the main audio so that they would not blend in with rest of the sound. With this in mind I created the soundtrack so that it would not disguise the audio that came from other parts of the game like shooting and enemy roars. The track is based on three key elements: rhythmic breathing, whale moaning and bubbling. These three features are the most important elements of the track. The breathing represents the avatar just as the sound of the water. The echoing moaning represents the endless ocean which I thought would enhance to the feeling of vulnerability and loneliness that we want the player to feel. The graphics and the physics in the game are not according to a realistic concept. The sounds are on the other hand closer to reality than the rest of the game. The reason for not adapting the audio to the comic and unrealistic theme, which the game has, is because it created an interesting contrast that would appear to be advantageous to the horror factor that we wanted to achieve. Here is a sample: https://soundcloud.com/mundari/ambient-main-track-example  |
