Dragon’s Song Power Ups – Let’s Hans Zimmer This Thing
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This week saw us running into some really stiff problems that in the end meant we likely cannot do our game the way we wanted it. A very stubborn problem with sound latency that even the teachers can’t seem to solve means we now have to abandon the rhythmical aspects of our gameplay. This means redesign only 3 weeks before final and just a few days before beta playtesting. We feel safe in the knowledge that we’ve done a thorough groundwork however, and that we have every possible opportunity to reiterate upon our game. I started writing my Post Mortem as well as the promemoria for my Concept Art Course while also having a 40 hour plus Concept art assignment this week so work has been rough. The things happening in the sound and FX department have been FX for lane changes, power ups and menu buttons. I thought I’d talk about one of the power ups. This sound is for the game’s überweapon, a massive sonic boom that cleans out the entire screen. When we were planning this attack I immediately wanted to have it sound like a Hans Zimmer ”BWOH”, that overused and overblown stab of everything capable of making a sound that is ubiquitous in movie trailers these days. You know the one! The trailer starts off all silent with some cheesy line about one man being the modern and sexy Atlas upon who’s shoulders the action packed existence of sexy Hollywood mankind now rests and then bam! The BWOH comes charging like it wants to wreck the cinema. I played around with a lot of different samples of real orchestral instruments since I wanted that movie score feel, but the sound also needed to sound grounded in the house music and party bounce that permeated the game. This mashup of highbrow string quartet and street fighter grunt was accomplished by taking multiple layers of orchestral horns and strings and mashing them together with 8-bit SID chip sounds and a very meaty dubstep style bass made using Vanguard (both synthesizers which I’ve previously discussed). All layers of the FX are treated with different types of reverbs to add depth, generally the more reverb you apply to a sound the further away it seems. One of the sounds, the SID synth, was treated with the same firework impulse response sample that I used for the main attack. The reason was of couse to get that same sense of an object flying through the air for this power up as well. All the sounds were grouped together and sent through a mix bus where I treated them with some tube saturation to make them blend better together and also to add some perceived ”warmth”. Saturation may smoothen edges on sounds that seem sharp or harsh without the need for equalizers which entails cutting pieces of the sound out by targeting specific frequencies. That method is always a last resort for me as I feel EQ often takes away what I liked about the sound to begin with. I finished the sound up by applying a discrete VCA-compressor to remove some unwanted transients and pack the sounds a little tighter. Link to the sound below: https://copy.com/tuyiylHwGDVZk9Pl Postat i:5SD033, Introduction to Game Development Tagged: 5SD033, Introduction to Game Development  |
