Week #1 – Player Projectile Sound Effect
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Who – Anton Berglund This week I have, among other things, worked on producing the sound effect that plays whenever the Player fires a harpoon. Our game concepts is inspired by the steampunk art style, leaning towards science-fantasy. In addition, the visual aesthetic is inspired by the animated film Treasure Planet (2002). Why – Creating a sound that matches the aesthetics of the cannon and projectile Naturally, the sounds of the game also need to fit the above mentioned aesthetics. Another requirement was to only use sounds with licences that allowed me to use them in an educational setting. In practice, Creative Commons (with or without Attribution requirements) or Open Source were my best bets. How – Reality is overrated anyway First off, I needed to procure sounds as a basis for the cannon. Starting off by researching what a harpoon gun/cannon actually sounds like. As it turns out, a harpoon gun is similar to almost every other conventional firearm in it’s usage of gunpowder to propel a projectile. Only difference being that instead of a bullet, you stick a spear into the pointy end of your boom-stick. This results in a harpoon gun sounding much like any other modern rifle, and not creating the satisfactory “thump” or “thunk” sound that me and the rest of the team imagined (Expectation vs. Reality). In the team discussion that followed, it was concluded that reality is overrated and should not be the main goal in a game where the Player pilots a flying ship, hunting an alien space whale from another dimension. I mainly used the extensive library found at http://www.Freesound.org. As shown below, finding a good sample was not an easy task.
Using different keywords to search for appropriate sounds, I managed to limit the number of sounds I had to scour through. In the end I estimate that I have listened through approximately 800-1000 sound samples. An absolute majority of the sounds were of low quality or did not fit the aesthetics of our game. I then procured a few different options to show to the rest of the team to receive feedback as I quickly realized that listening through 500+ samples makes you quite blind to whether the sound actually fulfills the stated aesthetic goal. Listening to the sounds a few dozen times is not very helpful either. Using an iterative process, I often let the rest of my team listen to what I was working on to make sure I was on the right track. Utilizing a thought process similar to the MDA framework (looking at how to achieve the desired Aesthetic) proved very useful at this point, especially when combined with frequent user testing. I used an edited sample of a Laser Sniper Rifle (again, reality is overrated) in an attempt to fit the aesthetic of our science-fantasy theme but the feedback I received noted a lack of the earlier mentioned “thump” or “thunk” sound that seemingly comes to everyone’s mind when you mention a harpoon gun/cannon. So I again scoured through the depths of http://www.freesound.org and surfaced with a fresh sample of a crossbow being fired. Mixing the two tracks together, the “thunk” was finally in place! The team was happy with the result and the sound was ticked of as “complete” and I could move forward with other tasks.  |
