Blog post #2 Monster approach sound
|
!Link to the music clip at the end! Team Cockatrice is building a Japanese mythology inspired game. In this game, you as the player traverse a foggy sea while mythical monsters try to get in your way. Even though there are enemies, the game is more about the feeling of threat and the sense of adventure without actually being in danger. So how do you design sound for these monsters? This week I made several sound effect clips, amongst them were the sound from when the enemies approach the player in order to attack them. The enemy traverse underwater and only emerge when they get close enough. This sound exists as a warning to the player so that they have time to react and prepare for the enemy. It is needed as without the sound it would become harder, more dangerous for the player as they have to be constantly vigilgant in this fog if they’re left without a warning. Now for the sound itself, since they are underwater my aim is for it to have a deep base tone to match the theme and hint to the player where the enemy is currently at. The sound clip is about 6 seconds long it has a different tone between the first three and last three seconds. The tone is more mellow and watery in the first half but as the sound reaches its end you hear a long high noise that serves as the final warning for the player to react to.
The sound itself was made in Audacity by merging and editing three sound clips. The first clip was a wide sonar sound while the other was a higher pitch sonar sound and the last is an underwater recording of a stream found in freesound.org. In Audacity, you can put in as many sound samples as you want to merge them together. The most practical function is the ability to edit the length, change the order of sound in the clip and use different tools to change the sound. It’s possible to change the pitch, base sound, and distance, invert the sound, make it go backward and more. The wide sonar and underwater sound are present throughout the six seconds and they were edited so that they have one second fade in before taking full effect. This was the basic edit after that all three were had their base tone, reverb, pitch changed. These were the main edits and the high pitched sonar changed quite a bit in the end.
The sound sample went through those edit’s but was as well inverted and changed to play backward. This gave the sound more of a digitized sound and lack the natural record sound of the original. This was done because the monster faced in the game is not of the ordinary world. These monsters are mythical and therefore should sound in a way to reinforce to the player that this is not a normal or safe creature to be approached by. The sounds end quite abruptly but at the end, the monster emerges from the water to attack you. It will be punctuated by another sound as the monsters traverse and near the player at separate speeds so it is good to have them as two different sound instances. Extra: Monster emerge sound Thank you once again reader for your time and wish you luck in future sound endeavours.  |
