Learning about Sound Design and Feedback
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Besides my role as programmer I am also the lead sound designer at our game project aetherial. I felt comfortable picking that role since I did have some experience in music (I played cello for about 10 years) and because I already had some very minor experience in editing and creating sounds digitally. However learning an entire software is no small task and I am still learning new stuff every day about FL Studio, which is the software I chose for most of the sound design. To prepare myself for my role as lead sound I watched several GDC talks on sound design and other feedback systems. And even though I have by no means the experience or resources to create every sound for our game by scratch, the talks still helped me a lot when selecting and editing sounds for our game. I mostly look for sounds that sound similar to what we are trying to simulate in the game and then try to mash them together with other sounds to make them as close as possible to the intended sound, so that the player will understand it as feedback. For example the harpoon attack sounds was made from a bunch of different metal sound effects, such as metal doors being shut. In our development process we have reached a point where our playtests have provided us with feedback that indicated that pretty much all of our problems come from a lack of feedback for different mechanics. This is partially due to a lack of sound effects and because some animations were still missing at the time since one of our artists had to leave for a few weeks. However there are also other ways of creating satisfying feedback for the player, for example screen shake for powerful attacks, which is something we might explore during our next sprint. Overall I believe that the hardest part about my role as a sound designer wasn’t creating the actual sounds, but rather the process of acquiring the skills necessary to accomplish that task. I am still very much new to the entire process of sound design and a beginner when it comes to the editing software, however I feel quite satisfied with what I have learned over such a short period, while also doing parts of the code for the project.  |