Creating the sounds of crystalline entities dying
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Ever since the start of this project we were talking about a death sound effect for our enemies. However, as the original design used player attack FX as additions to the soundtrack it wasn’t feasible to have the enemies make any sounds when hit. Because of the recent redesign into a more traditional shooter however, the time was now ripe for some crystal shattering FX. To imagine how sentient, murderous crystalline invaders hit by a burst of sonic waves and shattering upon impact sounds I turned to something called FM-synthesis. This is a kind of audio synthesis that was popularized in the 80s by Yamaha’s DX7 synthesizer. Basically FM-synthesis works by modulating a simple waveform’s frequency with a modulator frequency, this creates a new, more complex sounding waveform. FM-synthesis is great for creating glass-like and cold sounds, brittle bells and chilly plucks are some of its strong suits. I first turned to Native Instruments Yamaha DX7 emulator FM7. FM-synthesis is far less intuitive than classic analogue modeling however and while I’m a fan of the sounds I’m not a fan of the workflow. After playing around with the FM7 for a couple of hours I wasn’t getting the results I wanted so I turned instead to the REFX Nexus, a sample based synthesizer that I use a lot and have mentioned before in these blogs. The Nexus has a large FM sample library and in it I found a sound I liked that I could then modulate to my liking. With the Nexus I created a crisp and bell-like sound that I treated with some impulse reverb and delay to make it seem larger and more epic in scope. The sound lacked punch however and although it sounded crystalline, cold and hollow, just the way I wanted, it wasn’t ”beefy” enough. It also had the problem of sounding a bit off in comparison with the other sound effects as I had used a lot of 8-bit synthesizers previously. The solution was to add two more layers of SID-chip synthesizers that added bottom punch and some action in the mid range. I then ran all the sounds through a group channel with VCA compression and tube saturation to collect the separate sounds into a more cohesive whole. In the end I scrapped the FM sound completely and instead created a similar sound using the Nexus SID-synth libraries. Using a combination of different SID samples and QuadraSID sounds felt more in line with the overarching sound design aesthetic of the game. https://copy.com/MYsW2TERguWo1t3p Postat i:5SD033, Introduction to Game Development Tagged: 5SD033, Introduction to Game Development  |
