BTEC Extended Diploma in Games Development
  

Assignment 2; Creating and applying sounds to a video game

Unit 73: Sound for Computer Games

"Space Invaders": Sound effects (5)

"Brain box" (Maze Game): Soundtrack applied (Loops)

"Food catch" (Platform): Soundtrack applied (Loops)

The Plan: (Space Invaders)

The sounds are recorded as Mono then edited to Stereo.

The game will be Space Invaders.

The platform should be for computers so the sounds would be recorded using MP3

The sounds wanted: The death, collectible, win, next level, explosion, alien, spaceship, NASA.

The voice for the aliens would just have the pitch, tone and echo changed.

The soundtrack would either be a simple wind affect or a soundtrack that I would create.

Plan: (Platform game) If the sound effects were placed.

Stereo, Platform, Character sounds, enemy sounds, collectibles, death, next level,

Character (Man) the sound recorded: eating, odd remarks, death

Collectibles (food) the sound recorded: activates sound of player eating.

Death (collision with body builder/health inspector) the sound recorded: (voice) “darn it” “nooo!”

Next level the sound recorded: (voice) “mm more food” or door opening

Enemy (health inspector) (voice) “no, you’re not eating that” (body builder) “Stop!”

(Time) voice recording first, then environment recording second.
Soundtrack done after sounds are recorded.
Applying sounds.
Then record gameplay. 

Two soundtracks: 

This will be placed in my platform game and the space invaders.

The platform game would have a good and jolly atmosphere with high and medium tones. The sounds should be a mix of free copyright sounds and music.

The space invaders would have a gradual increase in sound when in combat and a higher level. The game could also contain the original soundtrack for "Space invaders" at the end of the game which would be edited. The sounds would be edited using "Audacity".

(Soundtracks are placed on a loop and are Stereo.

(Most of the sounds needed for the games are voice recordings).

  

Soundtrack 1: (For Platform)

These sounds that I placed in and edited with are all copyright free sounds. 

In editing I used:

Crop, cut, move, fade in, fade out, pitch, stereo, sounds (High/low), mono (which ear), 

9 tracks 

Last's for 6 minutes and is on a loop. 

Soundtracks: (Original)

Fade

Force

Fire burst

blank 

The first track was "Fade" this was cropped and placed at the beginning. With "symbolism" fading in then fading out just before the next track. "Force" was the track that continued the sounds with a fade in, so that it built up the atmosphere. Just before half way I place the bigger version of "symbolism" that was changed in pitch to be a little higher and the tone to be louder. This track also has fade in and out to join the next track. The track "fire burst" had no additional edits except cut and crop. Mid in between the track I placed a sound of a man saying "yeah" which I thought went well with the sounds. "Firefly" was next and had similar edits i.e. fade in/ out and had "force" in between when the sound got lower. I took a small part out of "miles away" which helped continue the sound for the other opening track. which was the same track that finished the previous.

This is a gamble for the this platform game, due to the sounds not being related to any group of sounds or genre.

This is a video of gameplay with the soundtrack enabled.

The game was changed to Shape man game which I feel makes the soundtrack more suitable due to the fast paste movement. The other platform was originally the game that would of had the soundtrack however the gameplay of that platform isn't great.
Next time I would create this piece of sounds that will go very well with the game, and try not to do to much of originality on a soundtrack that im gambling on to work well with the type of game.
However I do feel the soundtrack itself was okay and that it would of been better if I had a more suitable game for it.


This is the full soundtrack without gameplay

The last part of the track was edited before recording to make an echo so that in gameplay the sounds don't suddenly change to another track.
The edits made it seem that the beginning was joined with the end which worked well.

Due to it being such a long soundtrack, I wasn't able to record the gameplay for that long because the game is short.

"ALL SOUNDS ARE COPYRIGHT FREE"

Project rate (Hz) 41000

Soundtrack 2: (For "Brain box"-Maze game)

Tools used:

Pitch, echo, fade, copy, crop, cut, paste, import, export, volume, pitch, speed, duplicate, 

Project rate (Hz) 32000

The steps to making this track was very similar to the first soundtrack I made. With the move, crop and copy tool it helped me moved certain sounds in places which I thought went well.
This sound isn't like the first and takes a similar root to what platform soundtracks sound like. The sound placed at the end suddenly drops in volume which doesn't require me to use fade. At the beginning I used fade in which helped the end of the soundtrack link with the beginning.

Applying sounds:
Original sound: Fan

The sound was changed using a range of tools for example the pitch was increased to give the sound a more futuristic and robotic effect. When this was changed I edited the length (cropped) so that the effect of the (bullet) doesn't seem silly when applied. Due to the amount of bullets that are going to be shot at once, the volume of the bullets are turned down dramatically, while also making the effect of a fade out, The effect of the "fade out" isn't gradual compared to normal and i wanted a fast ending of the shot without completely removing all the sound.
originally, I thought it would be very cool to use this sound effect on a generator or laser, however I wanted the effect to go with the shot, because it would be unique as most shots sound the same in video games.

Original sound: Voices
The sound was an error in one of the recordings, however I decided to keep the recording and edit the sound so that it could be used for the aliens in the game. The sound was cropped at the beginning and at the end as most of the wanted sounds were in the center.

I highlighted the areas I no longer needed and removed them using the cut tool.
The pitch was increased to give the same wanted affect as the first sound, yet had no fade in or fade out edited in it. I placed a simple echo in the sound which you can barely hear as I don't want it to remove the effect of the aliens.

Versions: I decided to use this effect for all the different alien types. The first version was changed in speed by a percentage of -14.000 This gave a similar effect to the original edited version that I did, yet has a more deeper and slower sound effect, which I want to use for my larger enemy.
Version 2: The only thing I decided to change for this version was by reversing the sound so that it was backwards. This made the sound effect sound rather different compared to the last version.

And saved me time when editing, this also gives a cool effect that they make different noises.

Original sound: burp
This sound was going to be used for a zombie game that I had in mind, however I decided to change some settings and edit where necessary to make it sound good. Firstly, I copied the sound and repeated it four times. Each individual sound had a space in between them to give an effect like an alarm.
Then I used the fade out tool for the sounds, which gave the basic idea on what I wanted the sound to sound like. Then I changed the speed and tempo of the sound the speed was increase by 153% and the tempo by 15%. This is placed on a loop until the player kills all enemies or if the asteroid is destroyed.    

This is the image after the editing was completed.

The black lines are where I can merge the sound tracks together, however I decided to leave it because of the gaps I want in the sound effect.

Original sound: voice recording (blowing)
This sound was wanted to make a wind effect within the game, so that it doesn't seem quite and that the gameplay seems always active, which makes it seem more realistic. The sound was copied then placed after the sound which then were merged together. The sounds had to be edited using fade in/out so that the tracks don't suddenly sound like it has changed in pitch dramatically.
This will be placed in the controller with a chance of 1-500 which means that the sound wont always be happening.    

Original sound; paper
This sound was all cut except a small piece that i took and edited with the pitch and speed, this is going to be used for the sound of my bullet in gameplay.

Extra sounds: Wind
This was edited and cropped and to last half a second with the pitch decrease and the speed increased.

Original sound: voice
This was edited to a high pitch which made it sound like a baby crying. This gave me an idea to make the sound appear when a alien baby is created.
The Sprite would be changed to a small alien instead of a bullet, however it still behaves like one, this is to make the sounds more suitable.

(When activated) This sound happens when the bullet gets reflected by the enemy boss, the bullet turns into a small alien that makes this sound effect.
In this image you can see the edits of fade in and out. The fade out is more important, as its leaves the area (room) of the game, which makes it more realistic.


Video of Gameplay with sounds (Level 1 and Level 6 show)

Level 1: Sounds (Player-shot, enemy-shot, wind, explosion,)
Level 2: Sounds (Enemy boss noise)

Overall:
The Sound effects were exported out of "Audacity" then placed into (Game-maker) Space Invaders is the game that contained the 5 sound effects, which I think went okay, I understand that most of the sounds are not very unique to others, however my favorite effect was the bullet collision with the boss, I think that went really well. Next time I would record most of the sounds with a mic if I did this game again, due to most of the effects being voice acting.
The First soundtrack (Shapeman) was a big improvement to the original idea that I had with the platform game. The soundtrack looked as if the game was a similar speed.
The Second soundtrack (brainbox) was much more suitable for the game and made it really cool effect. The effect is slow and has a classic feel towards it which made the gameplay more enjoyable and helps the math game more fun.