Hello there! I’m online game composer Winifred Phillips – my most up-to-date sport launch is the music of Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord: the smash-hit 3D remake of the traditional 1981 dungeon-crawler (hear and obtain my award-winning soundtrack free of charge). Welcome to half three of my article sequence presenting the content material of my speak from the Sport Builders Convention 2024! My presentation, “Dial Up the Diegetics: Musical Sound Results,” mentioned the methods wherein sport composers can repurpose the instruments and belongings usually inside the province of sound design specialists. With a purpose to finest make my GDC discussions as broadly accessible as doable, I’m now sharing the content material of my GDC lectures yearly in an article sequence that features the complete lectures, supplemented by a lot of the movies and lots of illustrations from my GDC talks.
In case you haven’t learn the earlier installments of this sequence, yow will discover them right here:
Partly two of my GDC 2024 article sequence, I mentioned how utilizing acceptable animal vocalizations can present sport composers with superior sonic instruments for including evocative character to sport music.
For example, we mentioned how including seagulls to the music of an ocean-themed gameplay stage will help the surroundings mix extra seamlessly with the music supporting it. So let’s now try one other instance of an animal sound that’s used much less actually than seagulls on the ocean – and extra in a figurative manner.
Sounds of The Maw
Developed by Twisted Pixel Video games, The Maw is a science-fiction motion journey starring a lovable blue alien named Frank and his ravenous purple pet.
With one eye and large pointy tooth, this little monster eats the whole lot in sight. It’s a strolling mouth that will get round on a single foot – like a homicidal snail. Because the composer for The Maw, it was crucial for me to eloquently categorical the inside soul of this mushy maniac. So I requested myself – what in our pure world is spherical and squishy, and well-known for having a giant mouth that’ll eat absolutely anything?
That is the recording of the frogs that I utilized in my rating for The Maw. I edited down this lengthy recording of frogs singing the track of their individuals, and I remoted each distinctive croak right into a separate file that I might unfold out throughout my MIDI keyboard. Right here’s how that labored within the music I composed for The Maw:
As you may see, animal vocalizations are nice for including a lot of character to our sport music. So let’s stick to The Maw for just a little longer – there are just a few extra examples of various methods to make use of creature sounds right here.
As an illustration, at one level The Maw comes throughout an alien peacock-bird referred to as a Loofer, and after he eats it, he will get particular Looferbird powers that embody a lot of large inexperienced eyes that may shoot lasers. We don’t usually join the concept of peacocks and laser-fire – however I needed to maintain reminding gamers that The Maw is capturing alien chicken lasers out of his alien chicken eyeballs. So, to maintain this concept top-of-mind, I wanted vocalization for an alien chicken.
Ah sure, this appeared like simply the right combination of bizarre and goofy, so I included it rhythmically within the music that accompanies The Maw throughout his Looferbird laser rampage. Let’s test that out:
Listening to the chicken squawks helps reinforce the wackiness of the state of affairs – however the creature voices that I used for this sport rating weren’t all cute and quirky.
At one level, The Maw has to face off towards humongous alien Beetles. I needed to replicate some form of monster vocalization within the music – however precise beetle sounds aren’t intimidating.
So I appeared for another that may convey each large measurement and surly temperament.
The ever-popular humpback whale appeared to do the trick. After modifying, I ran it by means of some processing and delay, after which wove it into the music composition for the Beetul stage:
Earlier than we transfer on from our dialogue of animal sounds, let’s take a fast take a look at one other facet of creature sound design that may be helpful – absolutely invented vocalizations.
Animals of the creativeness
For the Little Lords of Twilight technique sport from BKOM Studios, I wanted to create some ghoulish music for a nighttime stage, so I made a decision to make use of uncanny monster sounds in my tracks. However as an alternative of choosing a real-world vocalization, I went with heavily-processed guitar portamentos – the bending impact was very monster-like:
Let’s check out how that labored throughout gameplay:
Partly 4 of this text sequence, we’ll be transferring into an exploration of audio results derived from science and know-how. Till then, thanks a lot for studying!