Unit 73 - sound for computer games

BTEC Extended Diploma in Games Development
Unit 73: Sound for Computer Games
Assignment 2
Plan

This is my version of Brainbox, which is the game I chose for this assessment.

As we can see it has sort of a dark theme, with all those dark colours, purple, different shades of grey, and others. We can feel like a tense mood with all the spiders and the webs, etc. The platform for the game is PC.

To record, I will mainly be using a shotgun microphone, and I will also import sound effects that I will be creating on an electric piano. This means stereo recording.
The plan is to create 2 soundtracks which are going to be simple loops of melodies, as well as up to 4 different sound effects (death sound, picking up purple shards, going through a portal and unlocking a lock).
I'll try to make the melody loops appropriate to the style of the game, and while the other sound fx can be a bit more random, my aim is also to keep them somewhat relevant to the game. I haven't decided which sound fx I will be creating with the Foley technique and which ones I will be importing from websites that provide copyright free content (eg, freesound.org) and then later on edit them.

I will be mainly using mp3 and WAV file formats, since they are the best in terms of quality and space at the same time, and also they are the most popular, which means any software that I may use will definitely support them. For editing, I will use multiple options of editing, from the easy ones such as cropping and looping, to the harder ones such as bass, pitch, fade, speed, etc...

Execution
I'm going to post some screen shots of me editing and mastering the sounds for the game as I go, so here are they:

snd_bass.mp3

This is from one of the melody loops. For both of loops, I added a finger snap sound effect that works as the beat. In the pictures above and below, it already shows the melodies with the beat added to them. We can also see that one of the things I changed was the pitch, obviously among a few other modifications.

snd_guitar.mp3

Below are the other sound effects

snd_deathsound.mp3

This is the deathsound that plays obviously when Brainbox dies. It's very short and simple, and didn't take much mastering because it wasn't needed.

snd_portal.wav

Portal sound effect. Plays every time you go through a portal in the game. Just like the deathsound, it's quite short BUT it did take some mastering. The initial sound was achieved by me punching an empty paint bucket. I then proceeded to edit that sound, mainly adding a lot of bass, as well as distorting and changing the pitch, etc.

snd_shards.wav

This is the sound effect for collecting shards. It sounds like a soul being captured in the game Dark Souls, and that was kind of what I was going for. This sound effect was super easy to make and didn't take much mastering other than cropping and fading.

snd_unlocked.mp3

This is the sound effect for when you unlock a metal locker. It's short and it also didn't take much editing except for some pitch and bass changes.

Results

I will post a video with gameplay, showing the sound effects all working properly.

Meanwhile here are some screenshots with proof that I actually managed to put them in the game and make them work:

And here is the video showing that all the sound fx are working properly:

Evaluation

Overall I think I did a good job. I stuck to the plan (created two melody loops and four additional sound effects that went good with the sinister/mysterious, dark style of the game) and in the end it turned out great in my honest opinion. I really like the sounds that I've created and I think each one of them is appropriate for what they were used for. What I think I did well and at the same time think that I could've improved, were the melodies, especially the bass melody. I really liked it, and I think it was perfect for the style and for the mood of the game, but I could have added more to the loop itself, although I really liked it nonetheless.

However, even though the sound does fit the game quite well in my opinion, when I was planning it felt like it was going to fit it even better. I thought about using piano sounds as the looping melodies, but instead I ended up going with bass and guitar. Maybe if I would have chosen the piano instead, it would've turned out better in the end, but still, I'm honestly quite happy with the outcome of the bass and guitar, especially bass.

Another couple of improvements that I could make would be turn up the sound of the "souls" (the picking-up-shards-sound-effect-thing), since in my opinion was too loud before I changed it, and in the end I turned it down a bit too much I think; and last but not least, I think the guitar was a bit too loud, and the rhythm was kind of failing. If you actually pay attention, you can easily notice that the timing is off in the guitar melody in the first like 3 notes, but no biggie.

In conclusion, and keeping in mind that I've never done this before, I'm very happy with what I've done and I'm confident that I will get a good grade.