Games and Sound
World Of Warcraft
The new (ish) massively multiplayer online role-playing game, played by millions everyday. Sucking wallets, savings accounts, and relationships dry on a daily basis - WoW has become very popular, and is experiencing growth in popularity everyday. Hollywood commercial cameos, online events, gigantic expansions a couple times a year ELVES IN MRS.CLAUSE BIKINI'S - WoW knew it was going to be huge, and knew it would be around for a while. The sad but true fact about WoW is that for any "Sound Guy" out there it's a bit of a let down. WoW has made blizzard lots of money; Blizzard has lots of money to begin with. Why is it that when I start my new character and set out against the wild - as soon as I come across the first Grizzly bear in my adventure, I am insulted with a grizzly bear growl sound effect, taken straight out of a Sound Idea's library.
Why? It's not like the sound was taken and effected, or mashed up, or anything - it was simply added to the game. And what a great game it is, but Blizzard is not the only company out there doing this...
Half Life (x)
Valve software, the company that many game industry individuals would amputate genitals to work for, myself included. Developers of the Source engine, Havoc Physics, and one of the best serial FPS games in history. I personally have played each and every episode of half-life and almost crapped my pants several times during each and every session. I remember now some of the suspense segments in the original game: valve did a great job of scaring us despite great processing roadblocks, and low poly-count. That being said, sound hasn't always been their forte. A lot of their sound effects are pretty lack luster, though generally speaking, are actually designed and not just library cuts. This goes a long way - any film sound guy (such as myself) will tell you that as soon as the audience recognizes a sound - you have taken them out of the context of the film - and into the experience of sitting in a theatre, watching a film. Well itfs the same thing with half-life, specifically half-life 2. For the most part ? the guns sound pretty blah, and there are a lot of copy and pasted effects - doors buttons etc. There were several times where the story, action and dynamics of the game play were making my knees shake, and then all of the sudden I open a door, hear Sound Ideas vol.35 take 22 and I gain the sudden urge to have a cigarette, use the bathroom, and make myself a snack. Now - not all is lost; what valve (in my opinion) lost in terms of sound design credibility, they gained in terms of implementation. The engine has a very good in game mixer, and very good DSP (reverb, roll-offs etc), which help make those repetitive, sounds more realistic. I have heard that valve makes use of some granular synthesis but I cannot confirm this. Half-life, in my opinion is one of the few games that get the world right. Everything sounds like it is where it is, there is the right amount of reverb - the EQ actively changes according to distance and room size etc. Kudos half-life - you sound kind of real, now BioShock on the other hand....
-
Tutorials
- Torque Game Builder
- Graphics
- Audio
Recent Updates
New Website
Tutorials
Recent Updates
Version 3.0 of MIG is here, finally. We’ve been working for the past three months to bring you this new site with some new features.
Sync HD Video Tutorial
It's the old tutorial remade into an hour long HD 1280X720 video tutorial so you can see every bit of code.
TSIT 1.3 Update
The best way to learn how to make games with TGB just got an upgrade.