Ambient pressure, the flare gun

This week I have mostly been working on adjusting all the sounds that I have made during this course. Much time was spent on adjusting the sound for the Flare gun audio. Today I will describe how I constructed its sound.

So a short description of our game: One plays as a diver who is supposed to explore shipwrecks deep down into the ocean. The goal is to find a specific amount of mutated algae in order to complete the game. While doing so the player has to avoid mutated fish that hunts the avatar.

One of the first sound effects that I made on the project was the audio for the flare gun, which the diver uses in order to light up the map.

The sound that I created was supposed to represent the shoot action. This sound was activated as soon as avatar pulls trigger of the gun. The first thing that happens when this action takes place, is that the projectile leaves the gun at a high-speed. In order to develop this I had to do some research on what it actually would sound like when a real flare gun was fired. But none of the realistic sounds was appealing to me, it did not match the rest of the game. So started on exaggerating the sounds.

The first thing I recorded was me hitting a paper roll. It took a while to develop a technic, but finally the sound that I was searching for appeared, but it did not sound as much as I wanted it to do. This was done to depict the sound of the projectile leaving the tube-shaped gun.

To enhance the sound I added some “exciter” plugins to make it both louder and sharper, along with various equalizers. A kick drum was added above earlier mentioned, which would enhance the ignition effect.
The second audio track consists of actual rocket recordings, available on the hard drive that I got from our teacher Finn Engström. At the same time as the rocket sound occurs, a bubble effect kicks in. This was added to represent the projectile under water. On these two effects I added both filter and equalizer plugins. At the start and the end of the whole track a light match sound was added. This increased the ignition effect. The program that I made all the sounds in is Logic Pro X.

You can listen to the sound, along with some other sounds that I have made during the course, by clicking this link:

Ambient pressure voice logs

This week I have been working on developing a radio voice for our game Ambient pressure. The voice supports the narrative and gives the player a quick tutorial of what the goal is. It also gives a hint of the dangers the diver is about to face.

For this artefact, me and David Crosson wrote a script of what the voice was supposed to say. The first time that the voice appears is in the first level. In summary it tells the player that the diver locates itself deep down into the ocean. It also tells the player that he is supposed to gather all the samples in order to complete the game. For you who does not know about the game goal: You are supposed to avoid monster fish in order to collect all the samples required for the completion of the game.

We booked a studio that is available here in our school. We plugged the microphone into the computer and started recording. The program that we worked in is Logic Pro X.

The first step was to design a suitable character behind the voice. We recorded different tracks where both David and I read the script, currently we are using David’s. When we did this, we tried to speak in different ways, different voices and dialects. We ended up with 12 different types of voices. From these tracks we select the ones we thought where the most interesting. We selected a voice we simply called “crazy”. This was a distinct character that we both thought would fit in our game because it had a light voice that would stand out from the rest of the quite dark sounds. The character is quite humouritsitc, a bit crazy and naïve.

The track that represents the character consists of various plugins. Plugin number one is called Soundshifter. This is used to pitch the voice. Number two is “Ekramer DR” which is a plugin for equalisation such as number three: Manny Marruqqin. The last plugin is called “One knob drive” and is used for giving distortion to the voice and add to the radio effect.

The sound shifter is adjusted so it pitches the voice to a slightly higher level than the original voice, which makes it sound a little bit like claptrap from the Borderlands series, though his voice is a very high tune: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKLXOkiEhIg

The equalisation is adjusted so that the higher frequencies are more pronounced, which makes it easier to distinguish from the rest of the audio.

Here is a sample that you can listen to if you want:https://soundcloud.com/mundari/radio-voice

The Audio for Ambient Pressure

The game that our group chose is called: Ambient Pressure. In summary, this is a game about a diver that explores shipwrecks in order to find samples while he is hunted by mutated fish. My main area of responsibility is the audio.

These last couple of weeks I have been working on the soundtrack along with other sound effects for our game. The soundtrack consists of different sounds that I have put together in order to create an atmosphere that fits our aesthetic goals. The game contains no music and is only based on different sound effects. The reason for this was that the group agreed on that it would not contribute to our aesthetic goal if we had music in it. By removing the music, we thought it would give a more tensed and thrilling atmosphere.

When I started to work on the track, the first thing I did was to imagine what it would feel like if I was the one in the game. Questions like What do I feel, what do I hear?etc. Where answered during this part of the brainstorming process.

The Program that I created the track in is Pro Logic X. The main soundtrack consists of: whale moaning, breathing, atmospheric synths, bubbling, base impacts, percussions etc. By putting all of these together it created the atmosphere that I imagined during the brainstorming.

A key principle that I always had to follow during the creation was that the other sound effects would stand out from the main audio so that they would not blend in with rest of the sound. With this in mind I created the soundtrack so that it would not disguise the audio that came from other parts of the game like shooting and enemy roars.

The track is based on three key elements: rhythmic breathing, whale moaning and bubbling. These three features are the most important elements of the track. The breathing represents the avatar just as the sound of the water. The echoing moaning represents the endless ocean which I thought would enhance to the feeling of vulnerability and loneliness that we want the player to feel.

The graphics and the physics in the game are not according to a realistic concept. The sounds are on the other hand closer to reality than the rest of the game. The reason for not adapting the audio to the comic and unrealistic theme, which the game has, is because it created an interesting contrast that would appear to be advantageous to the horror factor that we wanted to achieve.

Here is a sample: https://soundcloud.com/mundari/ambient-main-track-example