Friday, December 16, 2011

Small preview of Honmas music

Here is a small preview of one of the songs that will fill newerth with holiday cheer.
This one is called: Engineer's Shenanigans. (this is not the entire song)
Edit: I've added song preview of one of the more gothic christmas songs that will soon be heard in HoN: Shisha Odori.

Preview

Preview 2

There will be all sorts of genres for this holiday, from jolly orchestral music to gothic danny elfman sort of music, blues and even rock and roll. So hold onto your loincloth, you'll soon be in for a treat.

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Volume within games

I find myself many times wondering when I design sounds and implement them, whether it should be loud or not.

In films, we normally mix by the philosophy of just using the audio that is important to the situation, like dialogue. Dialogue is important because that is where the story is truly told and understood. Without dialogue, it is usually up to our imagination to tell the bigger story. Sometimes though, a visual element can tell a story far greater than that of spoken word, but it is still dialogue and has to be emphasised in some way.

The point in the end though, is what should be loud and what should not be.

Dialogue should always be louder than anything going on at the time - unless it is intentional to muffle the spoken word, but then it is no longer simple dialogue, it is dialogue-by-design.

Dialogue can easily be narrowed down to just lines on a script being said, but actually, sound design, foley and music, can also become dialogue, because it can tell a story if used correctly.

The issue in a movie is often facilitated by a producer and a director who got the final word on said audio mix, but they will often understand that dialogue is important and let the sound mixer do what he\she was hired to do.
But how does this matter in games? How do we mix for games?

Games are really just terrible mediums for mixing because a game is normally not on rails. When it isn't, you have to think about what the player will do and how the player will interact with the world.

Normally, the player will do something that will just make a programmer cry. But when they do that, we as sound mixers and designers, have to make sure we don't ruin their experience when they decide:

"I want to kill that orc by using a drawbridge as a catapult and fire a sword in their face. NOT by using a sword the intended way."

So everything has to interact perfectly; they expect to hear the drawbridge, the sword flying in the air, it hitting the orc and the orc crying in pain. If they don't, the experience is less rewarding...though amusing nonetheless.

Then there is the time when you are mixing and you think:

"Well, I don't really wanna hear my own footsteps the entire game. But I do expect that, when my foot hit those wood boards, there will be a sound of someone walking on boards of wood."

Then you have to put that in, but you cannot and should not - make it so loud that you are aware of it consciously, only sub-consciously.

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Saturday, August 27, 2011

Geomancer, I choose you!

After lots of work lately, I finally had some time to start writing a blog post about some of the additional sounds I've done for Heroes Of Newerth.
Though I wrote a Master of Arms blog post, I decided to put it on hold.

A video was filmed when I recorded gunshots, but I have yet to receive the tape from the man who did the video recording. Once I have it, Master of Arms' sound creation blog post will be up.
But lets begin on Geomancer:

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Master of Arms pending

I won't be posting this week about the sound work for master of arms. I am working on a film here in Norway and also going to do voice overs in a film and a video game (not s2 related)

Here's the spotlight of Master of arms:



You can get the remixed song here:
http://t.co/lBCOlRH right click > save as

I think there will be another spotlight at a later time which Arney did the sound design for.

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Part 1: "Monkey see, Monkey do."

Before I begin to talk about the sound design of Monkey king,
I'd like to give my condolences to everyone in my country, who lost or had to go through the insanity and evil, of the terror attack that took place 22nd of July here in Norway.
I personally did not know anyone who got hurt or killed, but I am still shocked it took place.
If you don't know what I am talking about, you can visit this site, it should give you a better insight.
This is not the correct place to discuss philosophy, but neither religion, politics nor skin color makes one evil, only what one does.
Now with that out of the way, let's talk about the Monkey king:

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Prologue: The sounds of Two Masters.

Here is an upcoming sound for an upcoming hero, can you guess which one?


I am writing a huge blog post(might be split in two\three) on the sound work of Flint Boomstick, the drunken master and Monkey king!

Cya then!

Monday, July 18, 2011

Recording Acid

I am working on an unannounced game with a group of developers (not S2,)
doing the ambiances and so on.
Right now in the game, we are working a sequence in which a character is submerged into acid and the view goes under with him.

I was wondering how the hell am I going to make this sort of ambiance, I couldn't use underwater sound, that is too calm and pleasant. So, thinking about it, I came up with the next best thing, Cola!

Monday, July 11, 2011

Part 1: The whisper from the past

Big update this Friday, I will be doing this blog in two separate posts dealing with two{three] different heroes:

Let us start with the biggest one; the new hero: Revenant.

Saturday, July 9, 2011

The small but silly work on Phantom Defiler


First but not least....

Allo everyone!

I thought it be interesting to create a blog about the development of various sound escapades that I go on, for the video games I help develop (and I might do some side stuff too like movies and such, maybe, not sure.)

Now keep in mind that I am under NDA and can only talk about what's been revealed.
I will also dwell into sound mods I create for various games.
Oh and of course, I will show things I've recorded in the process.
You can catch me on twitter too: Soundwizard

Alright, so let us get started!