Dev diary
Hi AtO community!
My name is Magnus Chirgwin and I’m here to talk about audio and give you a glimpse of what we’re working on! But this is my first dev diary so before we dive in, who the heck is this new Magnus guy?!
I’m a freelance sound designer and composer! I live in Sweden with my partner and her daughter, with the nearest and dearest to me only a stone’s throw away and if you were to strap a GPS on my head you’d probably get bored pretty quickly looking at where I’ve gone haha! I’m not a travelled man, although I’m a big fan of backyard adventuring (shoutout to Beau Miles), grabbing the canoe, camping equipment and heading out on the lakes nearby or just catching the small everyday moments where I can get them.
Before I chose to go freelance with sound and music, I worked in healthcare as a physiotherapist for 10 years, working together with you (or your loved ones) on anything from broken bones to vertigo and with traumatized fugitives of war. Yeah I know, a real u-turn from that to audio haha, so why big change? There were a couple of different reasons but the main one was that the idea of working with music and sound eventually became too large to ignore and I was simply curious if I could do it. I’m glad I did the shift although the previous 10 years taught me a lot about working with people and that will always be important, you won’t be able to convince me otherwise. Oh and yeah I workout a lot, take care of your bodies people, it really does keep the score and never lies.
In the 6-7ish years I’ve worked as a sound designer and composer I’ve had time to work on awesome projects (ranging from mobile games to 3D dome-cinema films), experience burnout (yep, even with my background I’m not immune!), meet fantastic people and re-evaluate what is truly important to me.
Anyway, onto Across the audio-belisk (I’m so sorry), let’s go!
There’s been a lot of community feedback regarding the sound design and I think it’s very justified. Yep, I think I’ve read it all and it was clear that a lot of you experienced a mismatch between visuals and audio as well as the lack of variation! Here are some examples of what you’ve said:
“...I do agree it'd be nice if more enemies had custom sounds and not the same generic grunt when taking damage.”
“All the enemy female sounds are the mage, all the pig sounds are the same, all the wolf, etc... there isn't an individualization of character audio and i think the game would really benefit from a more diverse audio that sets the hero's apart from the enemy.”
“are more diverse enemy hit sounds going to be added in the future? right now I noticed so many enemies have the same 'grunt' noise”
“yo the magma spikes from ignidoh make human sounds when they die make em do rock sounds or something”
“...its always the same sound playing on some enemies which makes it weird. Usually games will have 3-5 slight variations for each sound so its more natural.”
“A lot of the SFX get kind of bland to listen to on repeat.”
“I remember every monster having the same "murp" sound when hit for example. Has this improved a bit?”
“it sounds like someone with no energy at all just said "baah" into the microphone.”
So that’s what we’re working on at the moment to try and fix! I’ve been working on AtO since mid-january and I’m working on a more solid foundation to build upon, polishing and fixing already existing sounds in the game (like making sure the volume is a bit smoother overall and making sounds less harsh and piercing) as well as adding new ones with more variation! Here, have a listen to a comparison between the old and new stuff!
Old Sheep Sound
New Sheep Sound
Old Magnus Sound
New Magnus Sound
I’d like to mention that a huge challenge for me in this project is the amount of heroes and monsters, there are just so many and creatures take time to get right. Here’s a screenshot of my supersession for the NPC creatures in the first zone, Senenthia, alone!
So it really stretches my soundbank but also my own voice, I can only make so many noises myself and one way to get more mileage out of my resources is through pitch. Like pitching my voice down for bigger monsters, but you lose a lot of high frequency sound when you do that with regular microphones. So how do you get around that? Well you throw money at a really expensive microphone that can record sounds a lot higher than us humans can hear, so when I pitch it down it works so much better!
…and here’s an example of that where I’ve used this to pitch down my voice and some creaky wood for Ylmer!
Another aspect that I find essential when sound designing creatures and monsters is layering different sounds, especially when they’re non-humanoid where we, as listeners, don’t have a clear expectation of what it should sound like. For example, let’s have a look at what the heck kind of a noise a living slime would do if you hit it! I chose this one because you could probably try it at home! (please record and send in your DIY slime monsters, it would make me so happy)
I’m talking about this guy, this is my take on the sound it might make
The sound is made up of three layers.
Punching a wet towel
Me gargling yoghurt (yep)
240304_devdiary_audio_npc_slime_layer_02.wav,
Using a plunger in some melon juice-squash
I then try to fit each layer into its own slot on the timeline so that they don’t compete too much with each other and risk turning it all into noise! So for example, here the wet towel punch starts it all off while I fade the yoghurt gargling in (leaving space for the towel) and then try to fill out the end with some bubbly melon juice. They all have, more or less, a time to shine.
A risk when working with layers though is that it’ll sound like 3 separate things, so I try to choose source material that fit well together or sometimes (often) I wrestle the sounds into submission by using EQ, compression or other effects like tremolo to make them play nice and “glue” them together.
That’s all I can show and talk about…for now!
I enjoyed writing this diary and I enjoy working on this project. Both the devteam and paradox are treating me well and I feel lucky to be part of it all!
Lastly we want to let you know that once these sound changes has been implemented you'll be given a toggle in your options allowing you to choose if you want to use the old sound or the new! You can change this setting at any time!
The world is a turbulent place right now and I hope you’re ok. Take care <3
/Magnus