Kyle aka Anthrocarbon - music and sfx
Ahoyhoy, Kyle here.
2024 was a great palate cleanser on the music side, with me re-listening to many songs I thought were nearly ready only to notice many irritating and distracting samples and tones that require a little more than polish. Fortunately, Jay supplied me with a juicy list of required sound effects, so I was able to “oh shit” myself and forget all about that lot for a while.
Working in a DAW to create SFX has been far less expedient than I expected at the outset, not due to a lack of tools, but an overdependence on or habit of turning to filters and wrapper tricks as a first port of call. I also found that my usual approach toward balancing and pacing was suitable for music, but didn’t translate particularly well to one shot sounds. SFX which are expected to be heard throughout the game can be clustered in bunches as often as heard alone, and unlike a song SFX must sound coherent no matter which one or group of them are played in whatever order are necessary.
Distortion, bit crushing, equalising for sharpness or backgroundising, all very quickly became distracting and punished the player for taking actions. "Old school" sounds might well be a style, but amongst elements rendered at modern fidelity, the ugly truth emerged – I was imitating retro sounds without the requisite experience of working with 8 and 16 bit limitations like the progenitors at ID, Apogee, and Cygnosis. (Not to mention adding constant revisions to the list of sounds grew the channel count beyond expectations.)
And so I went back to where I should have been doing most of the work, which is where every Foley artist will turn with glee; smacking and scrunching a bunch of random shit from around the house in front of a mic. (Annoying bird chirps outside the window and all.)
Among the most difficult of sounds to pin down, and unsurprisingly one of the most critical, has been the basic exploding of rockets on surfaces and against enemies. For something one might imitate vocally to a recognisable proficiency, making a good ‘bang’ or ‘pop’ that doesn’t sound like it came from somewhere else had me grumbling (and napping) at the keyboard for a couple days. A creator’s choice – as I see it – in situations like this, is to go with something iconic and memorable, or generic and forgettable. I believe I’m capable of iconic sounds, but just not quite there yet, so I’ll carry on as many times as necessary until Jay says a sound is just right. Any sound heard constantly throughout the game must be just right, lest the start-to-finish gameplay feel a little bit wrong.
SFX is an area which suffers from a “that’ll do” mentality, which can sometimes be an unintended result of “oh shit” planning. Another pain point is the temptation to try and infuse a bit of awesomeness or coolness into sounds that don’t really call for it. Just like world-class BGM, sometimes the fact a soundscape compliments a scene so perfectly that it makes the scene come alive – then seems to evaporate after the audience moves on, indicates that everything was just right. Sound effects are difficult entities to carry narratives and moods on their own, but in something like a video game where they are the environmental information feedback, the artist responsible has a duty to produce a language for the world within the frustum to speak through.
SFX are far more challenging than I bargained for, and I worry about them far more than I think I ought to. Ultimately, though, whether they are the best possible sounds or not, they belong to Star Child in whole. New game; new assets. Star Child already looks and plays like nothing else; I’ll have it sounding is unique as it deserves and nothing less.
Now, I’ll allow myself a sound recess to revise an unfinished song I recovered.
The key samples I accidentally purged from my bank have been found in my backup archive after almost 12 months, and I get to try I remember what all these knobs did!