This week I have decided to briefly go over the process in creating the ambient sounds for the Slums level.
So What Exactly Do You Do When You Design Sound?
Sound design involves taking sounds you have recorded or sounds specifically purchased from libraries and creating entirely new sounds with them. I try to record sounds as much as possible when I can, but in Grimoire: Manastorm’s case I am going to libraries pretty often due to time constraints. There are also often times if you are freelancing sound design that you just can’t get access to certain sounds such as a heavy explosion or what not. To simplify the process, it usually involves taking 3 to 5 different sound sources and using pieces of each. There is a bunch of equalization (cutting frequencies 90% of the time!) and processing with delays, reverbs, flangers, phasers, etc involved.
Designing the Slums Level Ambience
Ambiences can be very difficult to create, especially in regards to a multiplayer game. The ambience needs to not stick out quite as much as it would in a single player game. However, you still want to the ambience to show some character and to give the level some life. Since this is a multiplayer game there will be a lot of sounds going off that I can’t exactly control. Due to this, I have to really watch the different frequencies that the ambient sounds are hitting. And in just like any other ambience I cannot have anything sticking out too heavily or overpowering sounds in the forefront. I also need to figure out ways to keep sound asset sizes small and yet at the same time figure out ways to have them appear to be occurring at random times so the player doesn’t get annoyed or tired of them. You can usually accomplish this by having one or multiple basic loops going nonstop and also by having individual very short one shot sounds that randomly choose from a bank when to play.
In the overall picture of audio I try to think of everything I design as background, middleground, and foreground (very similar when designing music). Ambiences are no different in this situation. While the ambience itself may be described as a background when compared to spells being cast or voice over (foreground), the ambience also has it’s own background, middleground, and foreground elements layered within.
https://soundcloud.com/shrackattack/grimoire-manastorm-slums-ambience-early-first-pass
For this first pass of the Slums ambience I have used multiple different wind sources, night-time insects, flies buzzing around the ears occasionally, and different short drones in the distance. You also hear a church bell off in the distance and the faint sounds of a fire which are both one shot sound sources coming from a specific point on the map. Since this is just the first pass, there is still a lot of equalization and cleaning up to be done. For example, I will likely end up cutting out more bass frequencies from the above ambience since many of the spells need to be bass heavy. Another solution would be to just cut out one of the heavier wind sources entirely to create more space. Designing anything is usually a lot of trial and error over time. You begin with a basic sketch and add and subtract until you get to a point where you realize “Hey, this is actually pretty good!”
I’ll be doing Grimoire: Manastorm devblogs a lot more frequently now as I have a lot of time freed up. In the next devlog I’ll show final passes for the Slums and the Ruins maps.
-Daniel