Game AudioResourcesGamasutra.com, Game Devek^jer mag-

azine's Web component, provides tech-

niail futures, profiles, product reviews

;ind networking resources in all areas

of game production, from audio and

visual design to legal issues.

The Game Audio Network Guild,

akaAudioG.A.N.G.fwww.audiojjang.

org) provides a community for net-

working and evangelizing audio

issues, as well as fostering education.

The group also hosts annual industry

awards.

Girls In Games (www.gjrlsingames.

com) seeks to attract and promote

women in the areas of design, art,

audio, programming and production

within the global game industry.

Tiie Interactive Audio Special In-

terest Group (www.iasig.org) helps

developers of audio software, hard-

ware and content exchange ideas

about interactive sound, and provides

re.sources via standards creation and

maintenance, research reports and

recommended practices.

Bu fine40.23 million:Units sold of Super

Mario Bros, for Nintendo,

best-selling videogame

of all time

29 million;Units sold of The Ea-

gles: Their Greatest Hits

1971-1975. best-selling

album of all time

BannepYeap POP Game Biz

Total game rardware salesI Software (including PC) salesI Accessory sales

Recently released 2006 U.S. retail sales figures

show record numbers for the game industry, and the

5tats just keep rising. Last year's sales for games

and consoles totaled close to $12.5 billion; adding

in PC games brings tbe grand revenue total to J13.5

billion—up 18 percent over the previous year.

The long-anticipated release of next-gen consoles

and continued strength of Sony PlayStation 2 sales

accounted for a strong rise in hardware revenues, with sales numbers coming

in at $4.6 billion—a 42.8-percent increase over 2005, witb a wbopping 87.5-

percent increase in console hardware revenues alone. Software sales continue

to account for tbe biggest chunk of tbe overall pie, however, bringing in $7.4

billion. And tbere's no end in sight: The industry is predicted to grow to $46.5

billion by 2010.

Who's Playing?when mo.st people think of gamers, the image of idle teenage boy.s often

comes to mind, but the actual demographics may .surprise you. Check oui

these stats horn the Entertainment .Software Association:

AA Average age of a videogame player

'- Percent of heads of households who play computer games

Years an adult gamer has been playing videogames

. Percent of women over IK who play videogames

Average age of a videogame buyer

fe> Percent of Americans over 50 who play videogame.s

0 . 0 Hours per week gamers spend playing videogames

Sources: RIAA, Gulnness World Records, the NPD Group, Nielsen Entertainmenl. Plunkett Research,Entertainment Software Association

1 /

uU

MW, March 2007 • wwiv.mixonline.com

The videogame industry is entering a new era, an era where technology and creativity

will fuse to produce some of the most stunning entertainment of the 21st century.

Decades from now, cultural historians will look hack at this time and say it is when

efinition of entertainment changed forever/

—Dougias Lowenstein, president. Entertainment Software Association

Bame Developers Conference Hits 5.F.

Want a piece of the $13 biiiion

game industry? Network with tbe

taleni liehind kKby's hottest titles

and teclinokigy at The Game De-

velopers ConfereiKC 2007 (www.

gdconf.com), taking phte tlu.s

month in San Frand.sco. GDC is

the world's largest game-creation

event, attracting more than 12,500 attendees annually; the awiference, slated

for March 5 to 9, frffers more than 300 seminars, lectures and networking

events tor ctevek^Ders, publishers and other content creatOTS for PC, consc^

and moI'Mie g:in:ie phitforn^s. !f you're kxiking to Ixiild up your game audk)

cliops, this is the place to learn: An expanded audio track offers such sessions

as "PS3: Audk) Development From the Trenches," "The Art of Orchestration"

ami "Mobik; Audio Has Gone Berserk!"

Events run into the wee hours with the 7th annual Game Devdopers

Choice AwartLs, 9tli annual Inck^penck-nt Games Festival, the always festive

Aiiiiio G.AN.G. Avt'ards and the wiltily popukir Video Games Live concert

event. (See CHir profile on page 78.)

Check out our expanded Gt3C covefage. including convention tips, San Francisco city gukteongoing reports and blogs straight from the show floor at www.mixonline.com/gcJc.

When it comes to favorite

game genres, fast-paced action

games are the most popular,

followed by sports and racing.

Surprisingly, fighting games fall

behind rote-playing and family

entertainment in popularity.

Got a PocketFull ot Quarters. . .And a LighterIn 1983, Bally/Midway developed

an arcade game to coincide with

the release of a new album by a

hot rock band. In tbe game, band-

members had to retrieve stolen

instruments wbile avoiding alien

obstacles and return to their

spaceship in time to make their

intergaiactic gig. Altbough most

of tbe game sounds were gener-

ated by cbips. during a bonus

"concert" round, an actual analog

cassette deck inside tbe cabinet

played a loop of a smash bit from

tbe album. If you can name tbe

game, email mixeditorial@mix

online.com. Correct entries will

enter in a random drawing to win

a CD box set from this band. ,

unifUf.mlxonline.com • March 2007, MIX 47

GAM EA u DID

LOCKED AND LOADED

Crafting the Sounds for 'Halo 3* With Thousands of Dialog Unes,An Evil Alien Armada and a Cast of Superhuman Soldiers

I t's no secret that the gaming woridhas chained by leaps and boundsover the past decade. We've all heardthe comparison: With today's high-

def consoles, games are moving cbserand closer to having the same look andfeel as big-budget feature films. And atthe front of this burgeoning entertain-ment revolution are the minds liehintltlie massively successful Halo series forthe Microscrfi Xbox 360—and soon forWindows Vista. Even if you're not a hard-core videogame fanatic, you're probablyfamiliar with the Halo name—the om-nipresent media canpaigns have madeit pretty hard to ignore. With a storylirKthat rivals the best parts of movies likeAlieyis, Terminator 2, Independence Dayand the like, the series has garneredlegions of devoted fans and is easily oneof the most successful video game fran-chises in history. So when it came timeto start work on the third iastallmentof Master Chiefs epic battle agiinst theevil Covenant, the development team atBur^^ Studios knew that they had theirwork cut out for them. (Note: AlthoughHalo 3 was originally expected out thisspring, the release date has been pushedback; the current release date, accordingto creators, is "sometime this year." Con-sider this a "sneak peak" window intothe game development.)

Begun as a basement operation backin 1991, Bungie Studios (www.bungie.net) has been responsible for some oftlie biggest vide<^ame titles of the pastdecade, including Marathon. Myth and,of course, the original incarnation ofHalo: Combat EtK>li>ed. The team gotits start creating titles for the Mac plat-form, and after a number erf" successfulreleiises. the company caught the atten-tion (rf Microsoft, which acquired Bungieto create titles for its then-forthcomingXbox game console. Though still aboutique operation, Bungie is now a

full-service game development housewith a con^lete staff of programmers,artists and sound designers. Headingup the audio group at Bur^ie are audiodirector and composer Marty O'Donnell,audio lead Jay Weinland and engineer C.Paul Johnson. The members of the teamare all accomplished musicians, compos-ers and sound desigriers. O'Donnell, forinMarKe, got his start writing commercialjingles, including the classic theme forFlinLstones Vitamins.

TURN AND BURNNearly all of the audio content develop-ment for Halo 3 took place at Bungieheadquarters in Kirkland, Wash. Theaudio department is housed in a re-cently coni^leted custom facility, whichcomprises three Pro Tools HD-equippedstudios and a centrally placed voice-overbooth. "We went strictly for functionalityas far as games go, so we're simikir to amusac post house or anyone that doescommercials," says Weinland. "We've tai-lored our stuff to what really worits wellfor games. So we're all surround sound.We're all running Genelec speakers ofvarying sizes. We're all on Pro Tools HD

rigs, one HD3 and two HD2 rigs. We usePeak heavily, and we're all atx>ut WavesDiamond.

"We also have some unique pieces ofgear that aren't present in most people'sstudios, including a Dolby DPS64, whichis basically a multichannel audio decod-er." Weinland continues. "U alk>ws you totake the optical (Xitput of the Xlxjx andbring it into Pro Tools as six channels ofAES/EBU. So that's a piece of gear thatyou don't find in a normal music studio.It's the linchpin of our rigs, as it allows usto monitor the Xbox digitally. Other thanthat we kxjk like a norm;il post Ixnise.Right now I'm kxiking at a straight-up 2-channel Av;ik>n mic pre. We re recortiingvoice-over. We're sometimes recordinginstruments. We're doing Fokiy. We'redoing all the same kinds of stuff thatcommercials and movies are ck)ing. butwe just happen to then hiive to t;ike itthose extra nine yards to get it into thegame engine."

"We have three full-blown, nic-ely Iso-lated 5.1 recording studios, one for eachdi us," O'Donnell adds. "1 have someextra music gear hete, so I can con:^x)semusic and get it re;idy. Sometimes I do all

I MIX, March 2007 • www.mixonlinecom

BY KOBERT MANSON

< )f the music here, and sometimes 1 just getit ready for taking out to a live orchestraand rtxording ikit in the Se.tttle area. Jayand I iioth have .studi(>.s tliat are similarlytM iuipped. ami fn>m the \ ';ly our desks sit.! kx)k one way out through a window toCHir voice-over isolation booth, and thereLS a studio on the txher side of that, whichis Jay's. So he cm kxik into the samelxM>lh, We cm run Foley and voice-overand indivitlual recording .ses.*)ions usingtliiit Ixxith. And either one erf us can runtile se.s.sit>n from our indiviciual nxiiTLS, .sowe c-an work pretty indeix'ndently. Its ajiretty nice little setup."

ONE PIECE AT A TIMEAs i.s the case wiili many of today's.sprawUr^, cinematic games, the devekjp-ment prcxress is a bit-by-Ni process wherethe audio team can only create audio asthe arUsts and pn>gnm]iTiers finish orfinnlize individiLiI levels, characters andthe like. "We liave lots cif areiis in thegames like weapons and amliiances andmiichines and .so on. And we can't reallytiesign something until someone else isdone." Weinland explains. "So we reallyinterface with the people in production;in».i witti the art leads ;md .so tm U) figureout when their assets are going to coniiennline, .so that we can then put our littlesprinkle of magic feiry dust on it."

Bungie's Jay Weinland and Marty O'OonrwU

"The implementiition side of it is reallyhuge," O'Donnell .says, "it s not just about.We need a soimd." It's a\\ jlx)ut. Here istliis vehicle or here is this weapon, whichha.s many different component.s and manydifferent ways it needs \o act in a 3-D au-tlio environment.' The lesson ie-amed hereat Bungie is that the audio guys need tobe in from the very incepHion."

Although much of the audio con-tent—like music and Ixickground ambi-ances—is created c(,)mp]etely in the ProTools environment tliroujjh the use ofS3mple libraries, soft syntlis and moresound design-oriented tooLs. a great dealof the sounds are actvially recorded onloc-ation. The team employed both tlieirown portable recording rig as well assome rather creative approaches to re-cording in the field. "To start with, wehave a very brge collection of commer-cial libraries that we will hit as needed,"Weinland explains. "But if we need par-ticular stuff, we have a couple of SoundDevice recorders, the 722 and the 744T.tliat can tie linked together to do up tosix channels. We have the Apc:^e Mini-Me and some mobile pre's that can becharged off a portable battery system. .Sowe can sit off in a field somewhere andrec-ord eight. 10, 12 channels, if we in-clude bptops in tile equation, and recordwhatever we need. We were im'olved in agun-recording .session with another MGSgroup that was Halo-ish, and we basicallyshared some erf" those resources.

"A couple months ago. I needed a

nice exhaust sound for something thatwe were working on." Weinhind contin-ues. "So i strapped u microphone on theback of a friend's Fiero here th;it has dual.six-inch pipes on the bade, and we drovearound town and recx.>Ried what weneeded. We record stuff as necessary."

One of tlie mcxst involved aspects erfthe audio development was the castingand recording of the voice actors, whoseperfbrmances are a mapr element erf theg;ime as they not only add to the overallrealism of the game. Ixit also provideplayers with crucial information. And un-like a film where things follow a predict-able, line-ar progression, the devel(>p)ershave to record ami edit enough dialogto account for the nearly limitless waysa player can move through the game.On Hah 2. O'Donnell and Weinhmd hadto contend with more than 16.00() linesof dialog, and with the increased audiocapabilities of the Xbox 360. casting thevoice talent and nwnaging the tlialogwere even more involved, all the waythrough integnition.

"That's a big one. I've been doingthis for a while in terms of castingvoices." says O'Donnell- "1 used to docommercial work where I knew tons ofvery talented voice actors. And when Istarted working with Bungie, we prettymuch cast from the Chicago ptxd of tal-ent. Then when we moveti out here andstarted working on Halo, we were inSeattle and went through a big castingcall, and we've gotten a bunch of really

wwiv.mixonline.com • March 2007. MIX 49

LOCKED AND LDADEG

good Scalllc actors to be part of oiir sUible.And on Halo 2. we went to Hollywood;inc] j>ot some people that we thought itw(3uld always be fun to have who turnedoul to be Halo fans and wanied to workwith us. We've got actors from Chicago,Seattle and Los Angeles in the game. Andthere is a company in Los Angeles calledBlind l.ij hl who has helped us qiiile a bitwith casting, especially in Hollywood andcontracts and studio booking time and allsort.s of .stuff."

THE GHOST IN THE MACHINEAside frcim crafting the atlual sounds andmusic for the game, the audio team has tocontend with how tlie audio will changeand react to game play. "We use in-housetools," explains Wcinland. "One whichhandles all of our data and any applicableparameters—volume and pitch variation,EQ, weighting, distance attenuation valuesetc.—and another for populating soundsin the environment, such as ambient andreverb properties, sound points, etc. The

PLAY

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audio p<iriion.'; ofthe.se tcxils -dw tailored forour game and allow us to attach sound tojust about anything in the game.

"Another component is the scripting.system, which among other u.ses allowsMarty lo paint music upon a blank canvas,responding to events during gameplay asdesired," Weinland continues. "He can forinstance highlight a specific evenl or moveto an ALT mix of a piece dependant ongameplay. It's a very subtle yet powerfulsystem that allows the music to flow with thegame without appearing to Ix' 'triggered,' asis ihe case in many videogames."

As players move through the game andinteract with different characters, vehiclesand weapons, the audio has to reflcd physi-cal changes in cnvironitient, and the tmisicand dialog have to be constantly mixed inreal time .so players don't miss importantpieces of information and plot develop-ments. This means that (he audio leam hasto .spend a great deal of time working withthe actual game engine to make sure theaudio is properly implemented.

"I think lliis the key lo making gtxKlgame audio," says O'Donnell. "It's 50 percentthe content and 5t) percent the implementa-tion. That's just a simple way of saying it.It might even lu' more implementation. Wewant to have ihc absolute besi content iostart with because it has to be interactiveand really contn)llable at a very fine, granu-lar level. And that means it's not just aboutgoing out and recording ihe be.st-sountlinggun.shot or Ihe be.si-soiinding engine sound.It's, 'How do you create an engine soundthat is totally interactive, dties all the thingsthai an engine does in real time bul iscompletely controllable by the player?' Andthat takes a lot of horsepower in the Igamelengine itself. There are all kinds of thingswhere you have to know how you're goingto use the physics of the game to have ihesound track a.s perfectly as possible."

"One of tlie things that's pretty coolabout our code engine is that we actu-ally have real-time ducking in our game,"Weinland adds. "So that we can control anyindividual sound, we can control how weduck it under cinematic or other types ofdialog, which is our biggest challenge. If thecharacter is giving you some very importantinformation, and all of a sudden three gR'-nades land at your feet and blow up, youdont want thai line lo gel .stepped on. Wehave real-time parameters where we cansay, 'We'll duck this sound nine dll over twoseconds and let it ramp back up after thedialog is done, over the course of another

SO MTX, March 2007 • www. mixonline.com

.seioncl and ;i half.' So ii atK)ws us real-limecontrol over the volumes in the game, andil helps iLs to make sure ihat we can alwayshear the iniptmant dialog and other thingsthai are iniiToriam."

"Il's almast like designing another artifl-t ial imelligence character wilhin ihe game,;mtl thal's the film mixer who .siiiing off onihe side mixing ihe game in real time." ,say.sO'Donneil.

TOTAL IMMERSIONV( ith A tk'L-p ;ind enveloping plot line, acasi of memorable characters, ultra-realisticgniphics. fluid game play and workl-cla.ssiiuiliichannel audio, playing Huh 3 is aht)U[as dose us one can gel lo stepping insidea blockbuster sci-ti film, and that is exactlywhat the team Bungie set out to create."The unexciting thing is that we're not try-ing to do anything too revolutionary." saysO'Dotinell. "The XIK)X was the first plal-form [hat allowed u.s to do real-time Dolby.surroimd encode/decode, and that's a hugepalette to perform on. So we're just sju-nd-in^ even more time on the details, gellingheller fidelily in every area, having more

voices, more control over how things aremixed, and even the numlier of charac'terson ihe .screen. Tliere will he more uniquevoice actors per level than we've ever had.And .so we need even more robust meansfor choosing what .should he heard. Sothats really what were working on. Wejust hope that when people get in. all ofthe sounds, all the voices, it ju.st .sounds soalive and real that they re not even thinkingahout how real il is,"

"I have a lot of people ask me how

we make our games .sound so gtxKl. andwhat I asualiy come hack to is that it's tiotlike were doing rocket .science," Weinlandconcludes. "We try and make good content.and ihen we're really stinking anal alx)ultrying to make sure that every .single tletaitthat should have a sound makes a sound.That way it just sounds natural. If it .st)undscorrect, then we're happy."

To learn more aliout Hulo.i or the devel-opers at liungie Siudicis, lake a Iciok ai www.hungie.nel. •

um-w.mixonline.com • March 2007, MIX 81

GAM E

Au DID

•? V —fir.. •• ^

SOUND INTEGRATION

The Next Revolution Will Be Piayed

BY MICHAEL HENEIN

A revolution is taking place in the game world;increased budgets, more hardware resources ontarget platforms and more high-level softwareintegnition tools that are being deveioped for

designers and composers. In the past, audio integrationwas once solely within the grasp of programmers. It wa.scommon practice to have a sound designer create contentand then hand it off to a programmer, never to hear it againuntil the game was released. Although this practice stillexists in some ways today, the process is changing as toolsfor designers become more refined.

The increase in overall game budgets has trickled downto the audio production pipeline, as more money is beingspent in all facets, from building quality studios to conduct-ing location recording, Foley work and live music sessions,ensuring that games have a level of sonic quality controlthat rivals film.

The latest generation of game consoles and PCs are allabout sheer processing power. This, of course. tran.slates tomore audio! From voice counts to output channels and ef-fects processing, current game systems have broken downmany barriers that once existed in game audio.

To dig deeper into the issue.s surrounding game audiointegration, we rounded up a group of pros on the frontlinesof audio development for some of the hottest game tities be-ing released. For more on our participants, see "The Players"sidebar on page 54.

If you are asked to create specific sounds, wbat typesof sounds do you primarily focus on? Also, what arethe challenges associated with the sounds that you areprimarily integrating?Phil Hunter: I dealt with the speech files for Carbon, and in-tegration occurred constantly throughout the developmentof the project. The greatest amount of my time is spent de-signing, recording and tweaking the speech. Since Carbonwas launched in six languages, integration did take its tolltoward the end of the project, as each language containedover 11.000 individual lines of dialog.

Robb Rinard: Our company [2XL Games] is currentlyfocused on creating racing titles. The Number One mosttime-consuming audio production element comes fromthe creation of the engine audio. There is a broad rangeof performance across all the different vehicle types we'reincluding, so I've recorded everything from 30 hp go-cartsall the way up to 1,000 hp open-header sand rails. The big-gest problem is the mix getting really thick. It's one thing to

listen to a high-fidelity race car engine by itself. But onceyou surround yourseif with 10 other vehicles, it's challeng-ing to keep the overall mix sounding good and keep theplayer vehicle sitting on top of the mix at all times.Do you have dedicated programmers for audio integra-tion? If so, how often do the designers interact with pro-grammers?

Rinard: Yes, and in our case the audio programmer is alsothe sound designer and field recording person. I've workedon past games where the audio designer was not a program-mer, and that's always a challenge, it's rough when the sounddesigner has a vision for doing something cool in real time,but the programmer doesn't quite understand that vision andis struggling with the implementation.

Our latest challenge has been connecting the vehicle toworld. In last-gen games, the vehicle typically only has anengine sound, but that's not enough to connect the vehicleto the worid in which it exists. Now that we have enoughconsole power and memory, we are adding a host of sec-ondary layers of Foley to the vehicles. These items includea simulation of all the other sounds that the vehicle makesas it moves through the atmosphere, such as tire noise andairflow over the surface of the vehicle. Aiso included aresuspension compression, bottoming out, sliding, skidding,gravel sounds, et cetera.

Hunter; The sound designers and programmers worktogether on a daily basis throughout the entire project. It'struly a combined effort—we throw ideas against the walland they tell us what sticks, and vice versa. Having thatbalance of sound/artist creativity and "coder logic" keepsthe ideas fresh and fluid. For example, as the cop speechin the previous Need for Speed title [Most Wanted] proved,a well-designed speech system can significantly enhancethe gaming experience for the player. Having the audioprogrammer and speech designer working closely togetherfrom the very beginning eliminates many of the problemsthat can occur early on. This enables us to focus on gettingthe player more emotionally involved, which, of course,makes for a better gaming experience.Are you using a proprietary or middleware solution foryour audio implementation needs? What sorts of featuresdo you look for in a toolset/engine?

George Valavanis: Having .strong middleware alleviates theneed for audio programmers and streamlines the produc-tion process so that the sound designer/composer is Incomplete controi of all sound assets in the game. Wwise,from Audiokinetic, is fantastic in that it minimizes the de-

\ MIX, March 2007 • umnv-mixonline.com

A lecture hall or a conference room. A church or a theatre. Whatever the venue, Shure has the wireless system to deliver the quality andconsistency you need. The SLX* and ULX"" series draw on over 80 years of Shure technology, including our patented Audio ReferenceCompanding for crystal-clear sound beyond the limits of conventional wireless. Visit www.shure.com today.

5ouND INTEGRATION

KB3

pendency un our cnjjineering ciepartmentand maximizes my level of contnil. It hasa a)n.siruct called Real-Time ParameterControl.s (RTPCs) that I find very use-ful. UTPCs are essentially variables thatcan be mapped lo virtually any audioparameter in the lool. Wwise is basicallylike working with a real-lime DAW, onlyslightly more abstract.

Nick LaMartina: FMOD, created byFirelight Technologies, provides a GUIand work methodology that very close-ly resemble.'; common sequencers andNLEs, so working vvith it is a very simple,transitional and familiar experience. Thething we all like the most about it is thatnearly all of the behavioral and structuraldata as.sociaic'd with the sound events ishandled in the graphic Designer tool, .soaiKlio decisions can be made by audiopeople and programming decision.s canbe made by programming people.

Ideally, the programmers will onlyneed to step in if something goes wrong,bul we'll see how ihal goes in the future.

Stephen Miller: The tools and enj^inethat we use are completely done in-house, giving us a customized solutionso we can be more efficient wilh howvvf want to work. 1"he proprietary solu-tion we used on Path of Neo was both aGUI and a scripting language. Importing.sounds into lhe database lo be used inthe game was a GUI—and a fanla.stic oneat [hat. it allowed us to import files fromPro Tools sessions and maintain the lay-ers and timing we had created.

Rinard: For the low-level conirol oflhe audio hardware, we use the Milessound system from RAD. Then we wrotean ab.straction layer on top of Miles thatallows us to manage the sum of thegame's audio in a way that is similar toa mixing console. Our game engine hasfeatures that allow the audio designer tolayer and mix ju,st about anything you canthink of, as well as position the sound in3-D with total controi. We can group col-lections of sound together intt) a virtualbus, apply effects to any bus and thenfeed all the buses inlo a masler bus, applymore effect.s if needed and then ship itoff to the hardware for AC3 encoding. Onthe Xbox 360, we are typically runningbetween 128 and I60 mono channels ofaudio at any given time in a race.

Michaei Smith: Most of my projectsuse one middleware solution or another.Sometimes it's Miles, lately more FMOD,but it ultimately depends on the projectand the people making it. I prefer to havethe programmer working on backside

me PlayersAdam Boyd

and Phil

Hunter:

Part of

the audio

team that

worked on Needjoi j^eeu. tuition for EA

Canada, Hunter handled the speech de-

sign and Boyd was the audio lead on the

project.

Nick LaMartina: sound

designer at Cheyenne

Mountain Entertainment

who is currently working

on the Stargate Worlds

MMORPG (Massively

Multiptayer Online Role-Playing Game),

which is based on the hit TV show.

Ed Lima: audio director

of Gearbox Software.

Previously, Uma cre-

ated the audio for 3D

Realms' Prey and Id's

Doom 3.

Stephen Miller: audio

lead at Inf ini ty Ward,

creator of the CaU of

Duty Series from Ac-

tivision. Miller recently

worked on the Matrix:

The Path of Neo game for Atari.

Robb Rinard: cofounder

of 2XL Games and game

designer of ATV Offroad

Fury 2 and MX Unleashed.

Rinard is currently work-

ing on all of the audio

development and design of the next-gen

racing tit le for THQ.

Michael Smith: Audio

director at Sony Online

Entertainment, Smith

has worked on the

EverQuest Series, Star

Wars Galaxy and Matrix

Online.

George Valavanis: audio

director at Blue Fang and

maker of the Zoo Tycoon

series for Microsoft.

54 MIX. Meii-ch 2007

BOUND INTEGRATION ifunctionality and expanding on Ihe tools.LInle.ss a programmer has a really stronjjbackground in audio, they're nol going loknow how best to integrate ihe sounds.

The integration time depends a loton the tools you have: If you h;ive wfll-designed and well-tested implementaliontools, the integration doesn't take longat ail, perhaps 20 percent of the overalltime. However, if the tools aren't so hotor are nonexistent, the integration willUkely take much longer than creating thesounds themselves. It's not just a limeissue, either. Weak tools also sap thecreativity in the sound design process.It's kind of a soapbox issue with me.[f the sound designer is dreading theintegration phase, ihere will be less itera-tion in the sound design, so the soundsthemselves won't be so hot. From there,the sound designer will be less likely todo fancy tricks that create that "wow"factor out of fear of breaking something

different kinds of footsteps, cloth move-ment, whooshes and hits, to gun reloadsand sword swishes. When the project wascomplete, there were over 40,000 soundentries on just the animations.Overall, how do you approach mixing?Lima: I think about [lie mix ihroughoulthe entire design process. I generally tryto bake .some .slight equalization curvesor tendencies into families of sounds. Forinstance, explosions might be bottom-heavy, voice-over might occupy a higherband or the music might he designed withspecific instruments and frequency bandsin mind.

Some of that seems pretty obvious,but if carried through the entire soundproduction effort, what I'll find is thatbefore I start properly mixing the game,the sounds playing in-game can alreadybe heard to a large extent residing intheir own frequency pockets, regardle.ssof their playback volume setting. From

If the sound designer is dreading the integration phase,

there will be less iteration in the sound design, so the

sounds themselves won't be so hot From there, the sound

designer will be less likely to do fancy tricks that create that

"wow" factor, out of fear of breaking something.

. —Micbael Smith

or fear of learning an obtuse integrationsystem.What was the most challenging!, soundintegration instance on a recent project?Ed l-ima: On my last project, the biggestchallenge was designing and implement-ing a real-time ducking compressor onvoice-over. The problem we encounteredwas that, having received final dialogas.sets relatively late in production, wefound that the aggre.ssive music andsound design mix left no headroom forvoice-over to be heard. We put togethera system wherein we tagged voice-over.sound assets wiih a flag that would dropeverything else by 4.5 dB. This producedsome pretty good re.sults overall, but wethen went back and built a second systemto bypass the ducking on specific .sounds,such as specialized cut-.scene .sounds,some music cues and so forth.

Miller: One of the most challengingsound-integration tasks I have had to dowas placing all the sounds to literallythousands of animations. Everything from

there I can start to tweak until I've goteverything right where it needs to be.

Adam Boyd: The audio mix for Car-bon was done by [audio director! CharlesDeenen and myself. We use proprietarymixing software that i illows every soimdelement to be individually controlled atrun-time by the game data that is oc-curring at that particular moment, Forinstance, we can have the wind noise vol-ume increase proportionally to the carsvelocity. This does not need to be hard-coded and will change dynamically as thevariables within the game change.

Other mixing sy.stems might allow youto turn down all other elements—soundeffects, music, et cetera—within a mixt(5 allow dialog to cut through, but oursystem has much more detail and control.We can turn down only the elements thatinterfere with the speech, in terms [)f fre-quency masking, which produces a muchcleaner and less "crude" mix. Ultimately,our goal is to have our games sound likefeature films.

56 MIX, March 2007 " www.mixonline.com

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What are some of the challenges youface with surround sound':' Also, do youuse multichannel streams'!' If so, are themultichannel streams capable of beingpanned in ^-D?Boyd: The higgesl ciwllengc with sur-round sound is to use it in a way sothat it doesn't draw a loi of attention toit.sclf. We tend to approach our audiodesign from a lowest common-de nomi-nator perspective, which means that wewant our game to sound great with smallspeakers through an average TV, as wellas have it sound amazing on higher-endsystems. Surround is a great too! becauseit informs the player of where his oppo-nents, or police, are in relation to them.

miiltitrack editor capable of sample-accurate looping of a "i.l-channel file.Often, the payoff of using 5.1-channelambience files isn't worth it for in-gameuse, anyway. Most of the elements wewant to play back larel in a 5-\') posi-tion that stays fixed lo ihe environment,creating something that the player caninteract with, instead of a static scenethai does not change position with theplayer's view.

The amount of data we would liaveto stream off the disc during the gameis also a detracting factor for us. We canget mt)re bang for our buck, .so to speak,Iby] leaving room to stream other in-gamecontent, such as music or a large explo-

The biggest challenge in surround is to use it in a way so that

it doesn't draw attention to itself. We tend to approach our

audio design from a lowest common-denominator

perspective, which means we want our game to sound great

with small speakers through an average TV, as well as have

it sound amazing on higher-end systems.

—Adam Boyd

It also greatly enhances the player'ssense of speed by accentuating tlie rapidmovement of objects around the car.

Many games tend to use too muchsurround, tliough, and in the typical liv-ing room setup, this can be very distract-ing. We try to use it in a natural, tastefulway. Regarding multichannel streams,we do use them for our pre-rendered.sequence.s. but not in-game audio. Theonly multichannel streams we use in-game are environmental ambiences andmusic. However, every object that emits.sound in the game has a position in the3-1) game space. This real-time surroundpanning is a fundamental component ofour in-house audio engine. Through ourdynamic mixer, we control what thatposition is relative lo—-the player car orthe camera—and how the.se .sounds areperceived over distances.

Miller: We often use 5.1-channelstreams for movie sequences, but notfor in-game. There are several reason.sfor this; one is we often need loopingsounds in game for things such as ambi-ence, but to my knowledge, only withthe introduction of Pro Tools 7 was a

sion sequence that would not otherwisefit ink) memory. Anotlier problem withhaving a lot of 6-channel audio is thatthere is no multiplatform, loopable com-pression scheme for it. The Xbox 360does support this with XMA, which isgreat, so hopefully others will follow thisdirection. This leaves us with disc spaceproblems, however.

Valvanis; Zoo Tycoon is a PC franchiseand our target market dictates our ap-proach to surround mixing. We mainlyfocus on the stereo mix since most casualPC: gamers do not have elaborate surrountisystems. Because our market is .so largeand there are those who have the propersystems, it's important to also spend .sometime on .surround-sanity checks, t do a 5.1pass using Wwise on everytliing beforewe ship.

One last question: How do you fevtahout 7.1?Uma; Oh, man, let's get 5.1 under controlnrst! •

Michel Henein is a game audio consultant,sound designer and entrepreneur basedin Phoenix.

GAMEA u Dio

BY BLAIR JACKSON

Soundelux's Scott GershinAt the Crossroads of Game and Film Audio

Scott Gershin is in a unique positionon the audio end of the videogameindustry. As executive creative di-

rector and sound SLipervi.sor/designer atSoundelux Design Music Group, he over-sees the development of a steady streamof high-end videogames by a wide varietyof publishers,

As a leading feature film sound super-visor/designer for more than two decades,he's worked on many Hollywood film.s—American Beauty. Shrek. The ChroniclesofRiddick. the ribald marionette comedyTeam America, the dazzling werewolfflick Underworld: Evolution and CurtisHanson's forthcoming Las Vegas gam-bling saga. Lucky You. Additionally, he'sdone sound design work for museums,theme park rides, commercials—the manhas his hand in a k)t of pots.

Gershin is also an outspoken and articulate advo-cate for game audio pros, promoting the field at tradeshows and in mugazines, and ;is of this month helpingspearhead a new organization called lESD: InteractiveEntertainment Sound Developers. "It's for sound pro-fessionals," he says, "for music, design and integrationpeople. It's a branch of G.A.N.G. [Game Audio NetworkGuild!, but it will also be its own thing." Partnering withGershin are Sony's Dave Murrant, Scott Selfon fromMicrosoft and Gene Semel of High Moon Productions."We've been nicknamed 'The Four Horsemen,"' he says

with a laugh.

Recently, we chattedwith Gershin to get hisperspective on the evolu-tion and rapid pace ofchanges in the world ofgame audio.

You had already beenworking in film soundfor many years when youfirst got involved withgame audio. How didthat come about?I started in games aboui 16years ago. I had always en-joyed games, and aroundthat time, I .started seeing[games] move away fromb'M Isynthesis] sounds andinto audio samples, al-

Gershin was sound designer/sound iupervi-

5or for Capcom's Devil A^y Cry.

though they were being done as llk/8-hit. Before Ieven did film, I was working as a synthesist—we'retalking about the Emu [Emulator] I and early Akais, 8-bit, 12-bit/companded technology. So when I started ingaming a decade or so later. I had already iivetl throughthat technology and its creative and technological chal-lenges. I knew a lot of tricks going in [to working ongame.s] from what I learned in the mu.sic busine.s.s-—howto get a decent sound out of .samplers. Sixteen yearsago when I was designing and suping just for movies[at Soundelux], I thought we could utilize our talentsin other industries. 1 started a new company withinStiundelux with Wylie .Statcman and Lon Bender, whichfocused on sound design and music cotnposition for in-teractive entertainment, theme parks, music videos andcommercials. It was a really interesting time for us inaudio, witb all the.se new sounti-with-piclure industriescoming into existence. We had to make it up and figureit out as we went.

Our first gig came from a friend of :i friend of afriend—you know how it goe.s—who heard about somepeople who had ju.st bought a company that was calledActivi.sion. They were brand new and 1 had set up ameeting with them to discuss tny philosophies and ap-proach to how audio could be used in gaming. I wasn'tscaretl of the technology becau.se I'd been there beforewith music. It was yreat fun becau.se at that time it re-ally was guerrilla audio. We ended up doing a bunchof projects out of the chute with Activision, includingPitfall: The Mayan Adixmlure for Ihe I'd, MechWarrior II,Spycraft and ZorkNemesis. They were all really dilfcrentand each required a different creative and tcxhnologi-

60 MIX, March 2007 • www.mixonline.com

MIX INTERVIEW

cal approach. Since then, we've worked onover ISO games.Did the audio litnitations of those eartygames bug you?I lofe technology. I've always been reallyinto gear. Il became a icchnological puzzle.The challenge was how to use limited ele-ments to create new and unique sounds.When I First siarfcd doing film, I was asampler guy using Synclavicrs, Fairlights,ADAPs and synchronizers to lay backmy sounds to multitrack. At first that waslhe only technology available. Then diskrecorders came out, but they were onlyrt-tracks. A toi of times I was using way

more elements than that to create my de-signs. So at that time, di.sk recording, beforeplug-ins, was limited compared to what Icould do with a sampler. With samplers, Iwas able to play the sounds using different,often exotic MIDI contnjllers to give eachdesign a human feel. It really allowed meto mangle the sounds into something newand interesting.

In the beginning of gaming, there weredcfinilcly limitations-—really low sampleand bit rates, as well as codecs that affectedthe audio in unflattering ways. If you werelucky, the best sample nite avaitalile was22/16; the high ends were rolled off, but it

was definitely manageable. F.ight-bit was awhole other challenge that wasn't a wholeloi of fun. But I took some of the tricks Iknew from the music busine.ss and appliedthem. A lot of it was trying lo figure outhow to .solve problems. It was hard jusi do-ing lhe simplest of things, hut thai was partof the fun, too. There were no rules andeveryone was kind of making it up a.s wewent along. Also, 1 really liked the peoplein the gaming world.

When we first started, one of the mainlimitations was on each platform—like asampler—how much RAM did we have ac-cess to? And that's stilt an Issue. So there'sthat dynamic: How many sounds can weuse in the game? We had loop lengths thathad to be divisible by a certain number of.samples. All lhe sounds within a certaingame level had to be abtc to fit in packetsof a certain size. Each level would retaincertain .sounds, such as your character'sweapon and fighting moves Ipackei one!while intrtxiucing new sounds to supportthe new characters and ctiatlenges, such asan adversary's .sound and weapons IpackelIwol, All .sounds hati to fit into one or the<)ther packet that was being used for thatlevel. There were all these strange littleformulas.

Anottier reason game audio was dif-ficutt tiack then was the codecs, It wasn'tju.st lhe Ilk, 8-bit. It had to go through datareduction and ihat alone created some verystrange artifacts. ThtTc nw timi-.s you'd ck) awhoosh or some kind ot .sound, ami tticnyou'd put it through the codec and whatwould come out was almost nothing likewhat you pul in.

And things improi'ed as new formatscame along?Yes. I think a couple of things happened.We got more RAM and liightT-tiipatilygame storage wilh di.scs compared locartridges; the codecs .started sound-ing better; and we were able to streamaudio, which was very hig, Then thenext lechnology was a combination ofstreaming and RAM, where we ct)utt.lget sounds with low-latency avaitabititythrough RAM white the rest of it streamedoff the hard drive or disk, similar to whata [Ta.scam] GigaStuditi docs today. So thatwa.s important.

And then some consoles were able tostream multiple track.s. With next-gen plat-forms, we're able to .siream large numlxTsof track.s and support plug-in-siylc technol-ogy. Now alt of a sudden the ability to dobigger and better audio has become avail-able. Graphics have gotten much tnore so-phisticated and are starting to tie compared

62 MIX, March 2(X)7 • wuw.niixonline.com

MIX INTERVIEW

to other media, such as film or television,i he pressure is on for a more cinematicexperience.Well, you want the realism of the soundto match the realism and dimensionalityof the I'isuats.That's right. There's been an interestingmarriage between the film world and thegaming world, where you want to createlhe coolest, biggest sounds you can. [Ingames,] we weren't neces.sarily constrictedby some of the technological restrictions(.»f broadcast TV—limited dynamic range,mixing for TV speakers; we were morelike DVDs.

We're at a time now when 5.1 hometheaters are becoming commonplace. Evenfor those using only computer speakers,most have subs and bass management. Insound design, we have the chance to usethe effect of the sub to have more impact,turning it into an E-ticket ride. Of course,a lot of the stuff we're doing in games ismtiltichannel—5.1 is now the standard. Iihink it used to be considered somethingthat was mostly in theaters or obtainableonly by the select few. I get the .sense thatif you look al lhe slice of America that s

into gaming and movies, a lot of ihemhave invested in S.I systems.Are there tnore paraltels or differencesbetween working on sound for film andsound for games?

There are a lot of similarities and somefundamental differences. I don't want tosound comy, but it really is all about sto-rytelling and enhancing the experience,whether you get to be characters in a gameor you get to watch ihem in a movie. I al-ways look at the medium I work in and tryto do the best I can within that industry.

There are some differences. In gamingyou hear the same sounds over and overand over as you play it, so we have tobe very conscientious to make sure thatthe sound still has the impact and theemotional fortitude when played over andover. Also, our ctients hear and approveeach sound individually before being putin the g:*me. So each sound is put underthe microscope. Conversely, in movies eactisound doesn't live on its own but ptays arole in tlie linear-ness of the story. Thatdoesn't mean we don't spend time on the.smaller .sounds; we focus the listener's ears,allowing us to prioritize what role different

sounds play within a scene.Gaming is not strictly a random medi-

um; it has linear phra.ses and flows; whereyou have to solve a problem, where you'vegot to get from point A to point B. whereyou've gol lo get through your enemies.Whatever the dynamic is, there's still anemotional arc to each scenario. So whetherI'm on a movie or a game, I identify thoseemotional arcs and try to support thosewith .sound.

Are you allowed to use effects that yougather for a film on a videogame? Couldyou use werewolf noises from Under-world or swords from Kill Hill, for ex-ample?

We go out as audio photographers and cap-lure life—sounds, events, whatever. Thenwe use them as our palette of elements thatwe can utilize later in any medium to cre-ate something new and interesting, We willnever take tiie exact same sound from oneproduct and u.se it in another project. Wewill comtiine and manipulate etements anduse them in new and exciting ways.How come movies of videogames are usu-ally so terrible? You'd think it would be agood marriage.

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64 MIX, March 2007 " www.mixonline.com

MIX INTERVIEW

They're different: Gaming i.s a mediumyou experience by participatinjj; mov-le.s are a medium you experience whilewatching. What's happening, though, isgames are becoming more story-basedand much more episodic. They're be-coming franchises—you can play partI, part 2 and part 3, and follow a long,complicated storyline with all theseadventures along the way. There are somany wonderful games out there thathave in-depth stories, v/hether you cre-ate them [within the game] or the gamedesigners create them. Something like

The Chronicles of Riddick is a movie,an anime and a game. All of them spandifferent time lines within the universeof the Riddick chronicles. So if you seeall three, you get more of the story. Thisapproach really expands the art of story-telling and character development.Are there pieces of technology that havecome out in the past year or two that youthink are advancing the state-of-the-artin game sound?

Sure. Gaming is a very technologicalindustry. I actuaiiy equate it more tomovie animation than movies themselves

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hecau.se the dev cycles are longer. Thereare different technological i.ssue.s ihathave to be understood and dealt withcompared to film. 1 see more of a parallelbetween high-end CG animated moviesand games.

Probably the biggest recent technologi-cal development is the advent of what'scalled middleware tools,' which will al-low Ithe games you deveiopi to play onmultiple platlbrms—sometimes compet-ing platforms. I think that's huge. It usedto be when you developed a project, youdeveloped it for Sony or for Microsoft orfor PC. The developer would make it forone platform, send it to a company andthen they would rebuild the game to makeit work on another platform.

There are two interesting companiessupporting what we call middleware—Wwise and FMOD—thai have enabledaudio content to be somewhat more ea.silyported between multiple pliitfornis, so wedon't have to keep reinventing the wheel.In the past, you had to create for the low-est common denominator. If you werecreating for, say, two platforms, where oneplatform would only stream two to fourchannels at hest and the other platformcould stream 30 to 40 channels, you al-ways had to stick to the smaller platform.What's a recent game you've worked onthat you're excited about?We just finished tCapconisI Lost Planet,which I'm very proud of. Heading up the.sound for the project was Tomoya Ki.sliifrom Capcom, Peter Zinda and myself Weand our crew worked on it for about twoyears. It was one of those projects whereeverything jelled and clicked. It was niceto have the time to work on .somethingand experiment a lot—that really makesa difference.

Are the sound budgets for big games get-ting to he comparahie to hig films':'It's apple.s and tminges. The whole busi-ness paradigm is very different. On some-thing like Lost Planet, we were on and offthe project for a long period and therewere different phases. On a movie, most ofthe time when youYe on it, you're on it. Inbetween phases, I did four or five movies(.luring that two-year period.Obviously, you stili like doing hoth.Oh, yes. I have a passion for both film andgames. I've been incredibly fortunate to beable to participate in both and work onsome really great projects in both indu.s-tries. If 1 could stay this way for the next20 or 30 years, I'd be a happy camper. H

Blairfackson is Mixi senior editor.

66 MIX, March 2007 • unvw.mixonline.com

AUDIONEXT

BY ALEXANDER BRANDON

Audio MiddlewareThe Essential Link From Studio to Game Design

W hen I first played games such asPacMan andAsteroids in the early '80s, I was fascinated.Wfiile others saw a cute, beeping box, I saw

sometliing to be torn open and explored. How couldtliese games create sounds I'd never heard before? Backthen, it was transistors, followed by simple, solid-statesound generators programmed with individual memoryregisters, machine c<xlc and dumb terminals. Now, tilingsare more complex. We're no longer at tlie mercy of 8-bit,or handing a sound to a pRigrammer, and saying, "Putit in." Today, game audio engineers have just as muchpower to create an exciting .sound-scape as anyone atSkywalker Ranch. (Well, okay, maybe not Randy Thom,but close, right')

But just a5 a single-channel strip on a Neve or SSL oncebaffled me, .sound-lrank manipulation can baftle youraverage recording engineer I'd like to help demystify tliLstechnology, starting by explaining what middleware gameaudio engines are because they are the key to understand-ing what makes game audio different.

In games, once sound i.s captured, tliere's a wholeother level to explore: integration. That's vv here middle-ware comes in. Middleware Is software that connects gamedevelopers with the hardware (Xbt)x 360, FS3, PC, etc.)they use in development, just as Pro Tools lets you gen-erate sound from a computer, middleware lets users linksounds to game objects, such as animations (firing a gun,running), scripted events (a column falling across a road, aship going to liglitspeed) or areas (inside a church, at thefoot of a cliff) Where a programmer was once required forall this integration, this is no longer the case.

GAMECODAKroiti tTcative l.abs' Sensaura division comes GameCODA(wwvv.gamecoda.com) for the Xlxix. PS2, PC and Game-cube platfonns. [t supports audio in WAV, AIFF, VAG, AD-PCM, Xbox ADPCM and Ogg Vorbis formats, from monothrough 5.1 surround, and the c(Kle is low-level, withrun-time and APIs. Sounds are auttjmatically compressedto console format.

Witliin GameCODA is CAGE prtxiucer, a sophisticatedbank-management tool that's cross platform-compatible,and its tab-type switching Ix'tween c( )nsoles is an excellentfeature. While the engine is fully compatible for hookupwith Renderware, Alchemy, Gamebryo, Karma, Fonix andHavok middlewares. it doesn't have dlrccl integration withUnreal 3. CAGE plug-ins provitie controi of 3-D scjundsdirectly in 3DS Max and Maya. However, most game audioengineers aren't familiar with that envininment so it is notthat conducive to place sounds using tliase ttxils.

If your programmers know how to u.se Rendervvare,then you can hear real-time parameter changes using

GameCODA. Tlie same Ls true of Renderware native audiotools. One caveat: Criterion is now owned by ElearonicArts. The Renderware site was last updated in 2(X)S, andmany developers are scrambling to Unreal 3 due to un-certainty of Renderware's future. Pity, it's a pretty gcx)dengine.

Streaming is supported, thougli it is not revealed howit Is .supi'xjrted on next-gen const)lcs. Wiiat is nice Ls youcan specify whetlier you want a sound stR-amed or notwithin CAGE Producer. GameCODA also provides theability to create ducking/mixing groups witliin CAGE. Incode, this can also be taken advantage of using virtualvoice channels.

Other than SoundMAX (an older audio engine byAnalog Devices and Staccato). GameCODA was the firstaudio engine I've seen tliat uses matrix technokigy toachieve impre.ssive car engine effects. Imagine teing ableto crossfade samples across a grid to achieve miiltiloop,seamless traasitioning during shifting and RPM change.It's that cool.

Alas, there's no way to link directly to game eventswithout a programmer's help. Unlike DirectMusic, there'sno VisualBasic scripting equivalent, and unlike Render-wareAudio, there's no message system. However, it ispossible to link messages in Renderware to samples inGameCODA directly if you're tising that approach. Still,it won't just "work" out of the box, which is what we allhave been waiting for. Interactive music support is comingS(X>n. According to company announcements, GameCO-DA will link .seamlessly with Creative's ISACT (InteractiveSpatialized Audio Composition Tedinology).

On the upside, GameCODA is one of the first reallyhard-hitting audio middleware produfLs of it.s kind, andwhere most thought it was dead, it is still po.ssihlc tolicense it. It features extensive integration functionalityusing 3DS Max and Maya, matrices, timeline editing andmuhlplatform seamle.ss production. Support is providedwithin a 24-hour response time. GameCODA is also lessexpeasive than some other engines. However, how isnext-gen supported? That isn't yet revealed, although itis hinted at in FAQs and press releases. In addition, anumber of developments on the horizon could make thisengine even better, such as direct ISACT support andother piug-ias for speech recognition. Unking ck>selywith Renderware and not Unreal 3 is also a problem;Unreal 3 is tlie Number One middleware these days.

ISACTAlso from Creative Labs. ISACT (http://dcvelopfr.creative.com) supports the PC, Xbox and Xbox 360 platfomis. andis free if a PC hardware output layer is used. The prognimsuppoits WAV, AIFF, CDDA (imptJrt), PCM, ADPCM, WMA,

68 MIX. March 2007 " wuu\mLxorilme.com

AUDIQNEXT

XMA and Ogg Vorliis (export) sound fonnats,a.s well as any configuration of surroundaudio. Sounds are automatically compressedlo console format using the Target Platformbettings tool.

ISACT Production Studio (IPS) is es-sentially a multitrack editing environment.I lowever, the 'tracks" are far more varied;han audio or MIDI. IPS gives you control• if a completely new suite of objects specifi-cally oriented to gameplay situations such•IS Sound Randomizers. Sound Events andSound Entities. Don't get .scared; it's a wholenew ballgame. a whole new playground.

Using the IPS function Realtime Param-eter Controls and the run-time componentwith a network connection to your targetplatform, you will have real-time controlduring game play of ali ISACT functions.

Although it's .somewhat convoluted, it ispassible to use Sound Entities and Groupsto create a ducking behavior, I've found thebest way to do this is to assign each soundor sounti object in your hierarchy to a groupthat you define. Then in a matrix (tliinkExcel document), set priorities (one groLipducks a .set of anotlier's or an individual),volume and duck time. ISACT makes it nee-

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e.ssiiry to create variables within ()bjt'Ct.s ;ind,well, without going int<} too much detail, itisn't as simple as my method.

Although there aren't any sound matriceslying iiround for you to asc, onto again, tlicSoLincI Entity i.s your friend! Create param-eters such a.s RPM, shift, gear and such, andassign them to pitch and crossfades usingRI'C (Realtime Parameter Control). Again,not quite a.s tast or intuitive a,s other nietluKls(such as GaineCODA's), but a Sound Entityis a much more open-ended tool.

As with GameCODA, you can .specifywhetlier you want a .sound streamed. Theplus liere is that you can specify preloadedsounds (this meaas the first chunk of astreamed sound is loatled to avoid the disk-loading latency associated with standardstreaming sounds). It's extremely useful forquick, load-required streamed sounds suchas voice-over.

ISACT can load a CAGI- Producer filefor intemciive music. ISACr was originallydesigned to be an interactive music sys-tem, and as such, you can create trackscontaining music objects wiih individualvolume and spacializaiion (as with mastmultitrackers). ISACT aist) allows you torandomize these, transition them with con-trollable crossfade.s linked to events andmuch more.

Here again, the Sound Entity lets userscreate parameters tliat will link to gameevents. llnft»rtunately, as with GameCODA,you can't just kwik up events in a list in yourgame world editor and then type them intoIPS and have them work.

On a happy note. ISACT won a FnjntlineAward two yearN ago for a rea.son: it was tliefirst KJol that used a track layout to a.ssoci-ate it more citxsely with traditional DAWs forgame audio integration. At this point, it hasa huge amount of open-ended, greai featuresthat put it in a category ail it,s own. The factthat it is free and allows you to create yourown kind of sound behaviors Ls more thanworth the learning curve. And ISACTs near-inslant e-mail respoase to support is excel-lent. However, it's a bit challenging to getyour head around the concepts of SoundEntitie.s, and at tliis time, thea' are no plansto go Wii or P.S3. At a company like mine,that creates quite a few limitarions.

MORE TO COMESo far, I've looked at the first two of thebunch. In future segments, I'll delve intoWwise, FMOD, Unreal 3 and Miles. •

Alexander Brandon is the audio directorfor Midway Home Entertainment in SanDiego, Calif.

70 MIX. March 2007 • www.mixonline.com

GAM EA U D I O

DNE-UPMANSHIP

Next-Gen Game Consoles Promise Exciting NewOpportunities for Sound Designers and Composers

T he battle for living roomsupremacy is on: No longera fringe element in the con-sumer electronics universe,

videogame consoles are fast becomingall-in-one entertainment systems, de-livering high-def gaming, video, audioand Internet connectivity in one easy-to-use system. And with the pricesof high-def-capable LCD TVs andmultichannel home theater systemsplummeting to new lows, the buyingpublic is quickly getting cozy with allthings HD. So it's not surprising thatthe gaming industry is striving to meetand push this demand.

On the audio side, the news justkeeps getting better for developers. Allthree of the major gaming consoles—Sony PlayStation 3. Microsoft Xbox360 and Nintendo Wii—feature someform of surround sound, and the PS3and Xbox 360 both include support fornext-gen optical media formats—Blu-ray and HD-DVD, respectively. Add tothat faster CPUs, more physical RAMand access to massive amounts of gamedata, and it's easy to see the vast po-tential that these systems represent foraudio content creators.

WHAT'S IN THE BOX?A.S most people already know, video-game consoles are essentially boxedcomputers, and as computers go, allthree of the major consoles sport somerather impressive features and specs.The PS3 features the multicore Cellprocessor. Jointly developed by IBM.Sony and Toshiba, the Cell combinesa 64-bit PowerPC prcKessor with eightadditional processing cores on a singlechip. The current Cell processor humsalong at a stout 32 GHz per core, andspeeds could go as high as 6 GHzwithin a year's time. The PS3 includes2% MB of system RAM and 2S6 MB

of dedicated video memory. Users canchoose between a 60- or 20GB harddrive or drop in a Serial ATA drive oftheir choosing. Processing and memoryaside, the PS3 includes both opticalaudio and HDMI connectivity (withfull 1080p HD video resolution) andsupports up to 7.1 surround sound,including DTS and Dolby True HD.When surround hardware is unavail-able, the tx>x defaults to Pro Logic IIand stereo. And, of course, the PS3includes a standard Blu-ray high-defDVD player.

Microsoft's Xbox 360 uses threecustom PowerPC-based CPUs, eachrunning at 3 2 GHz, The unit includes512 MB of physical RAM and a user-replaceable 20GB hard drive. The unitsupports 5.1 DTS and Dolby Digital viaan optional optical audio output, andlike the PS3. the unit defaults to ProLogic II or stereo output. The unit canbe further upgraded with the recentlyreleased Xlwx 360 HD DVD Player,which, as the name attests, adds com-plete HD-DVD video support and awireless remote,

Nintendo is a little more tight-lippedabout its console's specs than Sony andMicrosoft, What is known is that Wiiuses the IBM Broadway CPU, anotherPowerPC-based chip. Unofficially, mostindustry insiders have the chip ckxkedat around 729 MHz. The unit has 88MB of RAM, though 24 MB is dedicatedstrictly for video. For storage, the Wiiships with 512 MB of Flash memory,which can be expanded to 2 GB, Audiooutput is limited to analog stereo outswith Dolby Pro Logic IL though theWii controller itself includes a built-inspeaker. The unit lacks either HD-DVDor Blu-ray compatibility, but standardDVD playback is rumored to be a forth-coming feature.

That said, it's encouraging to see

surround becoming a reality for all ofthe platforms. "We finally have an en-vironment where all three major gameconsoles are supporting some kindof Dolby surround sound," says JackBuser, worldwide technology evange-list for Dolby. '.So I think people thatare creating audio tor game-develop-ment houses no longer have to negoti-ate with their producers over whethersupport for 5.1 surround he included ornot. It'.s one of those things that havesort of become the de facto standardfor game audio. So as a result, ratherthan argue over format, they'll be ableto spend their own clock cycles ina much more productive way, goingout there making game sound evenbetter."

THE FIGHT FOR MOREWith extra horsepower, expandedmemory and support for multichan-nel audio, the approach to creatingaudio content for these platforms haschanged dramatically from the earlydays of game audio. Audio teams arenow brought into the tievelopment pro-cess sooner than ever before because,in addition to creating multichannelaudio from the start, all of the majorcon.soles use shared memory, where allgame-play elements are drawing fromthe .same finite resources. "Movingfrom PS2 to PS3, the big difference isthat we've got HDMI on the box. whichallows u.s to have up to eight channelsof discrete audio for game use. some-thing we werent able to do on thelast platform," explains David Murrant,sound design manager at .Sony.

Tundamentally, that is a hugechange for us, having to deal with andmanage assets that have to be devel-oped for the environment," Murrantcontinues. "The most we had doneis Pro Logic II audio, which is sup-

MDC, March 2007 • unvw.mixonHne.com

ported out of the box for game use. Theother big difference is that the PS2 hadtiedicated audio memory, which was adedicated sound processing unit. So wehad two megs of RAM on the previousbox. Now on the newer .system, wehave to essentially fight for our cornerliecause it is a flat memory modei. Sowith the PS3. we have 512 megs oftotal memory, and half of that is usedfor video. So of the main memory thatis left, approximately 256 megs, we tryand shoot for approximately 10 percentof that for audio."

Developers workir^ on the Xbox360 faced a very similar shift whenmoving from the original Xbox, which,like the PS2, had dedicated audio pro-cessing hardware and memory. "I'llbe honest, it's sort of a double-edgedsword for us because there is so muchmore processing power in the 360,but it's all shared processor power,"explains Marty O'Donnell, audio direc-tor and composer with Bungie Studios(owned by Microsoft). "And that meanswe have to grab for as much of thatproce.ssing power as we can get. Onthe Xlxtx 1. that fight never happenedbecause there was a chip just dedicatedto audio processing. And we got whatwe could get out of the Xlxix, whichwas really nice.

"On the Xbox 360," he continues,"there are three beautiful processors,and if you wanted to do a graphics-only game, you could u.se all threeprocessors to rmike the most incredibiegraphics. So there is a iittle more of agive-and-take kind of thing. We have tomake sure that the engineers and theartists and the audio guys get togetherearly in the process and stake out theirrespective territory."

HOW DOES IT SOUND?But liardware support for multichannel

audio and fixed-memory model.s arenot the only major changes happeningon the audio front. With more memoryavailable to audio, as weil as the pro-cessing power to render and processmore voices effectively in real time, theoverail quaiity and fidelity on the PS3and Xbox 360 have improved signifi-cantly from the previous versions.

"We can get more content and domore streams with the PS3, hut the big-gest difference is fidelity and the qualityof the content we can create." Murrantcontinues. "Typically on a PS2 title, ifyou've got a ton of sounds, you ve justgot the two megs of RAM, and therewere some creative ways to get morememory. But you've essentially got tostart downsampiing. A iot of .samplescan be anywhere from 17k to 22k for.sound effects, depending on tlie fre-quency range of the sound. On the PS3,with the additional memory, we're ableto have full 44.1 samples. The fidelityand the quality of the output is signifi-cantiy better."

"On the first Xixix, we were cappedat 64 surround .sound voices," says JayWeinland, audio iead at Bungie Studios.

"And those are voices that could be en-coded as S.I, not .stereo or mono. Andnow the sky is the iimit. We've beentold that it is possible for the Xbox tohandle up to 320 simultaneous [sur-round] voices. I don't think anyone hasactuaiiy been able to hit that. 13ut wecertainly are able to do a lot more sur-round sound voices than we were ah]eto before. Ami the second hig cliangeis that we've moved from a fixed-ratecompression scheme to a variable bit-rate compression scheme, which ai-iows us better compression that soundsi^etter."

"Most pe<}ple who are doing audiofor television or movies never have tothink alK>ut Idata] compression," addsO'Donnell. "They might have to thinkaixjut the medium and nuke .sure thattheir mix sounds good out of a TVspeaker, but we also have son:ie datarestrictions. We're recxjrding everythingat 24/48, but when it conies down towhat we put in the game, we have to gothrough steps to get things compressed.And now that we have variable hii rate,we don't have to compress everything inthe same way, so that is pretty cool."

ivwuKmixonline.com • March 2007, MIX 73

QNE-UPMANSHIP

PiayStation 3

Processor; multicore Cell processor

at 3.2 GHz

Voices: 512

Sampling: 44.1/48kHz, 16-bit

Channels: stereo/DD/DTS, up to 7.1

RAM: 256MB system, plus 256 MB

dedicated to video

HrGH-DEF: NOT SO FASTOn paper, suppurl lur next-generationoptical media formats—Biu-ray and HD-DVO—-would .seem like an instant shotin the arm for game consoles, allowinggame developers to create games up to 50Gigabytes in size. The reality is that whileit's possible to store many times moredata than a standard-def DVU, seek timeshaven't ramped up at the same pace. Andfor games that require streaming, the add-

Nintendo Wii

Processor: IBM Broadway CPU

Voices: 64

Sampling: 44.1/48kHz, 16-bit

Channels: analog stereo/Pro

Logic I I

RAM: 88 MB, including 24 MB

dedicated to video

ed storage won't necessarily translate toenhanced capabilities until acce.ss .speedscan be increased. "We look at .somethinglike HD-DVD and .see all of the increasedmemory fo(Mprint, and tiiat's great," saysO'Donnell. "But getting data off the discis actuaiiy more important to us than howmuch data you can put on the disc. Speedof acces.s is hugely important to a real-timegame. DVD is not faster, in terms of accesstimes, than a CD. And HD-DVD and Biu-

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ray, I believe, are even slower.""Resistance: Fall of Man and NBA 07,

which were two launch titles, were bothon Blu-ray, and essentially what thaimeans for us is that there is a greater vol-ume of content that we can store," addsMurrant. "The bottleneck comes downto whatever the game is doing. If you'restreaming lots of textures or maps, or whoknows what, we're all kind of fighting inthe background to keep those resourcesmoving. That's the issue for us. On the

PS2, we were able to say that typicallymost levels would be loaded into memory,and as you'd finish each level, the next onewould load. There wasn't a lot of gamecontent being streamed so we could haveup to eight streams of audio playing off thedisc because we could pretty much takecare of it. The things we ha\'e to contendwith on the PS3 is that everyone is tryingto stream, and these worlds are big anddetailed, and everyone keeps wanting tobring more stuff in and they're hitting the

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XBOX 360

Processor: 3 cores at 3.2 GHz

Voices: 256

Sampling: U. lASkHz, 16-bU

Channels: stereo/DD/DTS up to 5.1

RAM: 512MB system

disc harder and harder."While integrated surround sound antl

the ability to stream more voices of au-dio content are certainly allowing gamedevelopers to create more detailed andcomplex-sounding games, some of thebiggest advancements in game sound arehappening as a result of increased fidelityand the ability of the game engines them-selves to intelligently process audio assetsin real time.

"I worked back in the day when youhad 64k of memory for music and soundeffects," concludes Murrant, "And what I'mseeing now is truly next generation. Take,for instance, the technical aspects of, "Hey,I want to hear this sound filtered Iwcauseit's on the other side of a door' I shouldn'thave to be designing it to sound like that.We should be able to do all of this filteringon the fly. And that capability is here now.Am I seeing it in a lot of titles? No. But aspeople get more and more into the devel-opment cycle, you'll see a lot more of that.Also, we're no longer limited by the reverbsthat we had on the VS2. We now can cre-ate our own reverb set, which is gettingclose to some of the high-end commercialreverbs that you can buy for Pro Tools. Andyou're hearing tho.se things being used inthe games. The quality aspect is gettingcloser to film." •

Pob Hanson is a former editor at Mix andRemix magazines.

76 MIX, March 2007 " wwtv.mixonline.com

3AM EAu DID

VIDEO MES LIVE

Legendary Music From Old and New GamesTakes to the Stage in Bloci<buster Concert Tour

magine a concert featuring someof the hottest videogame musicever; from retro-classics like 5M-per Mario Brothers, Frogger and

Donkey Kong, to modern blockbustertitles such a.s God of War and Halo. Adda live symphony orchestra, choir androck guitars, all performing to gamefootage being projected on a humon-gous screen—plus state-of-the-art, rockconcert-style lighting. Perhaps this is aglimpse of videogame nirvana?

That must have been exactly whatg:ime intiustry icons Tommy lallaricoand Jack Wall envisioned when they cre-ated Video Games Live (VGL). TaUaricoexplains, "My goal with Video GamesLive is not only to celebrate the entirevideog:ime industry, but to get this musicout there to people who might not knowvideogame music. And if they come tothis show, they'll see and hear all of thisand realize just how much of an art formvideogames have become."

NOT JUST FOR GAMERSIt all started on July 6, 2005. with asoid-out show at the HollywcKxi Bowl.Since then, VGL has embarked on ahistoric journey to concert halls aroundthe glol>e, performing for generation.sof Ixjth gamers and non-gamers. "Itsgreat to see people supporting theirloved ones' enthusiasm of videogames,"TaUarico says. "After each show, a lotof non-g:imer5 tell us that they foundthe performances Ixjth spectacular andIieautiful. and they finally see whypeople enjoy videogames so much.We also feel its important to bring thepower of the orchestra to younger gen-erations who normally wouldn't go to aconcert hall to experience an orchestralperformance." There is also a festivalt>efore the show, which includes con-tests for best ccxstume and best GuitarHero shredder. Contestants receive cool

prizes, while the l>est prizes—like AcerFerrari laptops or cold, hard cash—arereserved for the winners.

Mix couldn't pass up an opportunityto attend one of the shows in Ph(x;nixin the newly built, world-class IkedaTheater at the Mesa Arts Center.

Wall, a record producer and song-writer who has worked with David By-rne and Patti Smith, and who conductsthe show's orchestra, was inspired toscore videogames when he played theoriginal Myst game. Since becoming avideog-ame composer, he has scoredmusic for such notable hit games -AS JadeEmpire, Unreal II, Myst ni: Exile andMyst IV: Ret>elation.

GUERRILLA TAOICSBecause tlie show uses a video projec-tion system to disphy captured gameftxjtage on a large screen, the concertis driven by DVD. "Since this is a debutshow, economics always become a fac-tor." TaUarico explains. "We opted to usea prosumer DVD player that pretty muchdrives everything. The image is lx;ingdriven by a large video projector, whilefive channels of audio are coming fromthe DVD: a mono click track—whichis being fed to Jack, the orchestra andchoir—in atldition to two stereo outputsthat contain .synth elements and percus-sion, which are being fed to the consoleand mixed with the live elements."

SYMPHONIC SOUND,ROCK N ' ROLL AniTUDEFront-of-house engineer Matt Yelton,who has worked with The Pixies, findsthe VGL show challenging and exciting."We could have gone with a more tradi-tional symphonic sound, but 1 wantedthe show to sound big, including lots oflow end in the mix. using subwoofers toreally rock the audience,

"We use local sound companies at

feWorico fieft/ wi'rfi iack Wall

each host city to provide ecjuipment,"Yelton continues. "Because this showis so dynamic, I prefer to use a digitalIxiard, such as a Yamaha PM5D, for therecall. However, I'll usually warm upthe sound with tulx; compressors andEQs, in addition to using a nice analogcompressor—Summit, et cetera—on themaster bus." For the FOH speaker sys-tem, Yelton prefers Meyer Sound, EAWor L-Acoustics V-DOSC arrays.

The ensemble is captured u,sing a va-riety of different mics. which Yelton willadd or sul>tnict to tlie input list depend-ing on the size ofthe local orchestra andchoir. "I'm a big fan of DPA mics and usethem as often as I can, but I have othermics that I use, as well," .says Yelton. "Ihave found, for instance, that using apair of tSennheiser) e604 tom mics forchoir-left and -right works well Iwcauseof their incredible rear rejection. But I'lluse a condenser, like la Shure] SM81, toanchor the center of the choir." For theorchestra, "I pretty much use SM81s forthe strings, moved a bit ck>ser for someedge in the mix, land] also for bras,s andwoodwinds, although for the Frenchhorns I'll use a pair of SM'iTs," saysYelton. "For percussion, I use a pair of[Sennheiser] e609s or SMS7s for timpaniand a large-diaphragm condenser forthe remaining percussion,"

MW. March 2007 " timm'mixnnline.com

All (if the monitors are al.so fedfrom FOH. "We run four monitor mixesthrough a Rane headphone mixer toan additional srruill [Mackiel mixer ihatsums the click system." Yelton continues."Both are placed where Jack is so he hasctjntrol for tlie orchestni."

The orchestra'.s mix cfimprises amono click inick. .stereo jiereiission andbacking tracks from the DVD. A mixi,s fed to e;ith musician through KossED5TC single earphone.s. For the choirmonitor mix, tlie setup calls for two tothree wedges, depending on size. Yeltonadds. 'The choir gets the click track,some stereo percussion tracks and a hairof the extra stereo music tracks Ifromtlie DVD) for rhythm and to fill in thepicture for them. Al.so, I'll place .synthsand tlrones in their mix for pitchingpurposes, but the overall wedge volumefor the choir is very low." The soloistsgel a wedj e mix that is nirely loud be-cause they are usually unaccustomed tohaving sound reinforcement. The pianistreceive.s the final mix. which is deliveredon a wedge near the piano. "Most of thepiece.s perfornned do not use the backtracks from the DVD percussion loopsami synths. generally." Yelton adds, "butthe click and count-<ttTare always fed tothe orchestni."

4Man VWton stntses low end in his rock/orchatra mix.

HELLO INTERACTIVITY,MEET ORCHESTRA"This sho^^ i.s all about having fun,"Walt says, "This isnt like watching atraditionjil orchestral performance. Assoon as the show starts, we rile up theaudience and let it lie known that theyare going to have a blast."

"We pull random memliers of theaudience onstage and actually havethem play a game live, comiwting withone another, while the orchestra playsalong in real time." Tallarico adds. "Butto spice it up a bit, we throw up a count-down and time the players as they tryto achieve the goal before running outof time."

For one such interactivesegment, an audience mem-lier comes onstage to phiy agame oi Space Invaders. Wallconducts the orchestra so thatit plays in time with the move-ments of the space aliens asthey slowly inch their waytoward the player on the giantscreen—as the aliens speedup. so doe.s the tempo. Theplayer is given a big Fire but-ton for sh(X)ting at the mothership as it flies across the topof the screen; the twist here

is that the player must physically moveonstage to hide tiehind the virtual barri-ers in the game and avoid getting hit bythe aliens shooting down. Thi.s gives theillusion that the players movements arelx;ing tracked and that the data is Ijeingupdated directly to the g:ime itself.

"Not so," says Tallarico. "While il m;iyseem we are using a state-of-the-art mo-tion-capture system to pull thi.s off. thereality is we have someone backstagewith a feed off the players .screen, inaddition to a split off the joystick cable.So while the person onstage is physicallymoving around, someone in the back isjust following that person moving left toright with a joystick, and all the playeronstage has to do is avoid the onscreenlx>mbs being dropp)ed and fire at themother ship. E;ich time the player hitsthe mother ship Ixjfore the cotintdownexpires, they win some cash."

The evening ended with a grandfinale in which music from Halo. lx)ththe original and the .sequel, is per-formed beautifully alongside the ,stun-ning visuals from the games. The show,however, continued to blow us awaywith a preview clip of Halo J, courtesyof Bungie. with the live orche.stni per-forming music from the stiU-unreleasedtitle—definitely a treat. •

www.mlxonline.com • March 2007, MIX 79