Over the last few months I really feel that I have started to find my footing on the path to becoming a game audio developer. Compared to previous projects I've been a part of the last few I've had the pleasure of working on have been some of the proudest ones I've finished. The following blog will take you through what I've been a part of, what went right, what went wrong and most importantly what I've learned along the way. I'll go through project by project and hopefully by the end you'll agree that I've come a long way in such a short amount of time!
Piñata Simulator was my first game projects that I worked on in June with my go to games team headed by Bryn Jenkins. Piñata Simulator (which I will now refer to as PS because accents are rough on this site haha) is a VR game in which you are basically a baseball bat and your goal is you guessed it... hit Piñatas. It is a wonderful and bright game and was a great opportunity to flex my piano fingers and make some music which I've been needing to practice for a while now. I have made a blog about it already but let me go over again what I loved, learned and what didn't really work with this project. First things first here is a end result of the project in form of a show reel.
What I loved:
PS was such a pleasure to work on. I relished the challenge of creating all the assets myself and the general aesthetic content of the game was so bright. I believe I did Bryn and the rest of his team proud with the music and sound effects I made for it and am pretty happy with what I created with the time I had to work on it. The fact it was in VR again was fun for me to tackle as it adds something unique to my resume and project list. I have played and thoroughly enjoyed a lot of rhythm games in my day so getting to create assets for one myself was thrilling and really exciting which helped my motivation immensely.
What I Learned:
PS was a huge learning experience for me as before this project I hadn't really made that much music for games. It's been something I've wanted to pay more attention to because for indie games specifically there is usually only one audio member so I wanted to really make sure I was a jack of all trades. The main aspect I had been lacking up to this point was music composing and using MIDI in Pro Tools my DAW of choice. So PS gave me a short deadline, few references and a big challenge to make something catchy, loopable and totally memorable. I reached out to a few friends who I'm studying with who write their own music and they taught me a bunch of simple scales to stick to and how to start writing music and I took it from there. I wrote the main loop in a couple of sessions refining what I had made the previous sessions and it turned into one of my favourite tracks I've ever made. I also learned how to alter tempo within a track and made a 1 minute version that increased speed gradually for their time attack mode within the game. I also bounced separate tempo sections of the theme to use in their Rhythm attack section of the game but I'll get into that at a later point.
The sound effects for PS were a lot of fun to make and I learned that just because a game is about hitting pinatas doesn't mean you need to hit an actual pinata to make a good sound effect. Foley doesn't always mean find the thing you need it to sound like most of the time it's preferable to choose something that just sounds better... if that even makes sense. Basically the sound I got from an actual pinata didn't really translate too well into the gameplay. The rest of the sound effects weren't that much of a learning experience for me, recording / finding / editing sound effects is basically my bread and butter at this stage but I did certainly refine my approach and got all the SFX done in an afternoon which was a fun little challenge I assigned myself.
The dialogue I recorded was a little extra thing I actually added to the game and I'm glad I did because I got to meet a really talented voice actor and had an absolute blast working with him. Mark and I were
only in the studio for about 30 minutes but we managed to record some absolute gold for the game. I focused on the same aesthetics as the announcer from games for Super Smash Bros and other Nintendo titles like that and it turned out great. As 'payment' I edited a quick show reel for Mark and he's currently using it as his top demo on his website which I am quite proud of.
Aside from all the practical elements of the project I learned a lot about working in a team as well. From the get go I regularly attended the games class to get feedback and update them on my progress, get updates from them and also play test the game as it was being developed to be able to do my job properly. I learned that good game audio and inspiration comes from being a part of the team and following where the game is at and where it's going to. So many times in the past I've been more than happy to just provide the assets needed and that was that. Maybe I would go and make my own Fmod session with the same stuff to see what I could do with it but all in all that's as far as I would go. This was one of the first time where I started to get more involved and it really paid out with interest.
What didn't go as intended:
Originally I was hoping to have more of a hand in implementing the audio that I created. However since the team was working with VR for the first time and also working with a brand new genre there was little time for luxuries like me learning to code with them. Also on that note since this was a game way outside anything that they had worked on previously the game didn't really end up... well working as intended. The team did an amazing job with the time and resources available to them but it was hard to get a working video of gameplay from it hence the showcase style video rather than gameplay. There was actually a whole section of the game that was a real pain to get working which involved a steadily increasing challenge of hitting spawning pinatas to the beat. I made music for this mode by like I said exporting separate tracks at different tempos and intensities but the coding was a little too much to finish in the time we had to work on it unfortunately.
All in all the project was a blast to work on and a huge learning experience for my music writing, foley and dialogue editing, aesthetic choices, planning and people skills!
Castle lovers was the second part of my major project this year and again I worked with Bryn and his game team! Castle Lovers is a 2D, pixel art kingdom simulator where you make decisions as a ruler of a castle. It's a bright charming casual phone game and is easily my favourite project so far. Again I was in charge of providing sound effects and music for the project and this time I got to work with Fmod and help implement all the assets as well. The project only had a 5 week deadline so there wasn't a lot of time to spend on it but even with that time I'm proud of the end result. Speaking of.... here it is!
(I wasn't able to record my phone so this is footage from the unity session)
What I loved:
Castle lovers was a great project to work on. It gave me a chance to really contribute to a project rather than throw assets at people like some past ones. I will probably always remember this project as the one that finally went right and it will always mean a lot to me. The bright colours, casual gameplay and funny events and dialogue really spoke to me as a game fan and I'm happy i got to work on something as fun and silly as this.
What I Learned:
I think during these last few months I learned more from Castle Lovers than any other project. I spent a considerable amount of time in Fmod mixing, troubleshooting and working with parameters I had never previously really used before. For my entire process and Fmod session and further insight into what happened I made some developer diaries here. The reason I was able to actually work in Fmod this time around is because of what I learned about communicating within a group dynamic. After working on PS with Bryn and his team I realised that I needed to be more involved in the projects as a whole and as I discussed with Bryn the best way to do that was allow me to use Fmod and alter the audio parameters for the game. I think this project really helped improve my communication skills quite a lot. I attended almost all of their games classes as well to see what was changing or working and also to tell Bryn where I was with my work. This level of communication is something I've kind of glossed over in the past and it really paid off. I was more involved, motivated and generally had more success all around. There were still some issues with my more detailed communication but I'll get into that later.
The content of this project had plenty of different aspects and people I worked with as well including the events, general sound effects, music and dialogue (simlish). The foley I recorded with Ryan and it was a great mix of recording straight foley effects like coin sounds and hammering wood to sound we knew needed to be processes later like squeaking rubber to warp down into creaking timber using Pro Tools. We worked well as a team and bounced a lot of ideas off each other and weren't afraid to really let each other know what we were thinking which is essential in a project like this. As for the dialogue I worked with Ash and my friend Jade both of whom haven't really done much voice acting before. Ash is doing the same course as me so it was a little easier to guide him to what I wanted because he understood what I needed so he was an amazing help.
Working with my friend Jade was a real challenge from a producer stand point. It was actually a great opportunity because she was really nervous and embarrassed to be making silly gibberish voices for the game but with some guidance from me we got a bunch of really funny stuff to work with. I think it will really pay off in the future because if I ever have to work with someone who is unsure or lost in what I need from them I can help guide them to be good end result.
The music was another aspect of this project I was super excited about because I set a challenge for myself to make a dynamic score which basically changes depending on what screen you're on. I did a bunch of research for it and made a few videos about my inspirations and why it meant so much to me.
Basically it was a great chance for me to do something I had never done before and meet people who excel at this sort of thing in the industry right now. I think this changed my entire out look on game music and from now on I definitely want to try and make my music as interesting and dynamic as possible.
What didn't go as intended:
As with all school projects nothing get 100% finished it's the whole point of being at school. Castle Lovers still has a few minor bugs like the dialogue not getting triggered perfectly and also I was having issues with my music going out of sync if you pushed the game too hard. These little problems were pretty easily solved however and I ended up fixing it by removing two tracks of music then never stopped playing and adding them into each track individually. Basically what I'm trying to say is this project was full of little problems that sprung up here and there but unlike previous projects I went back and fixed them rather than being content with a poor end result which is a huge improvement for me. An example of this was the dialogue and how I originally perceived it working in the game. I thought it would be really cool if each character had a dynamic simlish player that played different starts, middles and ends of sentences when they were triggered in the game. It was basically a random sentence generator which involved a lot and a lot if input and editing. Long story short it wasn't anything like what we actually needed for the game and I wasted a few days working it out and another few days re-recording and editing the new dialogue that actually fit. If you're still curious I made a video about the entire conundrum...
This whole escapade really taught me the value of effective communication in a team dynamic and I really lost a lot of time making something that didn't fit.
Minor Project: Arctic Resounding
One of my other projects I worked on was a resound for the movie trailer for Arctic. This was a great opportunity to work on something other than game audio. It required me to record foley with a group, re-sync bad dialogue, source appropriate scoring and of course mix and edit the whole thing together. Here is the end result...
I was pretty happy with the outcome, I had a few different attempts but with feedback I improved each time and even had a chance to make a 5.1 mix as well. The surround mix was a great chance to use the S6 studio at school to experiment and play around with a few extra speakers and I learned a lot about the signal flow and workings for surround. Part of this project as well was mastering film sound which is always a challenge, my mix was pretty quiet to begin with but with time, research and feedback I learned a lot about film loudness standards and how to stick to them properly.
Well that's this trimester in review, I feel like I've finally started to make some headway as a game audio designer. I was so happy with the progress I've made these last few months and as you can tell I've spent a lot of time refining the things that will really help me make it out in the real world. This trimester I spent so much more time working with others and seeking their help and feedback as well as being responsible for the projects I was working on individually. I learned a lot and will always look back at these projects as my really starting place and I am looking forward to seeing what I can do and learn in the future.
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