Evaluation

Throughout this module I have gained valuable skills in audio manipulation with audition and the equipment used for capturing audio. The overall outcome of the audio I processed for my final game, I feel has come out to a high level and give a good atmosphere for my game. I captured audio for my game which I had to edit in order to gain the effect I wanted. As my final game was almost similar to a horror game, I wanted to create audio which had a strong impact on the actions in the game.

I captured many different pieces of audio to give me the opportunity to develop audio for my game and to give me the opportunity to explore audio creation with different sounds. The sounds that are used in my final game are; footsteps, character voice, character impact, enemy hit, enemy alert and background audio.

The footsteps used in my final game work were recorded in my house. The audio would have been perfect as they audio matched the visuals of what the character walked on. The problem I encountered was a slight buzzing noise from the fridge. Whilst editing this piece of audio, I had to sync the audio with the visuals. Once I synced the audio, I attempted to edit the audio as it had some background noise which did not sound good. I could not eradicate this from the audio so the idle to walk in game goes from no audio, to audio. If I could go redo this piece of audio, I would want to gain the same audio for the footstep without the background audio which doesn’t help the audio clip in the final game.

This is a problem but is helped with the introduction of backing music. The backing music was downloaded from a royalty free audio website which really gave the game and eerie feeling theme that I wanted.

The character voice was recorded by myself which was used for when the character is hit by an enemy. To create variety, I adjusted the pitch to the original audio piece and carried this out on two more occasions.

I also adjusted the pitch on three occasions from the original audio file with the character hit. The character hit is used when the main character is hit by an enemy. To gain the natural sound I hit myself and edited it accordingly.

The audio I created for my enemies were both created with my mouth. The enemy alert is a simple ‘hiss’ noise and the enemy hit was a simple noise made with my mouth. The alert is used when the character is in the line of sight with the enemy and the hit sound is used when the character is hit by the enemy which is a slashing sound. I adjusted the audio slightly as both the original files were a bit too simple.

The audio used for the gun was created through experimentation and development of different techniques. I originally gathered audio with multiple found objects. I used objects such as clipping a pen, dropping a pen, popping a bag and hitting a radiator. I compiled these audio files together as a multi-track mixdown with each audio file having an effect which helps the overall outcome for a gun sound. Despite the outcome being successful, I felt it could be better as it didn’t have an effect of a gun.

I knew of another way to create a gun sound which was through using 3 layers of pink noise with different frequency edits and having an amplification effect applied to each. The overall outcome of this edit had a greater effect and had a feel of an 8-bit sound. This works well with my character as when he is hit, he flashes which is similar to older games.

I feel throughout the process of development of the audio for my game, I have learnt new things and have given my game a great atmosphere. I feel that it immerses the player successfully with the realistic and different style of audio pieces used.

I have learnt a lot throughout and I have enjoyed gaining these new skills as I have been able to go and create and edit what I want for my game. I have enjoyed the freedom to create unique audio pieces with the integration of creating a 2D game.