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March 2014

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www.postmagazine.com Post • March 2014 27 uilding an interesting combat soundtrack is tricky because typically the gameplay is repetitious. There's a lot of bang- bang-bang happening (or clang-clang-clang, depending on the era of the storyline). So how do you break the monotony? Offering players a variety of weapons is a good start, but that's only scratching the surface. No matter the size of the arsenal, sounds need to change. Adjusting the EQ to account for perspective or adding reverb in spacious environments are effective changes that add variety and keep a game from sounding too gamey. Improving the game's dynamic range also keeps the soundtrack from becoming stagnant, and it helps players from becoming sonically fatigued. These game audio pros share their combat game experiences, and how they build compelling combat soundtracks. TITANFALL Respawn Entertainment's highly-anticipated debut game, Titanfall, is an online-only, multiplayer FPS game for Microsoft's Xbox One, Xbox 360, and the PC. Erik Kraber is the audio director at Respawn Entertainment (www. respawn.com) in Van Nuys, CA. His audio team includes senior sound designer Tyler Parsons, sound designer Bradley Snyder, and dialogue supervisor Joshua Nelson. Kraber also worked with Warner Bros. Game Audio (http://www.warnerbros.com) supervising sound editor Bryan Watkins and his audio team in Burbank, CA. Titanfall is a player vs. player game; six IMC (Interstellar Manufacturing Corporation) players battle against six militia players. Players are called Pilots when not in a Titan mech-suit. Each Pilot can summon a Titan. There can be up to 40 AI combatants in each game as well. In addition to combat weapons, there are tactical abilities and special Titan abilities happening. Each ability has a unique audio cue. Players hear messages through their helmet headsets. There's a musical score running throughout to highlight gameplay, and to signal the end of a campaign. Needless to say, the soundtrack is incredibly dense. "At one point, we had 460 simultaneous voices of sound happening," Kraber says. "Trying to control the chaos is a big focus and probably the biggest hurdle we had to overcome throughout all of it." A priority value is assigned to each sound. A sound that's given a higher priority will attenuate all other sounds in the mix. For example, when a player gets a message through the headset, that sound takes precedence in the mix. During the chaos of battle, Kraber and his audio team want to communi- cate as much tactical information through sound as possible. Senior sound designer Parsons says, "Players should know where the enemy is, what the enemy is firing, who was damaged, who was not, whose abilities are running out, and so forth. Finding space for all that information and providing it to the player became our biggest challenge." Titanfall's weapon sounds reinforce the realistic-yet-futuristic look that lead artist Joel Emslie did for the game. Many weapons are ballistic-based with tech enhancements, though a few are energy-based. They sound relatable, almost familiar, yet with a sci-fi twist. "We all agreed that we didn't want any 'pew pew' laser sounds," says Kraber. "The 'pew pew' sound was a big no-no. If any sounds could be described in that manner then they were wrong for the game." At Warner Bros. Game Audio, Watkins brings valuable weapons design experience to Titanfall. He worked with Kraber last year on the weapons for Medal of Honor: Warfighter, and he recently completed weapons work for Saints Row IV. Having experience with both ends of the spectrum, his weapon sounds for Titanfall tread the fine line between believably futuristic and too sci-fi. One weapon Watkins sound designed was the charge rifle, an energy- based sniper rifle used for taking down Titans. The rifle, he explains, has tendrils that move up and down during its idle. "To try and sell the little movements of the tendrils was fun," Watkins says. In contrast, Watkins also created sounds for the much larger Titan weapons, such as the XO-16 chaingun. "One of our challenges was to make the Pilot weapons really big and exciting, yet still make the Titan's weapons even more exciting and bigger still," Watkins notes. While discussing the direction for the Pilot's Archer Rocket, a shoulder-firing, anti-Titan weapon, Kraber referenced the rocket launcher sound from the 2005 film War of the Worlds. Watkins contacted Richard King (supervising sound editor on War of the Worlds) to find out how he made it. "Richard King was very nice and got his assistant to pull the sounds for me," says Watkins. "I took a listen to their pre-dub, and made my own version of it. Of course I didn't tell Erik until I sent it. It was a very clever sound in how it gave you the sense of the rocket going out of the tube." Watkins likens it to the sound of a cannon being cleaned out with a big swab. "It was exactly what Erik was trying to achieve on this game, which was to give every weapon a unique sound." Highlighting each weapon's unique personality through sound does two things: it instantly communicates an enemy's location and threat level, and it keeps the soundtrack from becoming a constant wash of indistinct gunfire. Even when fired from varied distances, each weapon retains a core par t of its personality. "If someone is 500 yards away firing the Arc Cannon, you know exactly what weapon it is," Kraber notes, "even though it sounds different than it does when fired right next to you." Kraber created the Arc Cannon sound using flanged, processed flame sources, like flame whooshes and burns, in combina- tion with synth generated white noise. The Arc Cannon has a drastic range, notes Kraber, from a low-powered shot to a high-powered shot. "I had to figure out how to mix, balance and create this design so you could tell it was the same weapon but it really felt amped up at times," he notes. He also created the 'Kraber Sniper' rifle sound, which features a distinct crack fol- lowed by a three second echoing decay. "If you hear that crack and that long decay," says Kraber, "then you know that sniper's bullet can reach you." Another interesting weapon is a gigantic orbital railgun that defends one of the frontier outposts. Parsons, who created the railgun sound design, notes the gun has an enormous warm-up and cool-down cycle that involves many mov- ing parts. To create the sound of the moving parts, Parsons used recordings he captured of a malfunctioning escalator in Thailand that has "huge sounding clunks and servos," he says. The sound also includes a box crusher that Parsons recorded at a grocery store. For the railgun discharge, Parsons recorded the revving of a Yamaha motorcycle, which he then processed using the Shift plug- in from the GRM Tools Spectral Transform bundle, the iZotope Spectron plug- in, and tons of EQ and compression. Parsons confesses, "It was definitely the biggest weapon that I have ever done." Audio Respawn Entertainment worked with Warner Bros. Game Audio on the soundtrack for the multi-player, first-person shooter, Titanfall.

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