Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/477283
www.postmagazine.com 30 POST MARCH 2015 to the player. For console or computer, players are either using TV speakers or a surround sound system. But with mobile games, you're using either ear buds, or a little plug-in system, or the mobile phone speaker itself. You have to think about sound a bit differently because there are certain frequencies that will not transmit properly across the mobile phone, partic- ularly low-end frequencies," he explains. Therefore the mobile version's soundtrack will have less low-end information. Taking out explosion sweeteners will help the team stay within their audio data budget. While data size matters, it's not nearly as strict as it used to be for mobile devices. Sweetman cut his teeth on game audio for the original PlayStation system, which he says allowed only 512k of data. Mobile games today can have a whopping 20MB allocated for audio data. "Compared to 512k, that's a massive amount. But a lovely thing is we can go back in time and use the old tricks we had back then to save space and meet our data limitations," Sweetman says, who explains there are different schools of thought on how much variation there should be on key sounds. "Take Japa- nese games, for instance, they believe in repetition, whereas in the West, we like variation. For example, a sword in a Japa- nese game may have two or three sounds and they train the player to recognize those sounds. In the West, we tend to have 150 variations for that one sword," says Sweetman. The more variation, the more data required. While ultimately the decision on variation lies with the client, Sweetman feels that repetition in mobile games can be a good thing. "I'm more concerned about having gameplay feed- back for the player. When a certain sound is played, the player knows a certain action happens. You know you completed a parry perfectly because there is only a few sword sounds." The processing capabilities and storage capacity of mobile devices is increasing exponentially. That, coupled with the proliferation for middleware programs, like Audiokinetic's Wwise, have boosted the possibilities for mobile game audio says Sweetman. "Wwise creates your audio engine depending on what graphics engine the game uses — in the case of Eisenhorn — Xenos, it's Unreal Engine, and bolts straight into it. Wwise enables you to integrate audio in ways you realistically couldn't do otherwise. Often you don't have the budget or the workforce capac- ity to designate someone to create the audio tools you need on a particular pro- duction, especially when you're working on a remote freelance basis, which is how we operate at Sweet Justice." Sweetman and Justice design, edit, and mix in Pro Tools and then use Wwise to implement sounds, including Eisenhorn — Xenos' score by composer Joshua Crispin, very quickly into the game. In working remote- ly with clients, Sweetman explains, "A key thing for us is making sure we have a very strong workflow." Sweetman and Justice focused most of their attention on creating the signa- ture sound for Eisenhorn, voiced by actor Mark Strong (recently appearing in The Imitation Game). His weapons, clothing and accessories — namely his ornate belt, footsteps, and special telepathic and psy- chic abilities — are all covered in over 150 discrete files. That's not a lot considering the size of the game and all the different things Eisenhorn can do, adds Sweetman. Eisenhorn's weapons, Sweetman notes, are all built in accordance with the War- hammer universe (for those Warhammer super-fans closely scrutinizing the game). "Most of these weapons never had a sound before. We got concept art and built the weapons' sounds based on what we saw. It was up to us to make the sounds for them. It was a lot of fun," he says. WAVE CHAMPIONS Richard Aitken, a veteran of the audio biz, has worked on a wide range of game titles, most notably the 2010 Ivor Novello Award-winning Killzone 2 [composed by Joris de Man] — the first time an Ivor has ever been awarded to a video game soundtrack. Aitken brings com- puter programming and professional songwriting experience to all the game MOBILE GAME AUDIO Richard Aitken is working on Kwalee's upcoming Wave Champions.