dSonic Interview Part 2
dSonic Tells GameZone What it Takes to “Sound” Like a Winner

by Louis Bedigian

 

“Interactive / Adaptive audio is definitely the future of games.”

 

 

Going into the next generation of gaming means more than new possibilities for graphics and gameplay, it also means new possibilities for an immersive, realistic sound experience. PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Nintendo Revolution, better PCs and superior handhelds – it’s enough to drive a crazy person nuts.

 

And when you drive a crazy person nuts you need a sound that conveys what he’s feeling. Something subtle, perhaps, that slowly builds up to this ridiculous, drum-heavy track that’ll blow your ears out. Or maybe you need a sound that’s sporadic; peaking in obnoxiousness just before slowing. Then it goes into an entirely different direction, sort of like the crazy man it was written for.

 

Whoever your characters are and whatever their story might be, they are only as memorable as the emotion behind them. Until the day comes when in-game facial expressions are perfect, that emotion can only come from one source: sound.

 

Be it music, sound effects and/or professional voice acting, sound is the element that holds a series together. Be it Halo’s theme, Final Fantasy’s distinct tones, Solid Snake’s unforgettable voice, or the theme from Super Mario Bros., sound is the one thing that never changes. It gets better. It gets more advanced. But while these and other titles have evolving gameplay, from 2D to 3D and who knows where next, the sound is consistent. When I hear one of Mario’s classic songs, I don’t think of a specific adventure – I think of the series as a whole.  

 

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion 

 

Where will sound take us next? In Part 2 of our interview with dSonic’s Co-Founder and Creative Director, Kemal Amarasingham talks about his projects, the future of sound, and examines the next-gen game consoles.  

 

dSonic Interview Part 1

 

 

Tell us about dSonic's studio. What's it like, what equipment do you use, etc.?

 

KA: We consider dSonic's tools and studio to be quite streamlined and advanced. We produce all our audio on PCs, which is unusual for and audio production house (most people are on Macs). We do this to make sure we are compatible with the platforms that the game developers use, and nowadays the audio tools on PCs are just as good as Macs IMO. We're always on the lookout for different software to make our sounds more interesting, so we update this constantly.

 

Our equipment is a variety of software packages, with tools like the Kyma system, Gigastudio, Vegas, Cubase and many plug-ins.  One aspect that we make sure we are up to date in is our video tools.  We find that for most of our clients, getting video captures and renders of animations to us is time consuming, so we take that problem off their hands by having the tools to do that ourselves.

 

Photoshop is the worldwide leader in photo editing; Maya is one of the most popular tools used for 3D animation. What would be the equivalent to those in sound editing?

 

KA: We have internal "discussions" (all friendly of course) as to what tools are the best, but we tend to let people use what tool they feel most comfortable in, and what they need to get the job done.  We also feel it's very important not to get to stuck on one tool or software and refuse to use anything else because we've convinced ourselves it's "the best thing ever".  Technology evolves, and so we're always trying out new sound tools. Some of the tools we've recently used regularly use in our studio are Kyma, Giga Studio, Cubase and Sony's Vegas.

 

Kyma is a very advanced sound design tool that allows you to create almost any sound you can imagine. You can create your own sound modules via a scripting language, so it's very flexible.       

 

For editing and mixing sound effects, recently we've been using Vegas a lot. We love the organization of the program and it's strong video capabilities, which are very important when syncing video capture of creatures in a game.

 

Finally, we use Giga Studio, and some of the extensive orchestral libraries in that format to produce most of our orchestral scores. 

 

 

 

What should a gamer do who wants to work in this field? Most colleges have animation, digital video, and other entertainment-related programs, but very few colleges and universities offer in-depth audio training. Where can gamers go to get the skills they need to succeed?

 

KA: One of the vital things you need to do to succeed in games is be a gamer, and knowing how they are put together. Of course you must be a talented musician / sound designer, but if you don't understand why you need a certain type of sound or ambient in a particular level by instinct, then it'll be hard to succeed. Playing games will give you this knowledge. 

 

Another great way to get experience is to create and implement sounds into an already existing game engine, such as Creative Labs’ ISACT. Doing this will give you experience that is hard to get anywhere else. That’s how I learned.

 

Where should you begin? I would imagine that playing an instrument helps, but what if you want to stick with sound creation (something like a foley artist) and have no desire to handle the music side of audio?

 

KA: Sound design is a tricky area to get into.  In my opinion the most difficult thing to do well.  There are very few programs that teach it, but as time goes on there are programs that are surfacing at various colleges etc.

 

I had to learn by trial and error, and was in a way self taught. Getting a game engine and putting in your own sounds is a great way to learn. Keep in mind that the more you do everything from scratch the better your sounds will be – i.e., don’t just pull sounds straight off sound effects CDs.

 

Back to what dSonic is doing, two of your upcoming projects include Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Mage Knight Apocalypse. What kind of audio is being provided to those games (music, voice, etc.)? How is dSonic making them sound as good as they look?    

 

KA: Both of these games are looking fantastic. I'm blown away by the creativity that has been put into these, so we did our best to support the visuals with some unique sounds. For Oblivion, dSonic provided creature, spell and combat effects for the game. Since there are a lot of creatures in the game, our mission was to make each one sound unique, and creep the player our in a different way (yes, even the sheep sounds a little psychotic at times).  

 

For Mage Knight we are providing all the audio for the game, and implementing it as well.  We paid special attention to putting many sounds in the environments so that as you walk through them they feel alive and evolve as time goes by. There are a ton of spell and creature effects in the game, and for these we've created not only the sounds, but variations on those sounds to make sure that what the player hears sounds more natural than just repeating the same one sound over and over. For the music, we created a different style to fit with the unique landscapes that the game has. Mainly orchestral, but with our own twist on that genre. 

 

Mage Knight Apocalypse 

 

Are you working on any other games? If so, what can you tell us about them? Even if you can't tell us the names, we'd love to at least know what type of audio you're providing...

 

KA: Yes...we're currently about to start some new projects.  As usual they are unannounced, but we can say that these will be somewhat of a different style of game than the ones we've be currently doing, which is going to be exciting for us. 

 

Who do you have on board the dSonic team? Who are your composers, sound engineers, voice talent, etc.?

 

KA: We have a built up a solid team of people over the years, and continue to look for a train new talent to deal with how to make audio sound good for games.  For our latest project we have a team of 8 people working for us, including people who implement the sound effects into the game, composers who understand Adaptive Music, sound designers and a production coordinator who is in charge of the voice over sessions. We also have a stock of voice actors that we have built up over the years, some of which I got to know back in the good old Looking Glass days.  A lot of the actors from Thief 1 & 2, System Shock 2 and Neverwinter Nights: The Shadows of Undrentide are in our rolodex.

 

How far in advance of a game's release must developers hook up with dSonic?

 

KA: This varies a lot, depending on the title and it's complexity, but generally we like developers to contact us as soon as possible in the development cycle.  Having time to think of ideas for the sound, music and voice-overs takes time, and so the better result will come the earlier we are part of the process.  It also gives us time to really understand the game and get to know the atmosphere the developer is trying to get across.

 

I've heard that you are implemented a technique called Adaptive Audio. Could you explain what that is?

 

KA: Adaptive Audio is music and sound effects that change in real time, reacting to the game play. For example a music track in a FPS might change from a relatively calm vibe when you are walking around [and] exploring, to something dramatic and upbeat when you get involved in a battle. Many games already do this by simply cross-fading from one track to another, but what an adaptive music track aims to make the transition seamless, as if it were a single piece of music, scored especially for the set of events that unfolded. There are only a small number of games that explore this approach currently, but in future we believe this will become the norm and players will come to rely on the cues in the music and sound FX to help them play the games.

 

Have you experimented with or created any techniques for interactive audio? Or is that what Adaptive Audio is?

 

KA: That's what adaptive audio is. The industry uses this term (instead of interactive audio) as a way to describe sounds reacting to the players actions in a real time way.

 

For each game we work on, we always create new ways of playing back the audio to go along with the gameplay. Some of these are subtle ; creating a sound effect that we split into it's elements and create variations for so that it can be mixed together in real time to give a more natural, varied sound. Some are more complex, such as building up a scripting scheme to play back multiple streams of music that will react to different situations in a game, or doing some real time surround sound weapon sounds. The key is that we experiment with things that we think will sound cool, and then test them out in the game itself.

 

 

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

 

How do you feel about interactive audio? Is it the way of the future for games?

 

KA: Interactive / Adaptive audio is definitely the future of games, because it allows the audio to be utilized by designers as part of the game play.  With Adaptive Audio every game requires a different approach to implementing the audio so it can be this as unique as the designer wishes.  Definitely the way to go.

 

Have you test-drove the Xbox 360 yet? Do you know what it can and cannot do for audio in games and how far it will advance the listening experience?

 

KA: XACT is the audio development tool from Microsoft for the Xbox 360 and it is certainly capable of adaptive audio. The tools are there to do great audio, now it's just a matter of coming up with ideas for any particular game. That will be the deciding factor in how far the experience gets advanced.

 

What about the other guys – PC, PlayStation 3, Nintendo Revolution, and handhelds like PSP and Nintendo DS. PC is always advancing, where do you think it's going to go next? How will Sony and Nintendo's next-gen consoles fit in? Is there anything special that can be done with the current handheld systems?

 

KA: As the new handheld systems come to light, the most exciting thing that I've seen happen is a shortening in time that it takes for the audio on those systems to realize their full potential. The techniques that are used on any system (the PC in particular) can be translated to any of the console or handheld systems, it's just a matter of to what degree, and then playing within those bounds. Some handheld systems are capable of playing back .wav files, mp3s or .ogg format, which is great. They can sound as good as anything, bearing in mind that some of the speaker on those devices can be limited, so listening with headphones is recommended

 

The next gen systems have so much potential that if utilized will be quite amazing what we will hear. 

 

What's next for dSonic? Where does the future lie for the company and for audio in general?

 

KA: As a company, dSonic has continued to grow since it's inception, and we intend to keep on  building teams of game audio experts who will develop new and better ideas to serve the industry and the games we work on.

 

Audio in the games industry continues to develop. We've talked with many companies who place a lot of importance in it, and are seeing some promising new middleware tools being developed to make the integration of audio into games more flexible and interesting. To me, the future lies in the use of audio engines and developing content that take full advantage of those tools.

 

Thank you for your time.