Screenshot of Biophilia
If you’re into adaptive/interactive music, you should definitely check out the Biophilia app by Björk. This ‘full-length app-album’ is an interesting application in which studio-produced music, music apps and visual art meet.
Today is the official release of the alpha version with all the music tracks that can be bought from the free main (mother) app. The beta was published earlier this year.
[Björk website]
[iTunes link]
You probably know End User Licence Agreements: endless forms you must acept in order to be able to use a specific piece of software. On the following page, the American actor Richard Dreyfuss reads the iTunes EULA, and I think it sounds great!
Just a quick pointer to a very profound article about footsteps in games. And check this video about the evolvement of footsteps in games:
Footsteps Retro Sound Study from lost lab on Vimeo.
Visit: http://blog.lostchocolatelab.com/2010/03/footsteps-informal-game-sound-study.html
A short pointer to something we’re working on…Extant! Extant is a free-roaming survival audio game, completely based on sound.
Extant - Zombie Audio Game
We released a tech demo for Extant in October 2010, a few days prior to Halloween. The demo allows players to wander freely through an atmospheric, monster-infested world, exploring sites and buildings while fighting off zombies and collecting pickups such as ammo and medicine.
Extant is based on concepts developed back in 2002 for an audio game prototype named “Dark – A Garden Wander”, created by Sander Huiberts, Richard van Tol and Hugo Verweij. One example of such a concept is Moby, the protagonists dog, who can guide the player to certain areas and objects using an innovative command menu.
Through this tech demo we explore the design possibilities of an audio-only game space that is intuitive, immersive and easy to navigate. We found that a space based on spheres meets such requirements best. For example, players wander around on a spherical-shaped world, in a fashion similar to Mario on a small planet in Super Mario Galaxy. This approach frees designers from having to add spatial obstructions in order to constrain the players’ free movement to a specific area. Spatial obstructions can be quite a design challenge in audio games, since walls are usually silent and one does not want the player to constantly bump into them. Each building and site is circular as well, allowing the player to enter from any direction.
The Extant tech demo can be download for free at the Creative Heroes website.
Discuss Extant at the AudioGames Forum.
I teach audio design to game designers and interaction designers at the Utrecht of the Arts. Here are some valuable links for finding audio material and some tools. In case you have something valuable to add, you know where to find the comments section.
A very cool example of field recording of remarkable sounds from real objects. By Jean-Edouard Miclot.
Julian Smith posted this video of a percussion performance with the help of the sounds coming from a Jeep. He claims that all the sounds in this video are the actual sounds from the Jeep and that it took 7 hours of filming to get a solid take. Pretty amazing!
You probably know the Wilhelm Scream. According to the Wilhelm Scream entry on Wikipedia, the sound effect that was recorded in 1951 has been used in about 149 films. A recent example is Inglourious Basterds…but we also find the sound effect cliche in games. The following video shows some of the most common examples of the Wilhelm Scream in movies:
Last week, Creative Heroes released the Helmut Scream, which can be used freely. You’re invited to download and use Wilhelm’s jealous brother in your projects.
Yesterdag Richard and I gave a keynote at the Music Summit of Festival of Games in Utrecht. After visiting many international conferences on audio for games, it’s great to meet all the local peers and professionals. At the bottom of this page, you can find a link to the slides and a special link page.
By the way, it was a great venue, featuring a truly wonderful performance installation by Matthias Oostrik. See the two pictures below I made before the summit started:
Festival of Games in Ottone
Festival of Games in Ottone
[Download the Slides as PDF]
More information and weblinks at FoG.AudioGames.net
See a slideshow below the break.
My colleage Kees Went and I attended the AES International Conference Audio for Games 2009. We presented a paper about the Game Audio Lab that was developed in 2008 at the Utrecht School of the Arts.
Game Audio Lab: an educational framework for research and design of realtime, nonlinear sound and music design. Photo © Sander Huiberts
