Game Sound Design 2 Flashcards
Modern game engines are
Extremely complicated
Custom game engines are (3)
Expensive, Slow, Risky
Middleware works alongside
Game engine
What does middleware do?
Expands functionality
What can middleware improve on?
Game engine functionality
Middleware normally includes (3)
Application Programming Interface, UI, Documentation
Two examples of middleware are
FMOD and WWise
Sound designer and programmer work together to make
parameters
Benefits of Audio Middleware (4)
- Sound designer has a role
- Responsibilities are clear
- Less work for dev team
- Audio engineer is less dependant on dev team
Functionality of Middleware (10)
- Define audio behaviour and events
- Create adaptive audio scores
- Mix in real time
- Apply FX in DAW UI
- Profiling
- Create 3D environments
- Generate sound banks
- Deploy sound across multiple platforms
- Compress audio
- Work with different game engines
“Don’t Chase Monsters After Parties; Cats Get Desperate Chasing Weasels.”
FMOD consists of (2)
FMOD Studio, API
What does low level API do?
Builds audio engines
What language does low level API use?
C/C++
Studio API builds a library of code on top of what?
Low level API
Studio API uses what concepts from FMOD Studio?
Architecture concepts
Studio API allows users to
work with higher level code
Studio API uses what language?
C/C++
Where is FMOD Studio tool built?
On top of FMOD API
What UI does FMOD Studio tool have?
DAW like UI
What does FMOD Studio tool help create?
Dynamic and responsive audio in game
Events can be (3)
triggered, controlled, stopped
What can be layered?
Events
Can events be 2D, 3D or both?
2D and 3D
3D events use what to locate sounds in game?
Spatializer
Tracks, Instruments and Parameters are all classified as
Events
Tracks can be thought of as a
bus or channel
Tracks contain (4)
Markers, timelines, FX chains, and output routing
Trigger regions are represented by
Instruments
What are the 7 instrument types?
- Single
- Multi
- Scatterer
- Programmer
- Command
- Snapshot
- Plugin
“Some Mighty Superheroes Protect City Streets Proudly.”
Single instrument plays what when triggered?
A single audio file
Multi instrument plays what when triggered?
A playlist of audio
Scatterer instrument plays what?
Spatial and spawning playlist of audio
What does the snapshot instrument do?
Loads preset when triggered
What does programmer instrument allow users to do?
Precise control through code
What is programmer instrument good for?
Complex dialogue system
What does plugin instrument allow user to do?
Create custom sounds
What is plugin instrument good at?
Creating generative audio
Banks are a collection of events that can be
loaded and unloaded for memory purposes
Banks contain (4)
metadata, event data, sample data, and streaming data
What data do banks not include?
Profiling data
Are auditory or visual reactions faster?
Auditory
What can auditory perception tell us? (6)
Where, What, Who, Material, Density, Weight
What is selective attention?
the process of picking important information for further processing by the brain
What does focussed attention lead to?
Other brain processes like emotions
First person shooters rely on what?
Quick sound identification
Racing games rely on?
Music
What is multi-sensory attention the concept of?
Senses dont work in isolation
Multi-sensory attention is
where object is attended to by different senses
Multi-sensory attention affects
Cognitive performance
Multi-sensory attention involves
decision making
Multi-sensory impacts
Gaming experience
What does the brain favour?
The more reliable sensory information
What is the consequence of dual sensory processing?
McGurk Effect
What is the McGurk effect?
BA or FA
Violation of Expectation
Is McGurk effect only limited to audio and vision?
No sir
Expectation and emotion depends on (7)
- Life experiences
- Game genre
- Current mood
- Audio characteristics
- Musical cues
- Loudness, Brightness, Roughness
- Audio Visual congruency
“Life’s Great Moments Add Musical Layers And Connections.”
What can violation of expectation affect?
Emotion
What is synchesis?
Fusion of sound and visual content. what is heard merges with what is seen
Humans can hear (2)
monaurally and binaurally
Monotic means
hearing from one ear
Diotic means
Hearing same signal in both ears
Dichotic means
Hearing different signal in different ear
What can be conveyed using HRTF?
Direction
Jit.phys =
Jizz
Distance can be conveyed using (3)
Direct/Reflection ratio, ray tracing, filtering
What is HRTF?
How sound is shaped by head, ear, shoulders, etc
How to measure HRTF?
Mic in ear
Disadvantage of HRTF?
Time consuming
Measurements taken as different angles during HRTF recording capture (3)
ITD, ILD, Monaural Spectral Cues
Where would you capture HRTF ideally?
Anechoic chamber
What does HRIR stand for?
Head Related Impulse Response
How do you calculate HRIR?
Inverse FFT of HRTF
Why is generic HRTF not the best to use?
Timbre varies between person to person
How can binaural audio be synthesized?
Convolving HRTF with sound source
What format is binaural audio stored as?
SoFa
What does SoFa stand for?
Spatially oriented format for acoustics
What should you ideally accompany HRTF with in terms of consumer audio?
Head tracking
HRTF panning con?
CPU expensive
What sounds shouldn’t be spatialized? (4)
Low frequencies, music, narration, character sounds
HRTF panners assume that audio is
Mono
What sounds can’t be spatialized? Why?
Pure tones
Can’t be filtered as they only contain one frequency
What is ambisonic audio?
3D surround sound
What are the two stages of ambisonics?
Encoding and decoding
What is referred to as A format?
Raw recordings
What is B format?
Encoded positional information
How many signals does B format have?
- W, X, Y, Z
W signal refers to
Signal equivalent to omnidirectional microphone
X, Y, Z signals refer to
Signals taken from figure of eight microphones
W equation =
Signal * ( 1 / SqRoot(2) )
X equation =
Signal * ( cos(H) * cos(E) )
Y equation =
Signal * ( sin(H) * sin(E) )
Z equation =
signal * sin(E)
In the WXYZ equations, what does H stand for? How should it normally be written?
Horizontal
0 with a - through it
In the WXYZ equations, what does E stand for? How should it normally be written?
Elevation Angle
(Looks like Y with a horizontal 8 through it)
What does the process of ambisonic decoding achieve?
Signal for loudspeakers
What speaker arrangementcan decodingproduce?
any
What is the conceptof Mix Agnostic?
Surroundsound ambisonic mix will have the same spatialisation regardless of speaker arrangement
Ambisonic pros? (3)
Decode any speaker layout
Mix Agnostic
Can convert ambisonic into binaural
Ambisonic cons? (2)
There is a sweet spot
Hard to design for irregular layouts
Ambisonic ordercan be thought of as
Spatial resolution
As ambisonic order increases, spatial sampling
increases
As ambisonic order increases, channels of encoded data
increases
As ambisonic order increases, number of loudspeakers
increase
As ambisonic order increases, accuracy
increases
As ambisonic order increases, sweet spot
increases
two formats for ambisonics?
FuMa
AmbiX
What are audio listeners?
Virtual ears which pick up sound in games
What are audio emmiters?
Single sound source instance
eight game elements are
Objectives
Boundaries
Players
Rules
Outcome
Resources
Conflict
Procedures
You can remember it as “OB-PROR-CP”, like a pro’s game plan.
What are players, in terms of game elements?
Player get GYATT
Participant who plays game
What are objectives, in terms of game elements?
specific goals
What are procedures, in terms of game elements?
How to achieve goals
What are rules, in terms of game elements?
Rules for goals
What are resources, in terms of game elements?
What players win/lose
What are boundaries, in terms of game elements?
Game world
What is conflict, in terms of game elements?
What happens when player cant achievegoal
What are outcome, in terms of game elements?
result of game
What are compulsion/core loops?
Cycle of activities which motivate player to continue tasks
What is intrinsic motivation?
Inherent to task
What is extrinsic motivation?
External factors which drive player to complete task
What is the player reward growth loop?
Loop to keep game interesting
What happens when you remove one element from the player reward growth loop?
It wont work
What is profiling?
Monitoring to identify issues with performance
What can be monitored by profiler? (8)
Memory
CPU
File I/O
Output level
Events playing
Number of instances
Number of voices
Master channel
What are instances?
Single event occurrences
How many times can events be instantiated?
Multiple
What is a key feature of scatterer instrument?
High voice number
When monitoring, what should you look for? (4)
CPU spikes
Increase in event instances
High voice number
High mixer output level
What does stealing strategydetermine?
What happens when max instances is reached. What will replace them?
Three methods of memory optimisation?
Dynamic Bank Loading
Asset Compression Settings
Asset Streaming Settings
What does Dynamic Bank Loading do? What two ways can it be implemented?
Loads and unloads sounds when required.
Space or Time
What does Asset Compression Settingsdo?
Sets how FMOD compresses and encodes audio
What does Asset Streaming Settings do?
What is it used for?
Audio more than 10 seconds is streamed
Used for music and atmospherical sounds
What is the standard for game loudness?
There is none
What does LUFS stand for?
Loudness Unit referenced to Full Scale
What are the Sony recommendations for Console?
Mobile?
-24 LUFS (+- 2)
-18 LUFS (+-2)
True peak should exceed what in Sony’s game loudness recommendations?
-1dBTB
Four stages of Loudness algorithm are
- K Frequency weighting filters
- Mean square calculation for each channel
- Channel weighting summation
- Gating data below the average
What is true peak?
How high signal level will reach when a signal is converted from digital to analogue
If signal is reduced by 5 LUFS, how many dB will it be reduced by?
5dB
Skibidi
Toilet
