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Sound Design: About

Sound Design

Getting Started with Sound Design & FMOD

Designing Sound for Games

Video game sound design is the art of creating and adding audio elements to a video game. This involves creating entire libraries of custom sound effects to give the game a sense of realism and uniqueness. The sound effects must then be implemented properly to the images that will be seen by the player.

Anyone who has had a game’s audio not working properly, such as a silent explosion or dialogue, knows how important sound effects are. Even the earliest video games used what little technical resources they had to add sounds and make the game more attractive. Pong, for example, had simple beeping sounds when the ball hit the paddles. Even though the creators couldn’t make sounds of a crowd booing and hissing, the different tones used in the original helped make it a more fun experience. Continue reading from GameDesigning

Creating with FMOD

When sounds are created for a game, they have to be dynamic and interactive in a game. You can’t just play the same footstep sound, or music loop, over and over, it has to change and be reactive. You also need a simple way for a programmer in a game to say ‘start the car engine’ and ‘set the rpm for the car’ rather than programming all of that very complex logic yourself. This is what FMOD Studio handles and more.

A standard sound editor lets you lay out a linear track, whereas FMOD Studio lets you have the audio laid out with multiple tracks, with parameter controls, game logic, and components that can be reused. This allows the game audio to constantly change and react in real-time. Complex game audio events can be created by a sound designer, not a technical person, and interactive music tracks can be created as well. The game then triggers those events with simple commands, or they can be inserted into an existing game engine like UE4 or Unity. Continue reading from 80 Level

Check out a book on Sound Design

Link to Designing With Sound by Amber Case in the catalog
Link to Logic Pro X for Dummies by Graham English in the catalog
Link to GarageBand for Dummies by Bob LeVitus in the catalog
Link to Home Recording for Musicians for Dummies by Jeff Strong in the catalog
Link to Indie Games by Bounthavy Suvilay in the catalog

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