Reminds me a bit of a game dev talk from a Valve employee. Having trouble finding the video, but one of the interesting things that stood out to me was all the challenges with sound effects in VR.
For a door, you can’t just have “door opens” being a simple creak. Because in VR the user physically drags the door open. They can drag it part way, they can open the door quickly, slowly, etc. What in other games was a simple audio file became very complex in VR.
Dynamic music and sound techniques for video games
21–30 of 37 posts
Re: Dynamic music and sound techniques for video games
#22I thought about for long how SFX in f.e. airsims are done nowadays: different engine characteristics are just one thing. Are there still samples / recordings involved? Same with racing or train sims.
You might find this software interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKT-sKtR970 I don't know if any of the state of the art flight/driving simulators are doing this kind of engine noise synthesis already, but they should be.
Thanks!
Re: Dynamic music and sound techniques for video games
#23While not as procedurally advanced as some of the techniques explored here, in my opinion the absolute pinnacle of dynamic music in video games is the soundtrack to Mount Wario in Mario Kart 8. While the level itself (an unusual point-to-point, highly vertical course) is its own masterclass in terms of game design, the music, comprising three separate movements, each with its own clever way of masking the transition…
Thanks for sharing. I learned something new! That’s my favorite level, and I love the crazy shortcut.
Re: Dynamic music and sound techniques for video games
#24I've noticed while playing PC and Android games, volume will sometimes apparently increase or decrease on it's own - without me touching the volume knob or any visible change in the volume setting. Is there some known bug in common (eg. Realtek?) drivers or hardware that may explain it? Has anyone else encountered?
Re: Dynamic music and sound techniques for video games
#25I've noticed while playing PC and Android games, volume will sometimes apparently increase or decrease on it's own - without me touching the volume knob or any visible change in the volume setting. Is there some known bug in common (eg. Realtek?) drivers or hardware that may explain it? Has anyone else encountered?
Is some sort of volume "equalisation" or compression being applied maybe? Could also be reacting to the change in ambient volume conditions otherwise.
Re: Dynamic music and sound techniques for video games
#26I remember a talk by Borislav Slavov (composer for Divinity: Original Sin 2, BG3) where he was showing how the music changes depending on the player's actions in D:OS2.
One of the examples, that I found really cool, was switching from major to minor scale when the player enters in stealth mode. There were other interesting bits and tricks, but this one really stood out for me.
Also, it worths mentioning that the player was able to choose the lead instrument for the in-game music during the character creation - flute, tambour, oud, and cello.
Not sure if that talk is available online. I've got the chance to meet him in person a few years ago.
Re: Dynamic music and sound techniques for video games
#27I just recently played Nier Automata for the first time, and was amazed by not only the soundtrack, but the way it handle dynamically changing as you interact with other characters, or when certain story elements are triggered. There’s even an in-game jukebox that lets you explore the music, and it’s crazy to see how nested it gets based on different environments. Definitely recommend checking out if you, like me, ar…
I was just about to mention Nier Automata too. The dynamically changing music was a huge wow moment to me when I played it.
Actually this game is such an art. Its story is touching, full of unexpected plot twist, and inspiring deep thinking afterwards; its graphics is cozy and unsettling, heart warming and hear breaking at the same time - yet the game is not really gpu demanding; its combat is slick, snap, and satisfying; its music literally echo with your emotional roller coaster along your gameplay. And what's crazy is that, all of these nice things about this game actually blend with each other really perfect, so you don't think about any single aspect of this game, you feel the whole game as a package delivers you one of, if not THE, finest japanese anime/game experience in so many levels. I was really depressed for like 6 months after finishing this game because I left wanting more of Nier Automata games. It will literally make you become a huuuuge weeb.
Re: Dynamic music and sound techniques for video games
#28Nothing will beat IMUSE from Monkey Island 2. Maybe because of the way MIDI worked versus the "pre-rendered" audio used today? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjtxK_WT784
Yeah there was a big push towards this in the 90s, I seem to remember the Wing Commander games and Ultima Underworld trying it. It's a similar tragedy to voiceovers in games - RPGs had increasingly interesting dialogue systems, Wizardry and Ultima would let you talk to NPCs using keywords or whole sentences. Voice acting killed that entirely. One can only hope that the era of LLMs brings back some of this interactivi…
> One can only hope that the era of LLMs brings back some of this interactivity.
The Wheel turns, and things Old become New again.
Re: Dynamic music and sound techniques for video games
#29Reminds me that there's some interesting audio techniques in the new Avatar game, like ray traced audio:
https://youtu.be/LRI_qgVSwMY (skip to 13:16 for the audio section)
Re: Dynamic music and sound techniques for video games
#30I thought about for long how SFX in f.e. airsims are done nowadays: different engine characteristics are just one thing. Are there still samples / recordings involved? Same with racing or train sims.
You might find this software interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKT-sKtR970 I don't know if any of the state of the art flight/driving simulators are doing this kind of engine noise synthesis already, but they should be.
The problem here is mostly computational cost. Simulating finer grained details needs a proportionally higher tick rate. In this case although the engine sim seems to be 2D and the gas sim 1D but both would need really high resolution to output sound synthesis. Driving games for now are largely putting that work into tyre dynamics as it’s such an integral part of the driving experience. Maybe there’s head room to do this x number of cars on the track but I don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion that they can just slap in a similar simulation.