Audiotory Gaming

Small preview of Honmas music

2011-12-16T06:49:00.000-08:00

Here is a small preview of one of the songs that will fill newerth with holiday cheer.
This one is called: Engineer's Shenanigans. (this is not the entire song)
Edit: I've added song preview of one of the more gothic christmas songs that will soon be heard in HoN: Shisha Odori.

Preview

Preview 2

There will be all sorts of genres for this holiday, from jolly orchestral music to gothic danny elfman sort of music, blues and even rock and roll. So hold onto your loincloth, you'll soon be in for a treat.

Volume within games

2011-12-10T16:23:00.000-08:00

I find myself many times wondering when I design sounds and implement them, whether it should be loud or not.

In films, we normally mix by the philosophy of just using the audio that is important to the situation, like dialogue. Dialogue is important because that is where the story is truly told and understood. Without dialogue, it is usually up to our imagination to tell the bigger story. Sometimes though, a visual element can tell a story far greater than that of spoken word, but it is still dialogue and has to be emphasised in some way.

The point in the end though, is what should be loud and what should not be.

Dialogue should always be louder than anything going on at the time - unless it is intentional to muffle the spoken word, but then it is no longer simple dialogue, it is dialogue-by-design.

Dialogue can easily be narrowed down to just lines on a script being said, but actually, sound design, foley and music, can also become dialogue, because it can tell a story if used correctly.

The issue in a movie is often facilitated by a producer and a director who got the final word on said audio mix, but they will often understand that dialogue is important and let the sound mixer do what he\she was hired to do.
But how does this matter in games? How do we mix for games?

Games are really just terrible mediums for mixing because a game is normally not on rails. When it isn't, you have to think about what the player will do and how the player will interact with the world.

Normally, the player will do something that will just make a programmer cry. But when they do that, we as sound mixers and designers, have to make sure we don't ruin their experience when they decide:

"I want to kill that orc by using a drawbridge as a catapult and fire a sword in their face. NOT by using a sword the intended way."

So everything has to interact perfectly; they expect to hear the drawbridge, the sword flying in the air, it hitting the orc and the orc crying in pain. If they don't, the experience is less rewarding...though amusing nonetheless.

Then there is the time when you are mixing and you think:

"Well, I don't really wanna hear my own footsteps the entire game. But I do expect that, when my foot hit those wood boards, there will be a sound of someone walking on boards of wood."

Then you have to put that in, but you cannot and should not - make it so loud that you are aware of it consciously, only sub-consciously.

Halloween Music

2011-10-23T08:31:00.000-07:00

Update: No longer available. Sorry, check back next year for new music.

The Midas Touch!

2011-09-07T22:58:00.000-07:00

Friday, Mr.Midas was packed up in a patch and sent off to the land of Newerth.
Now let's talk about his sound:

Who\what:

In Greek mythology, Midas was a king who was rewarded for his kindness (debatable) with a wish from the god Dionysus. In his stupidity, he chose the power to turn everything he touches to gold.
He learned through his folly, that you should be careful with what you wish for.
Personally, I would rather have gone with a wish of "Guns that shoot dub-step." But maybe he was a little bit more country with a dash of greed.

Anyway, I knew gold would be involved.

After seeing the character model, I decided to not record any foley sound. He didn't have anything on him that would make a specific sound unique to the character, there's his golden hand but, it doesn't play an important role to the character (i.e. no special effects or anything for it). His alternative model however, is a man made entirely out of gold. I might at a later date do some foley sound for his golden body movements but as of now, he will remain silent.

Voice:

S2's Nome wrote the finalized script for Midas that was then put up for auditions.
2 out of the 13 auditions we got, really stood out.
It was important that we didn't use a voice that sounded like our Witch slayer's alternative avatar: Pimp Slayer.

So Turner Battle (an epic last name), ended up being our favorite.
He had the perfect king-like voice and could actually churn out some great tidbits.

Since his alternative hero looked less human with his body made entirely out of gold, I decided to process his voice a little bit, making it sound different.
The following audio is his normal voice first with the processed one after:

Sound Design:

Attacks and Whooshes:

He throws a stone\nugget made of gold. (I just call it the philosopher's stone.)

For his impacts, I wanted a sound that would bleed through all the other attack sounds in the game, making it easier to identify:
I ended up recording sounds of chains being dropped on the ground, iron pipes hitting other iron pipes, a hammer hitting an anvil and the sound of a waterphone.
I used various plug-ins to give it a more "magic" sound.

In order to create the whooshes, I simply used a doppler effect plug-in on the attack sounds:

Ability 1:

Midas throws 5 bottles of liquid gold that smashes into the ground.

I had previously done some bottle sounds for Master of Arms and I really liked the sound of the throw.

After trying out some sound library sounds, I decided that since I didn't have enough nor the correct ones I needed, that I would go and record beer bottles being thrown - bouncing on the ground and smashing (worry not fellow drunks, I had "emptied" them prior to the recording! *hic*).

I then recorded the sounds of blowing into a bottle and put a Doppler on it for the whoosh sounds.

For the glass impacts, I used the previous smash sounds and added the sound of thick mud and water splashes.
I then sweeten the sound by using the previous attack impacts of the golden stone, but ran them first through a pitch change filter that stretched it and gave the sound random pitches.

As you will be able to hear in the following two first clips, the sound of the bottle impacts are directional, this means that if a bottle breaks behind the camera view, the sound will be played behind the player, same is true for in front, left and right. Though not incredibly amazing, it should give an interesting detail to the player's game session:

Ability 2:

For his second ability, he sends out golden lions that runs to a selectable area and explodes.

From the moment I saw it, I knew that I had to get the sound of lions running.
Obviously, I can't go to a zoo and ask for some lions and demand them to run while I record them because:

A, I'm "allergic" to scary big cats and
B, I didn't have much time.

To reproduce something believable, I had to record three different things:

1, Me running barefoot on dirt (Which made my neighbour think I had totally lost it)

2, Using a pair of worker gloves and slamming my hands on the dirt in a specific tempo (A kid came up to me and asked if my parents wouldn't ground me for doing this. When I said no, he said: "You are soooo lucky!")

3, Kicking up dirt (with a shoe on.)

I then made sure they were in sync and then compressed and equalized them for some sub-woofer love, I also made sure to make them loop, so if the balance team decides to make the lions run longer or shorter, it would not be a problem.

The second thing I worked on was the cast sound. I knew that we wanted to have Midas to occasionally say something that every player could hear, so no need for a lion's roar.
Instead, I used a recording of a french horn and processed it so much that it didn't sound like it used to.
I used a recording of a gun that I processed to be more "magical" and then layered a wind chime over it.

For the explosion, I ended up recording ceramic super-cheap vases that I destroyed, because it didn't sound like glass.
To my ears, it would work perfectly for gold debris or a statue breaking apart (more about that later).

I used the sound of thunder and processed it a little to be more aggressive. I also used some lion roars and snarls to sweeten the sound.
To top it all off, the low frequency sound of a Howitzer, was used to give it that extra push in the start:

Ability 3:

He melts into liquid gold, teleports to a location and reappears.

A friend of mine works with metal in an industrial workshop and often need to melt huge chunks of it. I called her and asked if I could record some sounds at her place and she happily obliged.

I stood in her workshop thinking I would faint, while she melted metal in that ridiculous heat. I was so scared the microphones I had with me, were going to die, but incredibly, they didn't.

Metal makes some of the weirdest gurgle sounds I have ever heard, monster quality gurgles.
Though I recorded 2 hours worth of material, I only used 3 seconds of it for the melting ability.
I layered some water bubbles a top of it because, why not!

For the weird looking stream of gold that flies through the air to the location Midas will reappear, I reused his attack whoosh sounds and created some Doppler effects out of the recordings of the metal melting. Also, he will randomly laugh when he flies around.

For when he reappear; I recorded a coin hitting hard on a wooden table, a firework explosion that's been slowed down, steam from cooking potatoes (nom!) and I reused some of the snarls of the lions:

Ability 4:

By combining any of the three abilities upon an enemy, the enemy turns into solid gold for a few seconds.

This was a hard sound to get right, it would play on any that turns into gold and, considering that all of Midas' abilities are in fact AOE, I couldn't make a sound that would be loud.
I had to instead make a soft but slightly more unique sound than any of his other abilities.

The sound was made by yet again using the impact sounds I had made previously (for his normal attacks), and make them into whooshes; this time however, slowing them down even more. I then added a bell sound to be an indicator:

Death:

Midas explodes into a gold statue that breaks apart.

For his death animation, I started to run out of time. I decided to re-use previous recorded sounds and what ever I could find in my sound library that would work.

I wanted the blocks of gold to slide on the ground and I ended up putting something together that I was quite happy with:

Midas was an interesting challenge but I am glad to finally be done with him.
For more information about Midas, check out his spotlight video:

Geomancer, I choose you!

2011-08-27T12:51:00.000-07:00

After lots of work lately, I finally had some time to start writing a blog post about some of the additional sounds I've done for Heroes Of Newerth.
Though I wrote a Master of Arms blog post, I decided to put it on hold.

A video was filmed when I recorded gunshots, but I have yet to receive the tape from the man who did the video recording. Once I have it, Master of Arms' sound creation blog post will be up.
But lets begin on Geomancer:

Who\What:

Geomancer is a centipede gone horribly wrong; a Frankenstein experiment within the dark-filthy minds of S2's art team. It looks like my previous girlfriend's mother, who terrorized the world with her bad innuendos and harsh language: a purveyor of filth and a master of annoyance!

But back to Geomancer. I got quite lucky with this one, since I got to work in pre-production of the hero (which is quite rare for audio people), and was able to start collecting sounds and plan ahead for how to best bring the hero to life. I knew from the artwork given to me that it was disgusting and scary. So I wanted it to sound disgusting and scary, though not through its abilities, but more through movements and vocals.

Voice:

A question was asked through twitter by Tedde, of why I decided to have his voice be more like Predator and Behemoth. Well first, it is a slug....snake.....worm.....thingy-that-looks-creepy.
Why should it speak English or any human language? Is it so it can communicate with the hellbourne?

Well, we keep dogs and cats, and though we don't understand the bark or nyan..I mean meow, we can still communicate with them...kind of.
So imagine Geomancer is like Maliken's pet.

The second reason is that Predator and Behemoth were both voiced by a human and not by animals. It honestly doesn't sound that good. When I finally had a chance to work on something where I could do monster sounds, I wanted to make it out of animal sounds rather than human vocals.

Every sound designer knows that vocal designs are the hardest to do, but can be the most rewarding of them all IF you do it right. It is hard to do because you want to make something believable, or sound alive. Though we are subconsciously aware of things like sound, we are especially aware of vocals. We have to be, because it is hard-wired into our brains, so we can communicate and form societies, at least until giant crabs decide to take over the world, or worse.

I spent days looking for three particular sounds I wanted to use: Hisses (high-frequency), barks, snaps, talkative, chirps and so on (mid-frequency), and guttural sounds (low-frequency).

I recorded birds, dogs, cats and went to the zoo to record crocodiles. I used some sound library sounds of seals and various guttural sounds from a sound library called Creatures.

My design philosophy was to create 20 different sounds (this turned into 22, not counting the Taunt sounds) that would randomly play regardless of the action.

They had to be designed into 3 categories: aggressive, meek and hissy.
It was done this way to give the character a wider spectrum of sounds.
Listening to screams for 45 minutes (normal length of a play session) would just wear a person out.

I then created his attack grunts that were short and could sound like a roar.
I also made sure to give some hiss sounds to his movements as he bend his front part down (more about this further down).
I made a decision that he would not say anything when he used any of his spells. He is already too noisy.

All in all, I am quite happy on how his vocals came out, but man was it difficult. It took MANY tries to get it right (in my ears).

Here are some samples of his voice:

Sound Design:

Attacks:

His attacks are of him biting and leaving a small cloud of sand.

I recorded breaking tree bark, celery and apples for the bite, for the sand, I recorded obviously falling sand and also added some small pebbles for some of the attacks:

Bored and walking:

For his walking animations, he walks with his 20 or so feet and slithers a little with his tail.
For his bored animations, he roars.

I recorded a wet towel moving in the sand for his tail movements.
I recorded movements of his feet by shuffling a deck of cards and speeding that up, I also recorded some sounds of me stabbing mud with a stick and layered that a top of the card sounds to give it more life.

For the body sound of the geomancer, I recorded slime sounds by using a can of dog food.
For when he moves his head down, I used the previous vocal sounds that were hissy and had been scrapped because they weren't scary enough for other sounds.
For his bored animations, I just reused the attack grunts and the movement vocals:

Ability 1:

His first ability is him digging into the ground moving to a location where he jumps out and stuns.

I was working on Frost Rider when I was doing this ability and was lucky enough to get some massive ice cubes. I recorded dragging them over solid surfaces, getting a large groan sound.
I also used a bucket made of wood on gravel and recorded the dragging sound that came from that. I combined these two and looped them for his movement in the earth.
Him bursting out of the earth was the sound of a large stone hitting another stone.

The sound ended up being so loud, I heard from the store some miles away that they thought someone was using explosives in the old quarry where I recorded the many sounds for geomancer.
I added some various gravel sounds as well:

Ability 2:

He uses sand that stays static but any fiend that walks through it, are slowed but not hurt by the sand itself.

I was quite puzzled on how I was going to make a loopable sound out of sand that didn't sound like it was doing damage but loud enough. I found a bizarre solution by simply using various sounds of wind gusts picking up sand, and making it loop with a generated signal sound called a Brownian Noise:

Ability 3:

For his third ability, he creates many exploding crystals on the enemies feet that does damage if the character is slow\standing still.

The designers did me a favor by using an explosion sound for this ability; it made me realize that it wouldn't work.
It was way too sharp, too loud and in the consistency of when it would play, it would be extremely annoying. So I decided that since it was crystals, it needed to be musical.

I recorded the sounds of a wine glass chime in various pitches and added an explosion that I had previously recorded of the rocks hitting each other, but I used an FFT equation on it so it became more low frequency and muffled.
This resulted in the sound not jumping out as much as the temporary sound did:

Ability 4:

For his last ability, he summons a crystal field at a location that grows until it explodes and crystallizes anyone who stood in that location.

Jesse, our art director, wanted the sound to be growing through a crystal like sound.

Keeping that in mind, I recorded more wine glass sounds that I increased in volume as it came closer and closer to an explosion. I also recorded a fence down at an elementary school where I live. It has a strange high frequency stress sound that was in turn processed with various plug-ins.

Then I recorded light bulbs and glass bottles breaking for two things: The explosion and to have glass debris.

I collected all the glass debris and put them on a smooth blanket, where I shuffled them around with a glove and recorded the movements that made. I then added a reverb to the sound and reversed it so it had a crystal like building sound to it. By combining this with everything else, I had a sound for when the crystal built.

Then I decided that since this was an ability where lots and lots of other sounds would play from other heroes' abilities, I wouldn't create a massive explosion sound.
Instead it was kept at a minimum, and focused on making it bleed through all the other frequencies by making the explosion more about the crystal debris. So I used the debris I already had, and recorded it falling from a height onto a blanket below:

Death:

He falls and crumbles up.

Since he sounded so menacing and scary when he is alive, I decided to make his death to be more ridiculing. I recorded myself screaming and pitched it up, I then used various mud sound for his fall.
I wanted his legs to sound like they were breaking by using the sound of twigs breaking. Then, I wanted the sound of air coming out of him, like it was drained from his body to finally signal that he was dead. So I used a sound from a library that felt like it could come from his body:

Overall, he was an incredible fun challenge to work on and I will consider him a milestone in my own sound work.
If you wanna know more about Geomancer, I suggest you watch the spotlight for the hero:

Master of Arms pending

2011-08-09T04:00:00.000-07:00

I won't be posting this week about the sound work for master of arms. I am working on a film here in Norway and also going to do voice overs in a film and a video game (not s2 related)

Here's the spotlight of Master of arms:

You can get the remixed song here:
http://t.co/lBCOlRH right click > save as

I think there will be another spotlight at a later time which Arney did the sound design for.

Part 2: Everybody was kungfu fighting!

2011-07-27T09:07:00.000-07:00

Here in part 2, I'll elaborate on the work on the Drunken Master, the other new hero to come to Heroes of Newerth:

Who\What:

The Drunken master is based upon the martial art known as: Zui Quan

But I knew it would also be very heavy based around Jackie Chan's Drunken Master 1&2

I'm a huge fan of kung fu films because I grew up with watching Bruce Lee, Jackie chan and at the end of my teenage years: Jet Li. They all are incredible to watch!

With kung fu movies in mind, I wanted the drunken master to sound like a kung fu movie, meaning that the whooshes and hits - had to be made like the old time sounds used to be.

I put my foot down to not use inorganic sounds (computer sounds) in order to create the sound effects I wanted, unless I had to add any delays or the like.
I also wanted to use an Analog recorder, which were used back in the days to get sound effects.
I don't own an analog recorder and getting my hands on one quickly, turned out to be more difficult that it should have been.
So I ended up using my digital recorder, but being adamant to handle it the same way they created the sound effects back in the old days.

I also knew that there was a different aspect of the sound which was liquid.
Having seen his animations and his model, I knew what sounds I had to create for him.

Voice:

MsPudding, Diva and I - wrote his lines, with additional help from a friend of mine and my GF.

Writing his lines turned out to be quite fun. I wanted his attack grunts to be like typical anime\kung fu chinese films, where you hear them say the name of their moves as they do them.
It sounds quite cool on paper, but when ported into the game, it was just an obstruction.
I added more typical "HAI! HOOO!" grunts and removed most of the lines. I still kept some in, because at a later date, they added 4 unique attacks to him and they are all really cool, so on two of them, he says stuff as he attacks.

I wanted to use lots of sound design in his lines as well, to give him memorable moments.
Which brings us to the voice actor:

I was worried we wouldn't get a good enough actor to portray the drunken master correctly.
But then we got an audition from Rich Crankshaw, that blew every other 70-80 auditions we had, out of the water.
He nailed the voice, the acting, the recording quality and the lines perfectly.
I have proposed we use him in more characters because he did an incredible job.

Here are some of his lines, it ends with 2 select flavour sounds, but before they play, there's a taunt prior sound:

Sound Design:

Attacks and Whooshes:

The old fashion whooshes of kungfu, are made by using a small bamboo stick that you swish through the air; in recent years, they've been using a lot of cloth whoosh noises too.

So, I ended up using both the bamboo stick and a piece of cloth attached to the stick, then I whooshed it around, until I had enough material that I were satisfied with.

With that done, I started working on the attack sounds:

Fight sounds in kungfu movies, are very loud and sharp.
For the old kind, the sounds were made typically by using whip sounds, hitting punch bags with baseball bats, etc.
In the matrix films, they ended up using the sound of hitting car tires with sticks and iron rods for punches.

I wanted to do kung fu impacts rather than making sounds for his cup impacts, there's enough metal noises...

I ended up using whip sounds, layered with me hitting a heap of cloth with a baseball bat and slapping my own hand.
Perfect job to take out all that anger after losing a game...

Here's the whooshes and impacts together:
"SCOUT PICK!?!?! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

Idle, Bored & Walking:

For his idle, he staggers around, drunk like a skunk.
For his bored, he hits around in the air,
For his walking, he moves all over the place, kind of tipsy.

I really wanted his sound to be very highly detailed for all his animations and specially for his walking and his idle.
I collected various bottles and jars that I could find and started recording water movements in them. I had around 2 hours of materials to pick from and for future use.

I also wanted the barrel to have a sound but I don't have a barrel laying randomly around and due to a time schedule, I had to design one
I ended up finding a plastic container that could take large amount of water, I filled it as much as I could and started to slowly move it around.
It was incredibly heavy and turned out to be quite the workout!

After it was all done, I listened through it and it didn't sound like a barrel enough, so I turned my attention to a plug-in called Altiverb, which basically recreates room sound.
By trying and retrying, I finally got the barrel sound I liked.

Here are some of the samples I recorded without any edits - other than splitting them up into one file, it also contains recordings of bottles filling up, which were used in various parts of his sound design:

These sounds were used for all of his animations but specially in his walking, idle and bored.
I limited the range of the sounds, so that people won't be over-saturated by them.

Here is a video clip of his Idle, bored and walking animations with sound:

I remembered putting the code for the footsteps - took half a day worth of work to get right. They were added for all his animations.

Ability 1:

In his first ability, he jumps forward and then dances around his opponent, he then strikes with a strong attack that sends the opponent flying.

For this ability, I recorded the sound of a cloth movement by using a pair of jeans.
I then used one of the previous recorded punch sounds, made it larger and gave it an analog echo.

I then used one of the voice recordings I felt fit and added that for the jump.
For his spinning around, I ended up using just his voice, Rich recorded a whole bunch of laughing sounds that worked quite well for when the character dances around.
I added three versions that randomly plays and for the punch, I decided to use his "FIST BREAKER!" yell.

Edit: I have increased the volume on the hit after the video recording.

Ability 2:

Second ability is him drinking and spilling liquid all over the place.

For this ability, I used a lot of my previous water recordings including a sound file that was used for the taunt animation.
I added some splash sounds as well, which ended up being the sounds for the puddles he started making while drinking. I recorded myself drinking from a bottle and added that with the rest.
In the end, I added one of his attack sounds as a cast sound, the "Down-The-Hatch!" yell.
I limited the sounds to a very close range, that way, it could be used before an attack without alerting the opponents by sound alone.

In truth, I wanted to add some drunken singing while he had the buff on.
I realized that in the end, it became very noisy and annoying, so I scrapped the idea.

Ability 3:

During his third ability, he jumps forward - stomping the ground, creating geysers of beer.

I used some recorded spatula whooshes with some cloth movements I had recorded previously, and added that for the jump he makes.

For the geysers, I used recordings of a water hose being squeezed tightly to get a harsher sound.
I added that with the sound of waterfalls and buckets throwing water onto the ground.
I basically had to become 12 years old again and do the things my parents told me to stop doing, in other words, I got paid for making a mess.
In your face, parents!

I also used the sound of a car idle to give it a slight rumble.

Ability 4:

He takes a large drink of ale and grows large, his barrel explodes and after a period, he shrinks back into size.

I reused the previous drinking sounds for when he takes the large swag, I then made a sound using a Chinese gong and a balloon.
The balloon rub sound was used for him becoming larger while the gong ended up being the indicator for the barrel exploding, I also added an explosion to the barrel, though not very loud.

Afterwards, I gave him a large burp with an echo that bounces from the right channel to the left, until it meets dead center. I noticed that visuals alone didn't help me pay attention to when the ability ended, so I added a hic sound that plays at the end.

Death:

He vomits and falls into the puddle it makes.

I ended up just reusing a lot of the sounds I had previously created but I added one of the death grunts that I liked and at the very end, I added a hiccup to give it a small dynamic.
I had little time and had to get done with it, overall, I think it fit quite well!

He was a fun character to design and took quite the time to get right, I liked how he came out in the end and stands to be one of my favorite characters.

Check out the spotlight for the hero that goes more in depth about him:

Part 1: "Monkey see, Monkey do."

2011-07-26T11:24:00.000-07:00

Before I begin to talk about the sound design of Monkey king,
I'd like to give my condolences to everyone in my country, who lost or had to go through the insanity and evil, of the terror attack that took place 22nd of July here in Norway.
I personally did not know anyone who got hurt or killed, but I am still shocked it took place.
If you don't know what I am talking about, you can visit this site, it should give you a better insight.
This is not the correct place to discuss philosophy, but neither religion, politics nor skin color makes one evil, only what one does.
Now with that out of the way, let's talk about the Monkey king:

Who\What:

The first question I needed to ask was: "Who is the monkey king?"

The answer to that comes in the form of a novel written in the 1590's called: Journey to the west

Unfortunately, I did not have the time to read the book as it was a rush project to get it done.
I had to work with three characters in a manner of a 2 weeks window, which meant not much pre-production.

I have seen The Forbidden Kingdom, in which the Monkey King is a central character, so I knew some of his lore, but I needed to know more accurate lore. I didn't have time to read anything on wikipedia, as I had so little time.

s2's Nome was kind enough to help me with some lore directions on the Monkey King, that really ended up becoming much of the thematics of the hero. I'll elaborate on them as we get into their respected topics.

In general, I knew he was going to be a very noisy hero (monkey is a keyword here,) so before I started, I realized he had to have quiet parts too, in order to create some sort of dynamics, which means that for every skill in which he says something, there had to be a chance he didn't say anything at all.

Voice:

The voice over was done by Matthew Mercer, you'll know him better as Fei Long from Street Fighter 4.
To be honest, he got a good voice, he just didn't fit the part in my opinion.
He sounds too young and not characteristic enough to be the Monkey King.
The recording quality was spot on, though I swear he recorded it inside his living room with reverb bouncing off his walls, but you can't hear it in the game, which makes it passable.

Here are some of his lines; it starts with selection sounds and ends with a Selection Flavour(if you click the hero many times, they say something funny):

He did loads of monkey sounds in his recordings - for the move and attack sounds, I had to remove them from the majority of his lines, simply because they became too annoying.

Overall, I personally would have liked to have re-casted the voice and let mr. Mercer do one of the other heroes instead.

Sound Design:

Attack sounds:

In the lore, it is stated that his staff weighed: "8,100 kg or 17,881 lbs."
Now, in reality, if anyone gets hit by anything of 8 tons, they are blood dust.
So I had to figure out how to make it sound like it had the weight of a truck.

I recorded shovels, metal poles, bells and hammers on metallic surfaces.
That way, I got the metallic sound I wanted that felt big and powerful.
I have a small collection of swords, and using a metal spatula, I scrapped the swords to create a large chime - that I layered over the hits of the metal.
In the end, I had a good number of sounds for his staff.

The problem, is that monkey king is an agility hero.
That means he hits not only like a truck, but quickly too.

We humans tend to get exhausted hearing high pitched sounds being played in rapid succession, which meant I had to pitch the impacts lower and also turn the volume down a whole bunch.

Later, Nome brought to my attention, that there were a great deal of body to the sound, but no real impact.
Luckily, there are already impact sounds in the game that are sharper, but not high enough to be annoying, so with some coding, the attack sounds were done.

Here's three of the impact sounds that became the "body" of the impacts:

There had be some whooshes as well and I remember that in "The Forbidden Kingdom",
the whooshes of the staff were very metallic and almost musical.

I wanted to make his whooshes based on metallic tonal sounds, so I used cymbals, previous recorded chimes from the sword and using a doppler plug-in, to make them sound whooshy.
Afterwards, I used bamboo sticks to give it a stronger mid frequency body:

Ability 1:

His first ability is a combo whoosh attack, where "clones" come out attacking those that he hits with his ability.

I decided that only the whoosh, the impact and his attack grunt were necessary to be worked on.
I had recordings of wind, cars, gun explosions and etc. that I put together and used EQ plugins and compressor plugins, until I felt I had the whoosh I wanted. I then layered it with a metal chime at the end.

I decided to use the previous attack whoosh I had created as well.

For the impacts when the character hits someone, I used the already created attack sounds, but a slight variation with a harsher feel, I also added some voice over to it, that would randomly play.

Now, I've decided to do something different, I recorded some in game footage so you can hear how it sounds like in game. Keep in mind that I'm an audio person and know very little about how video compressions and so are done, so bear with me, I'm learning:

Edit: The clones are not appearing at the attack, I think I remember that they decided to just let it play when attacking heroes.

Ability 2:
Edit: Due to a common complaint on the synth sound, it has now been removed with just a regular landing sound.

For his second ability, he uses his staff to jump over buildings, heroes or units, and can use it twice in a row if the player is fast enough.

Now this one came to me as a comical ability; it looks like a lot of fun so I wanted it to sound fun and silly.

For the staff bending, I recorded various twangs I could get from metal, plastic and wood like objects.

I then recorded whooshes made by swinging a spatula around and pitching it slightly down, for the somersault in the air.

Then, I created body fall sounds by dropping homemade sand bags onto the ground, with small metallic objects attached to it.
~~Which I layered with a synth sound that gave it that comical feel.~~

At the end, I added another randomly played voice, like before:

Ability 3:

For his third ability, he slams his staff hard into the ground and create a stone that explodes, and stuns for a short second.

Here I ended up just using previous attack sounds but not restricting them to volume and just have it play full out, to showcase the force of his slam.
I created a timer like sound effect for the stone, so if you get used to his attacks, you can by sound know when it is going to explode.

I used lots of metallic sounds being played in reverse, and reverbed as much as I could, I also used a bell sound that became the ambient layer of the entire sound.

For the explosion, I created a bass sound that becomes a lower body of sound for the exploding rock, which is just one of Behemoth's(a different hero) sound.
Yet again, I added some voice files:

Ability 4:

For his fourth and last ability, he uses a cloud which he can float around on.
He can activate and deactivate it as much as he would like, but not if he gets attacked.

I knew this ability would be very spamful, so I decided to create a soft as a sound as I could.
I started off with various spray-can sounds and adding reverberations to them, I then added a bell sound that felt very peaceful.

Then by adding a woman's whisper to it, I got the final result which I liked quite much.
I didn't want him to say anything when he used the ability.

I then added a very low wind howl that looped when he was on his cloud:

Walking:

He uses his staff to pole vault around as he walk.

I decided that I wanted to use many of the monkey sounds Mercer had previously recorded, on his pole vault. I also decided that it would only be played at a certain camera view to remove it being spammy.

I used a sound of an actual pole vault, and layered it with one of metal impact sounds to give it a thematic feel.
This sound also plays when his taunt animation plays.

I then used some of the whooshes I had created for Drunken master (different hero) for his movements in the air, I also used witch slayer's foley (also a different hero) on his rolling on the ground:

Death:

He turns into a stone statue and crumbles into debris.
In the previous animation for his death, he spun around in the air before he hit the ground.

I wanted his death to reflect the actor coming from street fighter fame, so his death had to sound like the old school typical street fighter death, the Echo Death Grunt.

For the sound of him turning to a stone statue that crumbled to debris,
I used lots of sounds of ice under stress, with a metal sound that's been chorused and reversed, to create a dynamic build before an explosion.

The explosion was made by rolling big stones down a small hill, hitting other stones.
I then used previous recorded rock crumble sounds and layered it all together:

And that's it!
It was fun and I hope people enjoy him as they play him.

You should check out the Spotlight of the hero next for more info about the hero:

Ta-Ta!

Prologue: The sounds of Two Masters.

2011-07-23T06:52:00.000-07:00

Here is an upcoming sound for an upcoming hero, can you guess which one?

I am writing a huge blog post(might be split in two\three) on the sound work of Flint Boomstick, the drunken master and Monkey king!

Cya then!

Recording Acid

2011-07-18T08:01:00.000-07:00

I am working on an unannounced game with a group of developers (not S2,)
doing the ambiances and so on.
Right now in the game, we are working a sequence in which a character is submerged into acid and the view goes under with him.

I was wondering how the hell am I going to make this sort of ambiance, I couldn't use underwater sound, that is too calm and pleasant. So, thinking about it, I came up with the next best thing, Cola!

Yes, I strapped couple of binaural microphones into plastic covers and submerged them into a fish tank FULL of cola. I tried various versions and I liked the normal kind best.

So if it the day comes, where you face the evil volcano-dwelling villain and he is about to submerge you into coca cola, and you are wondering (probably not) how it is going to sound like, well, let me spare you the trouble of anticipation and just listen to this:
Warning: Very loud in the beginning as I put the microphones in.
Do listen with headphones on, the experience is way better than with speakers!
Edit: There's a couple of cars driving in the background, this was just a test outside to see how well it would work.

Part 2: With "bow" and coconut Hooves! - 2.0.39.1 Patch HoN

2011-07-16T01:37:00.000-07:00

A little late update, but here we go!
When it came down to working on the emerald warden alternative's sounds. I kinda got rushed into the project:

She had to have additional new sounds because:

New Weapon
New Movements
The model was now a female

I would have liked to go as far as doing different ability sounds, but there really wasn't much to go with in terms of different looking abilities or animations - to support additional sound work.

The art for her is beautiful and some of her sound had to reflect that:

The voice:

The voice actress they had hired, had such a similar voice to Claudia Black, I first thought it was her!
Her acting was all over the place, really good at certain places and kinda strange at others, to the point of not fitting at all, but overall in terms of acting, she did a fairly good job compare to many of the other voice overs we've got (including some of the hilarious auditions!)

Now when it came to the quality of the recording, well, it made me slightly rage, simply because there were so many pops, clicks and a frequency hum going on in the background.

It always amazes me that voice talents never really listen to what they record, and\or they are not aware of all the noises their mouth make;
I hate when people lean into my ear and whisper; it tickles and you hear every phlegm and pop their voice makes, that you are not aware of during normal conversations, so when you decide to record, remember that when talking into the mic, you gotta think of how it feels like if someone screams, (this is more to the point of how clipping sounds on a recording, and outside of the comfort of a recording engineer monitoring it for you) or talk normally instead of whispering in your ear.
It isn't pleasant.

Keep in mind that microphones (condensers and so on,) can pick up every little detail in your mouth, and that place, is a factory of sound.

A good voice artist can do a voice.
A great voice artist can both do a voice and act.
But a fantastic voice artist can do a voice, act and realize their mouth made a crazy - additional (and unwanted) sound.

The voice over (no offense of course to the actress) had it all over the place, it puts the quality of the sound for a movie\game really down, and sadly, audio guys get the blame for the talent's mistake (which for the record, is hard to avoid when nobody tells you it is a problem.)

Had I the option to actually sit in a studio and be the recording engineer for the actual recording. I'd probably ask for retakes AND there wouldn't be a hum in the background.

So I started off cleaning the audio until it was passable.
Now, for those of you who wonder how to clean your own audio before you send it off to the client, there is a fantastic clean up tool called Izotope RX (I don't get cash for recommending any links in my blog, I recommend them cos I had good experience with their product, so I am not affiliated with them) which worked wonder on cleaning it up. I also used adobe audition's click\pop remover which never fails me.

I didn't keep the original file, but in the future, I'll do some before and after audio clips.

After it was repaired, I started separating the good takes from the bad, and putting them where they belonged.
I felt it strange to make her voice standout as human as it were, and I decided to do some effects on it.

What I did, was that I duplicated the voice into three separate layers but being played at the same time:
The first layer would play the normal voice without effects (it is also the loudest layer.)
The next would have a EQ setting on it so only the low and slightly the mid-frequencies would play, I also then added an echo to this layer, that would make it seem ethereal,
I then put the volume to -4dB.
On the last layer - I added a really wet reverb to it (a dry sound is a normal studio recorded audio without changes, a wet one got certain changes, like an echo or a reverb, if it is half wet and half dry, it means it is slightly effected) to help give another ethereal impression, but this time in the high - mid frequencies. I had the volume to -8dB.

I then compressed it and I felt quite happy with the result. It reminded me a tad of the warcraft 3 voices for the elves, which I used as a slight reference point, when I was thinking of the voice for the female warden.

Here are the before and after for the effects:

The Sounds:

When it came to start doing the sounds, there were two things that needed to be redone: Footsteps and spear throws.
I couldn't use the existing attack sound of the hero Valkyrie, simply because that is a bad idea if they are both in a fight.
It would just make it loud, confusing, boring and a constant barrage of the same sound, adding to the fact they are both agility heroes who suppose to attack fast, you can kinda imagine how annoying that would sound like.

So I had to make something for it:
I recorded various wine glass sounds and then using a doppler plug-in, I could make it sound whooshy. It wasn't enough though and had to result into using some library sounds of crystal like whooshes, that helped build a greater body of sound.
I added an additional sound of the valkyrie's whoosh, but decreased the volume so much that it would rather add tail to the sound than be part the whole soundscape.
I tested it with both Valkyrie and Warden attacking each other and felt that they were different enough.

Here are two of the attack sounds without Valkyrie's:

Next up was the sound of her hooves:

Do you remember the part in monty python's "banging coconuts together" to make the sound of hooves?
Well, that is actually how you used to make the sound of hooves!
These days, a foley stage use a special prop made to replicate the sound (unless of course you can record a real horse.)
Though anyone who spends some time with horses or been around them, knows that they don't sound like that at all, but, I really wanted to use them!

I used the coconut shells outside on a dirt patch and recorded during the early morning. I am sure anyone who looked at me thought I was 8 years old and ripe for the loony bin, but I had fun!
After the recordings, I picked the ones that I liked, cleaned them up a little and compressed them, afterwards, I split them up and added them to the game.
I then had to look through her awesome walk animation in which she walks and jumps around, find the correct frame number it hits the ground and attach a sound to it, I also added the normal surface sounds that play, so if she goes into water, the correct water sounds will play.

This is how it sounds like in motion with her animation on a grass surface:

And that's it!
If you wanna try her out and be one of the first before she becomes available on sale in the store, go here.

This is it for now, come back next Friday, where I will talk about the sound I did for something that was amazingly fun to work on, and what I am sure people been wanting to be available to them ever since [spoiler alert!]

Part 1: The whisper from the past

2011-07-11T17:27:00.000-07:00

Big update this Friday, I will be doing this blog in two separate posts dealing with two{three] different heroes:

Let us start with the biggest one; the new hero: Revenant.

To design a sound from the ground up for anything, requires some research into various aspects, dealing with what you are designing for.

Art helps tremendously to facilitate how the character needs to sound\feel like. (For whatever medium you are doing sound for.)
But only so, if you are building a sound palette until what you are doing the sound for is actually modelled, animated and put into the game\film.
Then, the sound designing actually starts, you will discard more than you will use and you will most likely go back and record some additional sounds when you start noticing details and such within the animations and effects.

But understanding what you are designing sound for is as equal important, not by just art alone, but by lore or history. So what are Revenants, well there is always what wikipedia can tell one, but you can also find some mythology about them through books. Sometimes, they mention small but important details, like for instance that revenants were sometimes heard to be whispering on their approach.

So let us talk about revenants movement sounds first:

I added a whispering sound that can only be heard if the hero is close, this is just me speaking nonsense into the microphone and then just layer many voices atop of each other and doing some slight ghostly effects:

Of course in the game, it is triggered by the proximity of the hero to the center of the camera i.e. The closer the hero is to the center of the screen, the more you will hear the sound.

Next, is to give the floating animation a sound. So a loop-able synth sound ended up being used for the floating:

The idea is to give a slightly empty, slow and creepy feel to the revenant.

Once we got the thematics down, we can start on the actual movement animations.
In the art, he is a metal effigy encased in flame, so I imagined a sort of flame movement to his body as well as some ghostly metal creaks.
Boom library released recently a really cool sound library that helped out getting these sounds down.

Here are his movements that became his "footsteps."

They are in the same volume range and distance range(how far away the sound can be heard) as the footsteps of creeps and other heroes.
They were also added to be triggered later, rather at the very beginning of the animation,
so you don't get the spam of sound when you are trying to get past a unit (A problem with Soulstealers sound.)

The very next is the metallic sound of his body in movement:

Like the previous sound, this sound is not triggered until very late in his walk_cycle.
It is also more limited in distance range and volume.

They all blend in together quite well.

Next up is his attacks:

For his attacks, I wanted something that reflected an evil and disturbing persona.
Considering his attacks throw a skull, I thought it be funny to give it a laughter as it flew through the air, maybe not loud and overly disturbing, but something you could occationally make out during the attacks:

The whoosh is a spatula being swung in the air creating a strange fluttering sound that sounds kinda "boney."

For the impact sounds of the attacks, I ended up using choir sounds that's been pitched down heavily, combined that with soulstealer's impact sounds and a bass drum impact sound:

Up next we have his abilities:

Ability 1:
The first one is a buff that causes magic damage and slow movements.
I wanted there to be several cast sounds making a spamful ability slightly thematic but refreshing as you cast them, though they had to be closely related so that enemy heroes (and allies for that sake,) could use the sound as a reminder when the ability had been cast.
I recorded fire sounds, wind whooshes, car whooshes and so on, and then added them all together.
I then added one of soundtoys awesome plugins and compressed it until I had a sound that became distinctive and interesting enough to work for that character.
Of course I wanted to add in some personality from the revenant into the sound. And I recorded some laughter (yet again..) and added them at the end.

Next on the list, was the impact you, and that of your fellow allies would make. It had to sound magical, and carry an "umph" to it.

Not too much though as there are three heroes at the same time being able to cast the same ability. It would be too loud and too annoying if three heroes at the same time attacked with a volume on 100%.

I recorded a ball of fire hitting a wooden panel (Fire extinguisher and all at the ready <.<)
It made the perfect hit sound that I needed and then I had to build a magic body for the impact.
I recorded cymbals and wind chimes and then added large amount of reverb and stretching the sound out, without ruining the details in it.

Once those sounds were done, it was all about the slow-state sound that needed to be looping.
For that, it needed to be very very distinct, so that when it was on you or anyone, you would know by the sound alone.

I recorded lots of whispers, found some library sounds of whisper (to mix it up a tad,) and at the end, adding a synth sound that gave the entire sound a much needed presence and structure.

Here are the sounds, in case you are wondering why some are mono and some stereo, that is because impacts and loops are suppose to be directional sounds, while the casting sounds are suppose to be situational sounds i.e. "oh he just cast it!" - A) it is harder to pin point the location of the hero through the sound alone, while B) it still gives you a cue that is has been cast...plus it sounds better >.>:

Ability 2:

The next one is an AOE spell that surrounds the hero, allies and enemies and does magic damage.
I looked at the effects, trying to figure out how it suppose to sound like.
It looks like bunch of ghosts(wraiths) attacking the player - it is cast on, so taking that to mind, it was all about recording ghostly sounds for this one.

I recorded water whooshes, wind whooshes, reused some of the previous choir sounds and various monster sounds, made from the sound of birds and tigers.
(Also reused previous whisper sounds.)
Put them all together and then compressed and effected them through a ton of plugins.
I also gave it a lower body of bass to make it have a bigger presence.
The sound is actually quite low in volume within the game but cast on many, the sound increases in volume. This is to prevent the ability which is slightly spammy, to become ear bleeding:

Ability 3:
This ability turns the revenant and two of his allies (at a later stage,) invisible.
It is quite simple really. The animation is of him spinning his stick around and then turning invisible.
I recorded a tube that electricians(real ones not goblin ones,) use to put wires and such in. It makes a wonderful whistle sound and stands out quite well.
The next sound was the "turning invisible" - sound, and that is a combination of my voice going "shhhh" and the sound of a cymbal being spun around and pitched down.
In the game, it plays very low, unless there's 3 characters being turned invisible:

Voice:

And thus we come to the voice for Revenant.
It went through maaaany iterations, many that I sadly didn't care to keep (they were quite bad)
I ended up with one that I quite liked, a voice that is a mix between two voices.
Since I ended up doing the voice over, I had the chance to do two voices for it.
I wanted a sad voice, a scary one and some ghostly effects to them. So I recorded one version that was very close to flint beastwood and one that was more mournful. I did some effects on them and started to put them together
.

The voices needed to be understandable at times and other times more haunting and creepy.

Before I came to the finished results, here are some of the ones that I kept, that didn't come out very well:

The last ones in the previous record, became useful in the final design of the voice:

The first and last one of these, are the taunts.

The lines were written by Mspudding, Diva and myself.

Death:

The last sounds that ended up being developed were the sound of Revenant's death.
With the thematics down and voice, the demise of our already dead hero,("logic...") was ready to be made.
I wanted there to be a sound of the metal creaking (think Sauron being destroyed in the beginning of the fellowship film - kind of sound,) followed by an explosion. I also wanted there to be a voice echoing through his death.

I recorded the twisting of some metallic alloys outside of my home(much to my neighbor's delight.)
I then compressed and stretched it until I was happy with it. Then I added some echo and reverb that changed pitch as it travelled through the sound.
I had a good thunder sound I recorded from a massive thunderstorm weeks earlier and
I added that with a sound of fireworks, a gunshot and me slamming a hammer into a shed made of metal. It was compressed, effected and reverbed to crazy amounts.

A top of it all, I layered the sound of the skull's voice I had recorded earlier and the heroes voice:

And that's it!

His taunt animation by the way, is a golf swing. If you taunt someone, a golf club sound does play!

And check back later for Part 2!

The small but silly work on Phantom Defiler

2011-07-09T06:35:00.000-07:00

Yay so phantom Defiler was released on the 2.0.38 patch for HoN.

I helped write many of the lines for the character (along with MsPudding) and I think it came out fairly good. I wrote all the select flavour sounds and designed the bug zapper noise (which is just a broken outlet), I also redid the sound for the wave (made it more masculine) and before you ask, the ultimate sound was also redone.
It might be in a future patch, I don't know, I honestly tried to put it in, there's still some work needed to be done for the alt avatars, on how they handle their abilities before any audio can be successfully changed.

The wave sound was redesigned by using string instruments (violin and cello) and have them do a marcato (video game trivia as well in that link.) And then, mix it with a choir that was pitched down very low so it came out demonic. A wind gust sound was also recorded and pitched down, compressed and EQ'ed so that it was just bass. It was then layered ontop of a car doppler (the sound cars make when they rush by you) and voila, the wave was done.
I should mention that I cut the original sound done by Arney and used the start of the sound with everything else.

And this is a comparision of the original female defiler sound and the phantom defiler sound:
The Wave sound Comparision

The Bug Zapper Joke

Until next time!

First but not least....

2011-07-09T06:16:00.000-07:00

Allo everyone!

I thought it be interesting to create a blog about the development of various sound escapades that I go on, for the video games I help develop (and I might do some side stuff too like movies and such, maybe, not sure.)

Now keep in mind that I am under NDA and can only talk about what's been revealed.
I will also dwell into sound mods I create for various games.
Oh and of course, I will show things I've recorded in the process.
You can catch me on twitter too: Soundwizard

Alright, so let us get started!