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GDC
2000 From an Audio Guy's Perspective:
As the official ears of this years Game Developers Conference, I took my place in game history as the obnoxious, but sometimes loveable sound guy, aimlessly wandering the show floor poking my nose into everyone's business. My mission was to find and report on all the worthwhile audio happenings, let you know what you missed, and perhaps encourage you to be at the next year's really big show. After what seemed like a month of solid rain, the clouds in the bay area parted to reveal some blue-ish looking sky, and better yet, allowed me to actually find my way to the San Jose Convention Center after my over-worked windshield wipers suffered a dramatic failure on the drive up from San Diego. (Note to self: fly next time.) Not being able to find a hotel room in San Jose was another disaster but I won't get into that fiasco. My advice, book early and book often.
Uncle Bill officially opened the conference to the enthusiastic applause of those in the civic auditorium, and to near silence in the simulcast room which I took refuge in. He talked briefly about this and that, my ears perking up a bit at the mention of DirectX 8.0 which will fully support interactive music applications, some good news to all of us if it works as advertised. The main event, however, was Microsoft's unveiling of their new gaming platform, the X-Box. We saw a demonstration of its incredible graphics potential but I didn't hear much about any serious audio improvements. I did note the DVD and 6 gigabyte hard drive which could give us some increased file sizes and greater sample rates. Perhaps there is some hope for us after all. Out on the expo floor, there was much vying for our attention, displays towering thither and yon, a veritable feast of information (and free goodies) to have for the asking. I noticed immediately that I could actually hold a conversation with someone standing next to me, unlike the E3 show where my head exploded after that audio onslaught. Many folks expressed their appreciation for the controlled volume. I tended to gravitate towards anything audio, nosing around the displays and generally causing trouble. There was the occasional chance of getting beaned by a flying mouse pad or squishy ball at the Aureal booth and cries of glee were heard when winners of sound cards, joysticks and cameras had discovered the word 'winner' on them. Staccato and Rad Game Tools also had their latest sound implementation tools and demonstrations on display. Dolby Surround had an involving audio demonstration set up and we got a chance to see and hear some of the upcoming game release, Messiah, from a theater perspective. Joey Kuras, sound designer on the project, was seen with a satisfied grin accompanying the big screen presentation. Way to go Joey. Next, I stumbled upon the guys at Stienberg and got a comprehensive education on their new multitrack music recording and editing software, NUENDO. Because the show wasn't wall to wall musicians like the NAMM show, we were able to spend enough quality time together to get comfortable, get all my questions answered and get a sense of the program without being rushed - quite a pleasant change of pace. Before I left, I had all the information I needed, including available hardware and system prices. While Pro Tools isn't a justifiable expense for me, the NUENDO system covered all the bases with an intuitive design and is thousands of dollars less. Definitely worth taking a look at. The real meat and potatoes of the conference, however, was the lectures, panel discussions and the myriad of sponsored events offered in several locales. There were plenty of audio events to fill the plate, giving much food for thought and there was a good showing for most of them.
Randy Thom's audio keynote was a big hit. This legendary sound designer, with movie credits on "Forrest Gump," "Indiana Jones - The Temple of Doom," "Apocalypse Now" and a long list of others, willingly shared his award winning experience with us. While he focused mostly on sound design for film, many game sound designers, such as Tim Larkin from Cyan admitted, "As video games grow to the level of film, game sound designers can take away many things by studying from the film industry." Randy played several clips from "Forrest Gump," showing us layer by layer how all the sound is mixed together to achieve the dynamic effects he is noted for. Overall, a great learning experience. Chris Grigg gave an overview of his vision for a new audio API paradigm. Rather than having massive proprietary API's that try to do everything you could ever want in a single package, he set forth a proposal for an individual component based approach, using a common scripting language to pass audio data and control commands between them. Initially cooked up at Fat Man's BBQ this past summer, it's a loose blend of the plug-in architecture model and the MIDI protocol. It was quite in-depth. Creative Labs sponsored an event detailing EAGLE (Environmental Audio Graphic Librarian Editor) which sound designers and game programmers can use to create compelling 3D audio experiences. I saw heads bobbing in appreciation and the word "cool" used quite often during the demonstration. The A3D and Dolby Digital session was enlightening as well. Dolby is quite serious about supporting game audio to the tune of loaning encoding/decoding hardware, evangelizing at developer sites and assisting with remote studio set-ups. In addition to the L, C, R, Left Surround, Right Surround, and Bass Channel information encoded in the file, they claim overall sonic superiority to the best MP3 encoding, a 4:1 compression ratio and a slightly more expensive processing hit than the lowest MP3 ratio.
Michael
Land and the Lucas Arts folks showed us their iMuse system, which blew
us all away. It was a truly momentous event looking inside a proprietary
tool 10 years in development that worked smoothly and intuitively with
audio files, responding interactively to an amazing amount of game states.
We saw samples from The Dig, Monkey Island and Grim
Fandango and could see how easy it would be for a composer/sound
designer to work with their system. Game programmers would love it too. ________________________________________________________ |
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Features
Audio
Track Wrap-Up: The Basics
