[MyIS]Spawndemon
04-21-2008, 02:31 AM
Develop Magazine (http://www.developmag.com/) has recently featured a new article that talks with the sound team behind Battlefield: Bad Company, David Möllerstedt and Stefan Strandberg. Take a look:
Enjoying a rare opportunity to start from scratch with a brand new game engine, head of audio David Möllerstedt and audio director Stefan Strandberg worked closely with the DICE Tools group to ensure a well-integrated sound functionality. With multi-player environments allowing up to 24 protagonists to blast each other with a variety of noisy weaponry, cacophony was always a clear and present danger in new game Bad Company.
Ensuring a good overall mix was a key focus: “There’s a lot going on and it’s difficult to know what’s going to happen so volume balancing has always been tough. Ducking systems with ‘static’ rules to cover fairly predictable situations aren’t enough – we’d need thousands of those rules,” Möllerstedt (pictured right) explains.
“Instead we have a sophisticated run-time system that deploys the available dynamic range intelligently moment by moment, logically selecting and balancing the loudest sounds for each player,” says Strandberg (pictured right). “From a design perspective, it’s like a movie mix where important sounds are deliberately prioritised and pre-mixed to fill the dynamic range. You may be in the middle of a car chase but if you fire a gun, it can dominate the engine sound temporarily. Other sounds are made to give way. We constantly measure volume at the listener position and continuously scale sounds.”
<a href="http://images.totalgamingnetwork.com/images/fv118_DSC04470.jpg"><img src="http://images.totalgamingnetwork.com/images/thumb_fv118_DSC04470.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a> <a href="http://images.totalgamingnetwork.com/images/fv117_DSC04430.jpg"><img src="http://images.totalgamingnetwork.com/images/thumb_fv117_DSC04430.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a> <a href="http://images.totalgamingnetwork.com/images/fv119_DSC04436.jpg"><img src="http://images.totalgamingnetwork.com/images/thumb_fv119_DSC04436.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>
To learn all about the new sound system in this latest Battlefield game, visit here (http://www.developmag.com/tutorials/69/Heard-About-Battlefield-Bad-Company).
Enjoying a rare opportunity to start from scratch with a brand new game engine, head of audio David Möllerstedt and audio director Stefan Strandberg worked closely with the DICE Tools group to ensure a well-integrated sound functionality. With multi-player environments allowing up to 24 protagonists to blast each other with a variety of noisy weaponry, cacophony was always a clear and present danger in new game Bad Company.
Ensuring a good overall mix was a key focus: “There’s a lot going on and it’s difficult to know what’s going to happen so volume balancing has always been tough. Ducking systems with ‘static’ rules to cover fairly predictable situations aren’t enough – we’d need thousands of those rules,” Möllerstedt (pictured right) explains.
“Instead we have a sophisticated run-time system that deploys the available dynamic range intelligently moment by moment, logically selecting and balancing the loudest sounds for each player,” says Strandberg (pictured right). “From a design perspective, it’s like a movie mix where important sounds are deliberately prioritised and pre-mixed to fill the dynamic range. You may be in the middle of a car chase but if you fire a gun, it can dominate the engine sound temporarily. Other sounds are made to give way. We constantly measure volume at the listener position and continuously scale sounds.”
<a href="http://images.totalgamingnetwork.com/images/fv118_DSC04470.jpg"><img src="http://images.totalgamingnetwork.com/images/thumb_fv118_DSC04470.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a> <a href="http://images.totalgamingnetwork.com/images/fv117_DSC04430.jpg"><img src="http://images.totalgamingnetwork.com/images/thumb_fv117_DSC04430.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a> <a href="http://images.totalgamingnetwork.com/images/fv119_DSC04436.jpg"><img src="http://images.totalgamingnetwork.com/images/thumb_fv119_DSC04436.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>
To learn all about the new sound system in this latest Battlefield game, visit here (http://www.developmag.com/tutorials/69/Heard-About-Battlefield-Bad-Company).