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阐述音频对游戏的作用以及处理方法

发布时间:2011-10-10 16:03:29 Tags:,,,,

作者:Jefferson Hobbs

可能阅读这篇文章的有两类人:一类是在游戏行业网站的文章标题中看到“音频”这个词而兴奋不已的人,因为这种情况并不多见;另一类才是这篇文章真正的目标受众。

但无论你属于哪一种类型,我想这篇文章都值得一看,其中的内容不会令你失望。

当前发展状态

音频可能是游戏中最不受重视的元素。诚然,有些公司认为音频很有价值,但是通常而言业界对其的看法仍然不甚恰当。

往往,音频并不被当成是游戏发布前应当校验的元素,人们并不愿意投入大量精力将这个部分做好。

不过情况正在发生改变,精确统计行业中音频巨作的数量较为困难,但越来越多的人开始逐渐重视这个方面。

希望这篇文章能够让你明白为何音频对游戏而言很重要,文章将会简要地列举可以用来改善游戏的做法。

sound(from next-gen.biz)

sound(from next-gen.biz)

音频的影响力

音频能够对游戏产生很大的影响。出于某些原因,人们遗忘了听觉感受。这确实让我感到很为难。怎么会有人认为人类某种感知能力不会影响玩家的体验呢?这是毫无缘由的想法。对于游戏开发者而言,真正需要做的是退一步看看音频究竟能够产生多大作用。

以下这些有关音频的事情可能你并不知晓。希望你能够通过以下内容了解到音频是游戏中的重要成分。

听觉很难被欺骗:如果你的音频做得不好,玩家很容易便会察觉。他们可能并不会意识到究竟是哪方面除了问题,但是他们知道肯定有什么地方不对。Alan Kraemer(游戏邦注:SRS Labs首席技术官)曾经跟我说过一个理论,与视觉等感知方式相比,音频有着相对较低的带宽。因而,大脑可以对音效做更加彻底的分析。这使得人们很难受到欺骗。

音频让事物看起来更棒:在消费电子行业中有个极为著名的研究,科研人员通过单纯改变音效质量就影响到测试者对电视画面的感受。他们选取了两个完全相同的电视片段,只是麦克风效果不同而已。当测试者被问及对视频质量的感想时,较多的人认为有着音频更好的电视更加好看。我确信这个测试也可以应用到游戏中。知道可以单纯通过改善音效来提升游戏图像这种做法的人并不多。

电影行业:长久以来,电影行业一直都很认同音频的价值。许多的情感都通过音效来表达。恐怖电影中总是在忽然呈现画面时播放骇人的音效。如果没有精美卓绝的音频,《星球大战》或许并不能成为如此优秀的影片。电影行业在音效中投入了大量的时间和精力,因为他们知道这么做能够帮助他们赚钱。

动用整个大脑:音乐可以激活整个大脑,甚至能够触发某些化学物质的产生。如果音频不重要的话,那么大脑显然会将其过滤。

即便有时并不一定是必备要素,但音频也是某些人们需要的东西:正如心理学中的其他误解一般,人们或许并不知道自己对音频的需求。人们不要求某些东西并不意味着这件东西不重要。

散弹枪:所有人都很喜欢散弹枪。为什么呢?因为音效确实很震撼。

如何使用音频

首先,使用音频并不困难。制成优秀音频所需耗费的人力和精力远比优秀图像、游戏玩法或实体要少得多。通常情况下,在游戏中添加音频会遇到的最大障碍是意识到需要添加不同的音频而不是一直重复播放。

以下我列举了某些公司可以使用的步骤,帮助其在游戏中添加音频:

1、获得优秀的音效资产。添加音频前必须先做好准备。

2、至少雇佣1名通晓音频知识的工程师。这个工程师无需将100%的精力全部投入到音频中,但是他们必须对音效、音乐或互动音频较为熟悉。

3、尽量雇佣专门的内部音效设计师。这或许会让公司付出大量资金,但是如果你能够负担得起这笔费用,花这笔钱是值得的。这会使得音频与游戏的整合加速,提供新音频特征想法。

4、倾听游戏音效,然后像检验新游戏机制那样提出意见和评论。如果音频不佳,那么就重新制作。

5、优先注重音乐,其次才是音效。音乐总是存在于游戏中,而且需要表达情感。确保音乐能够与游戏相匹配。实现这个目标之后,你可以将注意力转移到音效上。

需要考虑的音频效果

在博文结束之前,我想提供某些简单的音效措施,这可以提升你的游戏质量。这些东西可能你之前没有考虑过,但是可以通过OpenSL ES之类的API来实现。

1、死亡的EQ——当玩家生命值较少时,降低3D效果,应用低层次的过滤器。这会产生一种清晰度下降,玩家的界面变得模糊的效果。

2、电影立体扩展——在电影点时扩展音效。比如,假设玩家走过一条小过道进入某个有BOSS或者会播放过场动画的大房间,你可以在刚开始使用较为低沉的音效,然后在房门打开时将其扩展。

3、大爆炸——使用低沉音效来提升爆炸效果。

4、包围音效——在音效上使用立体扩展,呈现玩家被火、雨或蜜蜂包围的场景。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

Opinion: Why Audio Matters

Jefferson Hobbs

There are two kinds of people who are reading this article. First are the people who saw the word “audio” in a game industry site and got excited because that doesn’t happen very often. And then there’s the people who I am actually writing this post for.

If you fall in the first group, don’t fret. You should still keep reading. I am sure you will learn something new. If you are in the second group, be brave and venture forth. This won’t hurt too much.

Current State Of Audio

Audio is probably the most under-rated element in a game. Granted they are a few companies that value audio a lot but generally speaking it does not get the respect it deserves.

More often than not audio is treated like a checkbox that you have to check before you ship. It’s not something that everyone looks at with a fine tooth comb and tries to get 110 percent right.

However, things are changing…slowly but surely. It’s tough to quantize the amount of buzz audio is getting around the industry, but I’ve seen more people are starting to get into it lately. It’s not over-whelming but it is increasing from the bottom up.

This article hopefully will show you why audio is important and simple steps you can do to improve it in your games.

The Impact Of Audio

Audio has more of an impact to the game than most people think. For some reason people forget about the sense of hearing. It truly baffles me. How can someone think that a human sense doesn’t play much of a factor in a gamer’s experience? It doesn’t make sense (yep…that’s a bad pun and you just read it. Sorry). What does make sense (sorry again) is for game developers to take a step back and look at what audio is actually doing.

Below is a list of things about audio that you may not know. Hopefully, you are able to take away the point that audio is an important element in games.

WARNING: I am posting some information below that are not really referenced…unless you count the word on the street as a valid reference

Ear Is Hard To Trick: If you have bad audio, people are going to notice. They might not realize what it is but they will feel something is wrong. One theory that I have been told by Alan Kraemer (CTO of SRS Labs), is that audio has a relatively low bandwidth compared to other senses like vision. The brain is able to do a more thorough analysis of the sound waves as a result. This makes it tough to trick.

Audio Makes Things Look Better: There is a famous study in the consumer electronics industry where they actually tricked people into thinking a TV looked better by only changing the quality of the sound. They took two TVs that were exactly the same except for the speakers. When asked what they thought about the video quality, more people said that the TV with the better audio looked better. I am sure that this also applies to games. Who would of thought that one could improve a game’s graphics simply by improving the sound.

Movie Industry: The movie industry has known the value of audio for a long time now. A lot of the emotion and thrill is actaully in the sound track. Imagine a scary movie without erie sounds followed by a sudden screech. Or think about what Star Wars would be like if you replaced the sounds a crappy free sound library and generic music. The movie industry has invested a lot into sound because they know it helps them make money.

The Whole Brain Is Involved: Music has the ability to activate the whole brain and even trigger the production of certain chemicals. If audio wasn’t important than clearly the brain would just filter it out.

Audio Is Something That People Need Even If They Don’t Demand It: Just like with every other misconception in psychology, a person might not know what they actually need. Just because someone doesn’t ask for something doesn’t mean that it’s not important.
Good Ol’ Fashion Shotgun: The shotgun is everyone’s favorite weapon. Why? Because it goes BOOM! QED.

How Do You Fix This

First off, audio is not hard. Its not. Really. The amount of energy and man hours it takes to get good audio is far far less than what it would take to get good graphics, game play or physics. Usually the biggest road block in adding audio features is realizing that there are other audio features to add besides playback.

Below I have a list of other small steps a company can do to help out their audio:

Get good sounding assets. You can’t make something out of nothing… Well you can but it’s crap.

Hire at least one engineer that knows audio. He/she doesn’t have to work on audio 100 percent of the time, but he/she should have a knowledge of sound effects, music, or interactive audio.

Try to get an in-house sound designer. This might break the bank for some, but it’s worth it if you can afford it. This will speed up integration time and can offer up ideas for new audio features.

Listen to your game’s audio and critique it like you would a new game mechanic. If it doesn’t sound right, send it back to the cook and have it remade.

Put your energy into the music first and then the sound effects. Music is played ALL the time and carries most of the emotion. Make sure that it resonates with that game and sets the environment that you are aiming for. Once you get that, you can then focus on the sound effects.

Audio Effects To Think About

To conclude my post, here is a quick list of simple sound effects that you can do to enhance your game. These may be things that you have not thought of before but are trivial to setup with an API like OpenSL ES.

EQ of Death – Lower the 3D effect and apply a low pass filter (ie cut the treble) when the player is low on health. This will lower the clarity and disorient the player just like blurring the screen does in the graphics world.

Cinematic Stereo Widening – Widen the sound during cinematic points. For instance, if the player is walking down a small hall way into a big room with a boss or dramatic cut scene, you can start off with a narrow sound stage and then widen it as the room opens up.

Bigger Explosions – Apply a bass boost effect to enhance the explosion’s boom (note that bass boost is different than just increasing the bass). Afterwards apply a low pass filter for a short time afterwards to shock the player audibly.

Engulfing Sounds – Apply stereo widening on sounds that encompass the player like crowd noise, fire, rain, bees, etc.

Thanks for reading! If you know of other cool things about audio, please share them in the comments. I (and others too) would love to hear about them. (Source: Gamasutra)


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