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如何从提升游戏声乐愉悦角度运筹音效设定

发布时间:2014-11-10 14:32:42 Tags:,,,,

作者:Craig Chapple

作为致力于寻找全新方法去吸引玩家注意的开发者,我们分析了一些对设计师有帮助的最新工具和技术。

自《超级马里奥》诞生以来游戏工作室已经走了很长的一段路,那时候许多类似的音乐都被认为能够提供额外的音效。

而现在音乐更是以电影般的规模迅速壮大,声音也变成了所有游戏中必不可少的核心部分。

让我以Develop Awards的入围作品为例。Simogo的文本冒险游戏《Device 6》很大程度地依赖于其沉浸式音频将玩家带到游戏故事中并会在故事的重要部分出现时调动玩家的紧张感。

还有像《战地4》和《罗马2:全面战争》等更大型的游戏也依赖于真实的音效让玩家觉得自己真的身处战地中,而不是在玩游戏。

Simogo的创始人Simon Flesser说道:“对于我来说,声音真的是与任何视觉效果一样重要的反馈元素。”

“我很难理解那些会关掉声音玩游戏的人。对于我来说,这与关掉屏幕只开着声音玩游戏一样荒谬。”

Develop Award的获胜者,即《Monument Valley》的声音制作人同时也是音频老手的Stafford Bawler通过提供自己曾经致力于的一个大型项目去总结了这些效果的重要性。

他回忆道:“我只是将第一个最适合的音频带到游戏中,并用能够呈现游戏发展的最终音频取代所有早前的测试内容/占位符。在第一次听到这一音频时,游戏的首席设计师便跟音频程序员说道‘这感觉就像一款真正的游戏,我们不再只是在构建一些内容。’”

加强声音

对于手机和主机的全新硬件以及一些不断更新的音频技术,如FMOD和wwise(游戏邦注:最近刚开启免费独立授权)同样也帮助着游戏工作室去执行一些全新风格的音频。

来自Creative Assemble同时也是《全面战争》的首席音频设计师Matt McCamley说道:“在过去,人们拥有非常有限的工具,因为这些技术上的限制导致他们很难创造各种不同的内容。而现在,随着游戏技术的发展,游戏音频也不断发展着,如此我们可以更好地向玩家传达游戏体验。”

Creative Assembly最让人期待的一款游戏《异形:隔离》便明显地呈现出了音频在游戏中的重要性。该团队采取了各种全新且独特的技术去唤醒最初电影中让人难以忘怀的氛围,并以此带给玩家身临其境之感。如果缺少了声音,这款游戏可能就没有这样的效果了。

而所有的这一切很大程度要归功于全新的主机和工具。

Alien Isolation 2(from develop-online)

Alien Isolation 2(from develop-online)

Cooper说道:“伴随着额外的处理能力和频繁更新的中间件,现在的我们能够在全新一代的主机上使用丰富的卷积混音并使用像游戏内部的HRTF/双声道处理等新型的DSP。我们正逐渐摆脱新主机的硬件限制。”

来自CA的另外一名声音设计师,同时也是《全面战争》的音频管理者Richard Beddow表示,《罗马2》标志着该工作室第一次使用音频引擎wwise,该引擎为声音设计师提供了一些能够帮助他们重放有关游戏事件的声音资产的工具,还有资产容器以及DSP设置等分享资源。这意味着设计师能够设置全新的内容,并且多亏于其视觉GUI,他们还能够创造Beddow所谓的更有效能的工作流程。

Bawler还推荐了其它工具,如Unity和Fabric,他表示这些工具帮助他们创造了有序的层次结构以及精细的数据树管理,让他们能够花更多时间去处理音频创造的创意元素。

手机

就像Creative Assembly在其高预算的主机和PC上试验声音执行一样,手机同样也是这些有趣的技术的归属。

Simogo的Flesser以及编曲家Daniel Olsen面对着一项复杂的任务,即在《Device 6》的互动故事中整合音频。该音频必须符合玩家的理解,同时还需要避免在错误的时间播放音频而失去玩家的关注。

他解释道:“我们想要确保许多内容都是符合玩家的想象力,所以决定文本中的哪些内容是听得见的真的是一项很难保持平衡的任务。”

“创造太空感是我们最优先的选择。所以我们将使用脚步去传达不同的材料,并使用适当的混音去传达房间的规模,在每个声音中利用EQ确保玩家在当下能够真正感受到这些内容的存在。”

音频限制

在音频的质量和多样性方面,时间和预算限制扮演着一个重要的角色,特别是当设计师需要使用这些资源,但是手机却呈现出一系列特别的挑战。

Bawler说道,智能手机所呈现的主要限制便是扬声器本身,通常是使用单声道放音并让用户的脸避免接触听筒,或者是放置在玩家的手下。

他说道:“任天堂3DS的扬声器便拥有非常棒的HRTF回放。如果更多手机能够拥有这样的功能的话就好了。”

“你同样也需要处理玩家可能在任何地方玩手机游戏的情况,经常是在一些噪杂的环境中,或者玩家不想打扰到别人的情况下。当我在伦敦乘地铁以及在Monument Valley工作时,大概有10个人会在路上玩手机。一方面我会因为他们安静地玩游戏而感到可耻,但同时我也会感谢他们没有打开刺耳的声音。”

Flesser还补充道,让人们打开声音玩手机游戏是开发者所面临的最大挑战之一,并且他建议如果这是游戏体验核心的话应该尽早做出要求。他同样也表示设计师应该确保音频也能够运行于一些早前的设备中。

他说道:“出于某些原因,人们总是倾向于关掉声音玩游戏,但是《Device 6》中的许多谜题却要求玩家听取音频线索。”

“我们使用了低通滤波器,但我们在早前设备的游戏版本中关闭了这一功能,因为这在早前设备上使用会太吃力,我们想要保持稳定的帧速和性能以确保游戏体验足够顺畅。”

现场录音

尽管许多游戏都保持着较小的规模,但仍有许多游戏变得更大且更有野心,特别是最顶端的那些游戏。所以现场录音得到了更广泛的使用,并且因为之前游戏的声音已经过时而出现了全新的程序库。

Bawler建议现在的声音设计师需要根据自己的游戏去判断是否创造消费者所需要的音景。

Headphones(from develop-online)

Headphones(from develop-online)

他说道:“到外面去收集所需要的材料或投资针对于你自己的游戏的小型程序库是必要的。我们已经使用了好几年早前的程序库,但它们大多是源自电视,电影或广播—-这是你收集声音的一些先行环境,而不是我们创造游戏所需要的动态且真实的音景。”

Beddow认为音频处理并不需要随着游戏的变大而变得更加复杂,并且他认为这样的规模将加大对于音频处理的管理挑战。

他说道:“你必须足够聪明。很大程度上这是管理资产规模并在内部和外部部署适当的资源去传达现代玩家所期待的带有沉浸感且达到电影标准的音景的最佳方法。”

展望未来,将会有更多技术(不管是新的还是旧的)成为音频处理的核心,如虚拟现实游戏中的双耳音频等等。

Bawler表示因为程序音频的未来发展而兴奋不已,特别是看到当前产业中广泛使用的各种程序技术。

Bawler说道:“从很早以前开始,我便致力于通过有趣的方式结合简单的组件去创造复杂的声音和音频系统。”

“程序音频似乎是最适合这种方法的选择,但是你可能仍需要一名声音设计师帮助你确保声音效果。”

本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转功,如需转载请联系:游戏邦)

Aural nirvana: Bringing outstanding sound to games

By Craig Chapple

As developers look for new ways to immerse players, we analyse the latest tools and techniques open to sound designers

Game audio has come a long way since the early days of Super Mario, where much of the same music was condensed to provide extra sound effects.

Enormous musical scores are now provided on the scale of film, and sound is fast becoming a near central part of all gaming.

Take our Develop Awards finalists. Simogo’s text-based adventure title Device 6 heavily relies on its immersive audio to engage the player with the story and ratchet up the tension during key parts of the narrative.

And the bigger titles like Battlefield 4 and Total War: Rome II rely on realistic sound effects to make the player actually feel like they’re in a warzone, and not just playing a game.

“To me sound is as an important factor for feedback as anything visual,” says Simogo founder Simon Flesser.

“I can’t for my life understand people that say they play games with sound turned off. To me, that’d be just as absurd as turning off the screen and playing with sound only.”

Develop Award winner, audio veteran and the man behind Monument Valley’s sounds, Stafford Bawler, sums up the importance of such effects by offering an example from a large scale project he’d previously worked on.

“I’d just delivered the first proper audio build to the game, replacing all the early tests/placeholder with first pass final audio that represented where the game was going in terms of audio,” he reminisces. “On hearing this for the first time the game’s lead designer was speaking with the audio coder and said ‘It feels like a proper game now, we’re no longer just making builds’.”

Sharpening sounds

New hardware for both mobile and console, as well as a number of constantly refreshed audio technologies such as FMOD and wwise – which recently opened up new and free indie licences – are also helping studios record and implement new styles of audio.

“In previous generations, a limited set of additional tools was available, and it was more restrictive to set up multiple instances due to technological shackles,” says Creative Assembly and Total War senior audio designer Matt McCamley. “As games tech matures, so does in-game audio, chiefly in the way we can deliver an experience to the player.”

One of Creative Assembly’s hotly anticipated titles, Alien: Isolation, is a prime example of how key audio can be in games. The team has had to adopt various new and unique techniques to evoke the original film’s haunting atmosphere and turn it up to ten to keep players on the edge of their seats for its 15-hour or so duration. And from early footage, the game just wouldn’t be the same without sound.

The team’s sound designer Sam Cooper says the game’s audio has been crafted to subtly conjure up dark and scary imagery on even seemingly mundane objects, tapping into the player’s subconscious, in-built fight-or flight responses. He explains this creates an unpredictable soundscape that will keep users second-guessing what their ears are telling them, moving the experience beyond just twitch-play and how good they are at games.

And much of this has been made possible thanks to new consoles and tools.

“With additional processing power and frequently updated middleware, we’re now able to use rich convolution reverbs on new-gen consoles and experiment with emerging DSP such as in-game HRTF/binaural processing,” says Cooper. “We’re far less limited by the hardware with new consoles.”

Another CA sound designer, Total War audio manager Richard Beddow, says Rome II marked the first time the studio had used audio engine wwise, as it offered tools for sound designers in terms of how to play back assets assigned to game events, asset containers and shared resources such as DSP settings. This meant that designers could set up new items, previously the realm of coders, thanks to its visual GUI, creating what Beddow says was a more efficient workflow.

Bawler recommends other tools, such as Unity and Fabric, which he says lent themselves to the way he likes to work, creating ordered hierarchies and the careful management of data trees, allowing him to spend more time on the creative elements of audio creation.

Mobile beats

Much like Creative Assembly is experimenting with sound implementations in its big budget console and PC outings, mobile is also home to some interesting techniques.

Simogo’s Flesser had the tough task of integrating audio, along with composer Daniel Olsén, in interactive story Device 6. The audio had to match the reader’s interpretation, while also not losing their attention by playing sounds at the wrong time.

“We wanted to keep a lot of the things up to the players’ imagination, so it was a tough balance to decide what things that are mentioned in the text should be audible or not,” he explains.

“Creating a sense of space was our biggest priority. So working with footsteps to communicate different materials, the right amount of reverb on sounds to communicate size of rooms, mixing things properly, fiddling a lot with EQ on every sound to make everything feel just right within the space that the player was in at the moment.”

Audio constraints

Time and budget constraints can of course play a big role in the quality of audio and its variety, particularly if designers are required to go to the source, but mobile in particular throws up a unique set of challenges.

The major limitations presented by smartphones, Bawler says, is the speakers themselves, which often use mono and face away from the listener or are placed just under the player’s hands.

“The Nintendo 3DS has amazing HRTF playback going on with its speakers. It would be awesome if more phones featured this kind of thing,” he states.

“You also have to deal with the fact games on mobile are played all over the place, often crowded or noisy environments, or places where you don’t want to annoy other people. When I was traveling on the tube in London whilst working on Monument Valley, there were about ten people in the carriage all playing their phones. On the one hand I thought it was a shame they were all silent, but I was also thankful that we didn’t have an amusement arcade cacophony going on.”

Flesser adds that getting people to play mobile games with the sound turned on is actually one of the biggest challenges for developers, and suggested stating the requirement early on if it’s central to the experience. He also says designers need to make sure audio can run on older devices, which can limit effects on newew mobiles despite their more advanced capabilities.

“For some reason or another, people tend to play mobile games without sound, and quite a few puzzles in Device 6 requires the player to listen to audial clues,” he says.

“We used low pass filters here and there, and we actually had to turn that off on older devices because it was too demanding and we want to keep a steady framerate and performance to keep the experience smooth.”

In the field

While many games keep to a small size, it could be argued many more are becoming bigger and more ambitious, particularly at the top end. As such, the use of field-recording is becoming more widely used and new libraries are being created as the old sounds from past games become overused.

Bawler suggests sound designers now need to up their game if they’re to create the soundscapes consumers clamour for.

“Going out and recording your own material or investing in boutique libraries specially constructed for games is a must,” he states. “The older libraries have been our bread and butter for years, but they were all recorded for TV, film, radio etcetera – a linear environment where you’re making a ‘photograph’ of sound rather than the dynamic, living, breathing soundscapes we have to create for games.”

Beddow says the audio process isn’t necessarily becoming significantly more difficult as games get bigger, but says such scale has sparked a greater management challenge of the process.

“You have to be smart,” he says. “Largely it’s about the best way to manage the asset-volume and deploy the right resources, both internal and external, to deliver the kind of deeply immersive, cinema-grade soundscape that the modern player, quite rightly, has come to expect.”

Looking forward, many more techniques, both old and new, could become more central to the audio process, such as binaural audio in virtual reality games [See boxout Virtual hearing], for example.

Bawler says he’s excited by the prospect of working with procedural audio in future, particularly given the prominence of various uses of the procedural generation technique evident in the industry at the moment.

“Since very early days, my way of working has been built upon building complex sounds and audio systems from simple components combined in interesting ways,” says Bawler.

“Procedural audio seems like a natural fit for this way of working, and from what I can tell, you still need a sound designer to make sure it’s all sounding as it should.”(source:develop-online)

 


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