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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogs[icefishing v] An Interactive Noise-Based Album
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Nate_G
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« on: September 21, 2012, 08:44:17 AM »


Update 21 April, 2013

Nearly finished. Final beta testing is taking place this week.
Progress upgraded to 90% Smiley







-------------------------------


First up, a quick summary so you get an idea what I'm planning here

The player will inhabit a noise-based ambient composition, finding themselves in an abstract environment in which sound is used to discover, interact with and modify the landscape/composition.




I am

Nate. I do sound design and music. I'm doing the sound design for Trash TV, and the sound design and music for Red Rogue. My music project is called icefishing (5 free albums available!), a noise-based/ambient/drone/industrial thing. This will be my first game.

I'm about to start my final year of my Music/Sound Design degree, so this game will form my final production piece, alongside my dissertation, which gives me a very definite ETA, some time in June I think (I should really know the exact date...) [Edit: Holy shit, it's April 26...]. So I'm using this as a good excuse to learn Unity, audio implementation, research interactive audio and further my work with noise-based compositions. So as this DevLog goes on I'll be referencing academic texts, interviewing interesting people and sharing my research across all the relevant fields.

It almost seems a little premature to start this thread with so little actually set in concrete, but I've got to document every step of this project anyway, and doing it publicly is a good way to stay motivated.



How will it play?

It's obviously very early days, so the gameplay will evolve as I start building the thing. However, what I'd like to do is build a game in which players default to using their ears as the primary tool for observing their environment. I considered making a game in which the player must ONLY use sound to navigate and interact, but I'll leave that for another project. Instead I intend for the visuals to always serve the audio, rather than the other way round. The visuals will never communicate new information to the player, they will need to listen closely and learn the way the audio behaves to learn the 'rules' of the environment.

In real terms, they will start off in an empty world. Listening carefully, they will find things to interact with. But there will be no visual clue, the player will be rewarded with a visual reminder, but discover will rely entirely on sound. There'll be a basic puzzle element in the form how the player will use sound, but I'm not going to go into that just yet.


What will it sound like?

I'll be drawing from music genres such as glitch, noise, ambient, drone and doom. If you consider Aphex Twin, Oval, Merzbow, Lustmord, Sunn 0))), Pan Sonic, Burning Star Core, Azure Skies, Bongripper, Hey Colossus etc. etc., you'll have a pretty good idea of what it might sound like. There'll be no synthesis, partly because I'm no good at it, which is partly because I really love recording my own sounds, out in the real world, and then utterly destroying them to create weird shit. I intend to blur the lines between music and soundscape.

If you know those artists you'll realise it's going to be quite a dark soundscape. That's sort of my specialty, and since this project is worth 75% of my overall degree mark, I'm going to play to my strengths and do what has served me well in the past. I'll leave the heart-warming stuff to Ed Key and David Kanaga Wink

I build binaural microphones so I'm going to strive to include as much binaural audio as possible in the game.




Technical Wotsits

I'm building the game world in Unity. I started learning it earlier this month, doing a bunch of tutorials and such. I've managed to sketch out some prototypes and I'm working towards a visual style. I'm keeping it very basic in terms of scripting, I'm really relying on the audio to do most of the work.

I'll hopefully be using FMod to implement the audio. This will allow me to break out of simply triggering samples.

My DAW of choice is Logic, so I'll be using that to do the bulk of the sound design and editing. Obviously I'll be breaking out into other software for certain things, I'll go into that as it comes up.


That's a lot of writing so here's the same picture I used at the top so the wall of text wouldn't scare you away:


And a lighting test video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lc7eDl4ETOI



I've had to send my main computer in for repair so I'm stuck drawing and writing for a few days, at which point I'll get something more concrete up. Pictures and stuff.

Hope that whets your appetite.

-Nate
 
« Last Edit: May 04, 2013, 09:19:53 AM by Nate_G » Logged

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« Reply #1 on: October 08, 2012, 07:33:48 AM »

Update 2

It's all progressing quite well. I'm forcing myself to leave the sound design aspects for the time being and focus on creating a working game world. It's really important that as time starts to run out in the lead up to my deadline that I'm not dealing with technical/mechanical issues, bugs, etc. etc. I can't afford to have that stuff get in the way of dissertation writing etc.

Here's a screenshot from the editor. It shows the 5 tracks that make up the game. When you complete one you take an elevator which whisks you to the next stage:



The next shot shows one of the first areas you'll be able to uncover. You'll receive your first sound here, the shards you can see falling. These can then be used to unearth the towering shards you can see there. Each shard will generate a randomised sound, as will each interaction. 





Here's a video (The video isn't smooth for some reason, the game runs fine, I need to sort some better screencap software I think):




(Is it possible to embed Youtube?)

The shards stabbing into the ground like that was an accident, but I've kept it as it's rad. I stumbled upon the sky effect in the same way. ie. messing about and seeing what happens. So basically the same way I do music.

Significantly less fancy but equally important:
- Upgraded the 'Transitioners'. These are essentially elevators that will appear once you've created enough noise. They take you up into the air while the 5 stages rotate below you, depositing you safely once the new stage is ready.

- I'm starting to get to grips with Unity and Javascript, to the point where I'm managing to write scripts without having to refer to tutorials, the Unity help files etc. Not quite as much anyway.

- The games folks at uni have been kind enough to let me sit in on their intro to games programming class on Tuesdays, so I'm hoping that'll give me a useful grounding in the theory behind what I'm currently stumbling through.

- I'm building a load of basic models in Maya ready to drop into the stages. Dropping things into the game world and then walking through it & interacting with stuff is super rewarding.

- I've been looking at implementing FMod... Really starting to feel like it's not going to happen. I think I probably could get it working, but I think that it might take far much time out of an already tight schedule. Considering using a plugin from the Asset Store to handle the randomisation stuff.   
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« Reply #2 on: October 08, 2012, 08:45:31 AM »

ah cool! I am glad you are posting over here, I have been intrigued from your twitter. This is looking really good, and I am excited to hear what it sounds like.
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« Reply #3 on: October 08, 2012, 08:55:16 AM »

Binaural audio is fucking awesome. I'm curious to see the outcome of all of this.
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« Reply #4 on: October 09, 2012, 05:24:24 AM »

Thanks for the interest guys.

I thought I'd write a little about how I'm going to use binaural audio in the project. Sorry if this post is a little light on game content. This is all important stuff for the project though.

Binaural Audio

What it is

Binaural recording is essentially a stereo recording technique that encodes locational and spatial information into the sound.

When we hear a sound, we hear a different version of it in each ear. So, the sound of a car alarm going off over to your right will hit your right ear first, with a delay before it reaches your left. Additionally, the sound will be filtered by your ears and head, to give different sonic properties to the left and right versions. Your brain then compares these two versions to form information about where in three-dimensional space this sound originated from.

Binaural recording replicated this effect by using a replica of a human head. Here's one I prepared earlier:



It's got a fibreglass head, silicone ears to replicate how the pinna filter and direct sound, and silicone ear canals. At the end of each canal is a tiny condenser microphone. When you record with the head, the delay and filtering effects are baked into the sound, and when you listen back, your head decodes this information in the same way as if the sounds were originating in an actual 3D space.

Here are a few examples:
soundcloud.com/nathan-gallardo/leicester-square-binaural <- This is a binaural recording of a crowd in Leicester Square.
http://soundcloud.com/nathan-gallardo/long-train-runnin-ambient <- This is a remix of the Doobie Brothers track 'Long Train Running' that I did by remixing the song, then playing the individual elements back on speakers placed at different positions around the dummy-head.


Faking it

There is software that synthesis this effect, in real time, and achieves pretty good results. However, I really like working with microphones, getting out into the field and capturing sounds, so I've not really devoted any time to the synthesis of binaural effects.

How I'll use it

The thing with binaural sound is that, a sound recorded on the dummy-head's left is baked into the left side of the stereo field in the recording. This is problematic in a three-dimensional game. Say I recorded an oscillating fan operating at 45 degrees to the left of the head. If I feed this sound into the game, the fan will sound as though it is coming from 45 degrees to the player's left. So they turn 45 degree in that direction and... the sound originates from 45 degrees to their left. They turn right 180 degrees and the fan is somehow still 45' to their left.

So it's no good for sounds that originate from a definite 3D location in the game world. However, binaural recording is bloody brilliant at capturing the sense of depth and space in a recording, it is incredibly immersive.

So I'll be using binaural audio to create immersive atmospheres, and sounds that aren't tied to particular game objects. A prime example of what I intend to use it for is a scene that will feature the sound of insects buzzing around the player. They'll appear to buzz around the player's head in 3D space, but the illusion will still work when you rotate the camera as you expect those sounds to move around erratically anyway, and there won't be a visual cue to associate with the sound and confuse things.

 
Wind, internal monologue, breathing, footsteps, all sounds very much suited to binaural.
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« Reply #5 on: October 09, 2012, 06:31:16 AM »

I'm really curious where that piece of equipment came from.

As for your problem, I'd say limit the binaural audio to atmospheric elements that don't necessarily need to be found in 3d space. For example, crickets chirping would be good, but not the sound of a river (if the river is part of the game environment). I'd say use 3d sound for those elements.

I am looking forward to seeing where this goes
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« Reply #6 on: October 09, 2012, 09:03:18 AM »

I made that particular head for a client. I'm really into binaural stuff.

Yup, that's exactly how I intend to use binaural sound. Not for things you'd actually look for, but for more ambient sounds. Luckily, this particular project is an abstract, ambient game so that covers a lot of things Wink

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« Reply #7 on: October 09, 2012, 10:33:26 AM »

Binaural is awesome.
This project looks awesome.
You are awesome for doing this.

Look forward to seeing where it goes.  Waaagh!
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« Reply #8 on: October 12, 2012, 10:05:44 AM »

Cheers Bones! Don't get your hopes up too much though. This being my first game and all, and an experimental one at that Wink

Update 4

So, I've got some pretty cool things going on now. So far I've really only worked on the first stage, because although I've got some really solid ideas about what I want to put in the other stages I figure it's best to do all my learning, iterating and analysing on the first stage. That way, when it comes to do the other stages I'll be better prepared to start implementing my designs, rather than faff about trying to figure out what I'm doing. Like I am now.


Some theoretical stuff?

I've been thinking about how to manage the player's expectations about the game, ie. about how much 'game' there is in it. It's an interactive album after all, and the rewards for interacting are going to be quite subtle rather than quantifiable. ie. New/changing sounds rather than kills, points, pickups or inventory. In a game you can finish without actively doing anything, and in such a bleak landscape, how do I convince them to engage in play, and continue playing rather than just downloading the album (which will be available). I think one of the main solutions is making sure to provide the player with enough toys so that they can create their own fun.

I'm looking at Proteus as a case study in this regard. Ed's managed to nail this problem, so there's a lot to be learned there.

I'm sure this is all established stuff in game design theory, and obvious to a lot of people, but they're new considerations for me, and I feel like I have to work through this stuff to get a good handle on it.


Visual stuff

I've played a lot with the visuals to get to where I am now. I told myself a couple of weeks ago that I'd concentrate on building the world and getting the mechanics in place and dealing with the look of it all later. But I've realised it's super important to get the look right fairly on as it's going to have a huge influence over how I create the sound.

I've settled on a palette: black, grey and a colour. I think each stage will have a different colour. There are some pragmatic reasons for such a minimal palette:
- I don't have time to make loads of awesome textures
- I don't have the skills to make awesome textures
- Shitty textures look shit, and detract from the overall experience
- Simple visuals are less system intensive surely?

There are also creative reasons for it though:
- I want to avoid the visuals distracting from the soundscape
- Giving the player a stark, empty environment allows them to project their own interpretation onto it
- It looks kind of cool


Tech stuff

I've been using iTween and the awesome iTween Visual Editor to deal with things like fading audio and fading objects out, combined with the Visual Path Creator to create path following behaviour for objects. I wish I'd started with iTween from the beginning rather than doing so many animations with the Unity editor, which sucks a bit.


And a screenshot to make up for all that text.

Here you can see the monolithic floating shards. They drift about hither and thither in the air. Each one has it's own signature wail, so as the shards and the player move about in the space, they form a shifting ambient soundscape. The Doppler effect adds another level of randomness into the mix.



Currently they all emit audio all the time, so I'm trying to figure out how to get them to only call the sound when the player is in their proximity. Think I've nearly nailed that...
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« Reply #9 on: October 13, 2012, 12:33:44 PM »

Update 5

Interacting with stuff

I've implemented two main ways of interacting with the environment. These will change slightly on each stage, but the principles will remain the same:

1) Projectile Sound- I was really trying to avoid anything 'FPS' like, but I like the way this turned out. Essentially, you can fire sound at something, and the something will then react.
2) Hail of sound - You can call this and it will rain down 22 instances of sounds to your location, like a hailstorm.

I'd like to implement one other idea to supplement the current projectile, but I'd really like to avoid having to use more than left and right mouse clicks to interact. I haven't settled on a solution for that yet. I'll never understand why 5-button mouses aren't the norm.

THE FLOATING MONOLITHIC WAILING SHARDS OF AMBIENT DOOM

I completely overhauled the floating monolithic shards today. I've used iTween and the Visual Path Editor to move them around in groups, which gives them a really nice floaty, drifty feeling. They now also respond to being interacted with by gradually changing colour, achieved using the iTween Visual Editor. These things really are huge though, which has thrown up a problem.. It's quite hard to tell how near or far they are. Not too sure how to solve that.

The nice thing about being able to interact with the FMSs though is that it puts even more power into the player's hands in terms of controlling the soundtrack. The more of them you activate, the richer the atmosphere. I'm thinking the fatter shards will make deeper sounds, the skinnier ones higher sounds. Currently they can't be deactivated, but I think that's probably a good way to encourage the player to move on, to give them a sense of having achieved something.


Where the shitting hell am I?

In an empty landscape it's very hard to gauge how quickly you're moving, if at all, without visual markers. Sound is going to be the main tool used to orient the player in the game, particularly in the early portions of each stage where there will be minimal, if any, visual clues. For the time being I've implemented trail-rendering on the player, which provides a very clear visual clue. The other projectile feature I mentioned will also assist radically, though I'll deal with that if I decide to implement it..
« Last Edit: October 13, 2012, 12:46:50 PM by Nate_G » Logged

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« Reply #10 on: October 21, 2012, 11:33:33 AM »

Update The Sixth

I'm reasonably happy with the first stage now, so I've made a start on the second. It's inspired by the loneliness of big cities, and their unique sonic properties. I'm talking reverb, echoes, and rain.



It's modelled very roughly on Charing Cross in central London, in terms of layout. It's densely packed with ghostly skyscrapers that function as this stage's primary instruments. Sounds bounce off these structures, pinging and ponging through the metropolis, creating unpredictable soundtracks.



Trains pass through, contributing a rhythmic element to the soundscape. They interact with each other, the environment and the player before disappearing into the void.




Boring tweaks
The transition platforms for moving between stages are now further refined.

In the interests of optimisation I've implemented limiting on certain projectiles.

I learn a lot while I worked on the first stage, one of the main things being that planning and organisation are key. So I've really tidied up the project, streamlining my process and using old fashioned pen and paper to devise plans in an attempt to predict and avoid obstacles.


 
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« Reply #11 on: October 22, 2012, 09:29:12 AM »

Update 7

Frustrating day. Decided to make a title screen before I got on with dissertation research. It ended up taking hours. Nevermind, it works now, and I really wanted to get the title screen in before I send it out to testers.



I know it doesn't look like it should have taken hours, but getting it to proceed through various pages, getting text to actually work in Unity, and some other stupid things slowed it up.
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« Reply #12 on: October 26, 2012, 11:12:48 AM »

Here's a little thing I put together, it's just a glorified 'coming soon' thing, but it does feature a basic version of what I'm doing:

www.v.icefishingmusic.com

So there's 3 looping sound files in there, moving around in the 3D space. Each loop is a different length so as they play they become out of sync, so you'll never actually hear the exact same thing twice. The sounds rotate around the 'audio listener', creating panning, and the rotation is slightly skewed, so the sounds actually move towards and away from the player slightly, creating a subtle Doppler effect. The mouse also moves the sounds about somewhat, creating a further glitchy Doppler effect. And I mean glitchy in a good, musical way.

So the result is a generative ambient texture. It's generative in the sense that it's produced by a pre-defined system, according to a set of rules. ie. The sounds rotate on this axis at this speed.

Now I'll grant, this is a very subtle, rather unremarkably example, and there's really nothing new here. But what I'm interested in is interesting ways to create these sort of virtual/modeled instruments, kind of like virtual installations. Games do all this sort of stuff obviously, sounds are always moving about in a virtual space in games, but I think it's kind of cool to use a 'game engine' as a means to non-game ends.
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« Reply #13 on: October 30, 2012, 01:36:32 PM »

Update 9

I've moved on to track/stage three.

This stage is an underground maze kind of thing. It started off very much inspired by Stephen Lavelle's Activate The Three Artefacts And Then Leave, but I ended up simplifying it signifcantly. I don't want the gameplay to be a barrier to anyone completing the game, so I essentially removed the 'maze' aspect and streamlined it. It took a whole weekend of trial and error and testing, but I'm happy with what I've got now.

This is a cutaway view, the maze being contained within the pyramid.



Each sphere is an automated instrument. The blend of sounds within the sphere depends on the players location within it. There are three main instruments, and once activated the player can leave the maze and proceed to stage 4.



Originally I had tunnels between each sphere, and they are still there, but I accidentally unticked the 'renderer' box and realised it was way cooler that way. Now you can shoot the projectile sounds and they'll bounce around the inside of the tube, the build-up of trail-rendering leading the way. The player's own trail provides a handy clue as to where they've already been.

I've a few triggers to wire up tomorrow, and then it's on to the penultimate track.


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« Reply #14 on: October 30, 2012, 09:49:59 PM »

This is a very intriguing project. Count me as a fan of your work, now. I look forward to seeing more updates!  Smiley
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« Reply #15 on: November 04, 2012, 01:04:36 AM »

Thanks Inanimate, appreciate it!


Update 10

I spent some time yesterday enriching the first track. The interactions are slightly more complex now, and as this project develops I'm forming a really strong idea for the next project... But one thing at a time.

So now, the monolithic shards, when shot, release a seed, which grows into a shardling when it hits the ground. If you then call a rain of shards, the shardling will grow into a garden. They can then change colour when the player walks through them.. I want them to change back when the player has left, but I can't seem to get that to work... Is there a way to cancel a function or an iTween before it finished?

This shot shows a bunch of this stuff:




Here's track 2. There's a glimpse of a train in the bottom left, as I mentioned earlier. The player has sound projectiles they can shoot, which bounce off the buildings. Each building releases a tone when struck, so the projectiles trigger a sequence of unpredictable tones as they bounce about.




Here are a couple more shots of the third track:






I've been looking into Tazman's Fabric Audio Toolset, which seems to have many of the same features as FMod, only a hell of a lot easier to implement. Thinking I'll have to bite the bullet and buy it. It'll allow me to control randomisation of sounds played, volume, pitch. Linking parameters such as speed, distance, etc. etc. to all sorts of sound parameters. Pretty excited to give it a shot and start implementing sound properly.

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« Reply #16 on: November 06, 2012, 12:47:42 AM »

Update 11

Put the alpha out yesterday, got some really useful feedback last night. If you'd like to take a look send me an email:

v  at icefishingmusic dot com
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« Reply #17 on: November 07, 2012, 03:12:09 PM »

Update 12

Started work on Track 4 today. It looks a little something like this:



As you run through the field of grey shards they will spring up, turn red and form a sort of monumental chandelier of red shards.
« Last Edit: January 06, 2013, 12:50:18 AM by Nate_G » Logged

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« Reply #18 on: November 09, 2012, 05:05:21 AM »

Update 13

The feedback I've had from the alpha testers has been encouraging and really useful.

One thing that comes up is that it's not clear what to do or where to go, especially when it comes to finding the elevator to change levels. I have been trying to think of ways to tell the player what to do without telling them explicitly. But then I wonder if I'm only complicating things. I'm considering putting something like this in:



I can avoid actually giving anything about what the player will experience away, ensure they
are familiar with the two methods of interaction, communicate that they they will need to move about and explore to progress, and that when they hear a particular sound, it is time to head towards it and proceed to the next track.

I'm very wary of having to explain how to play. Ideally it would be nice to make a game that completely explains itself, but as each track differs a fair bit, I think it might be for the best to just lay down some vague advice. In fact, having those rules established might actually liberate the in-game experience.  

Any thoughts?
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« Reply #19 on: November 09, 2012, 05:19:23 AM »

I still havn't gone back to it, sorry about that... my experience with the first level was that the interactions, and especially the objects that could be interacted with were not communicating their state that well to me.

So it was clear that proximity could trigger sounds, and that the gun did a thing, but the before and after states of the interaction were somewhat slow in their transition. If, for example, things were all white when you started, and jumped to red when you clicked on them, then it would be a clear path of "click on all the white things". Sorry if this is already being done, and I just missed it.

Also, highlighting the items that can be interacted with as you pass the gun over them might drive this point home as well. Then the objects become more clearly things that can be acted upon.

--- I clearly need to go back and play deeper through the game, but this is the feeling I get from the first level.
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