Blog #1: How does a harpoon missing sound like?
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Hello and welcome to my first blog post! I am Léo, project manager and producer of team Wendigo. In our current project, I am also responsible for the sound effects and music of the game. In this post, I will talk about the process of developing a sound asset from ideation to implementation. The game we are developing, “Umibōzu”, is about a Japanese fisher navigating a boat through a thick fog encountering dangerous sea creatures on his journey to find the mythical entity Umibōzu. The game’s aesthetic goal is to evoke a feeling of mystery and excitement within the player. The MDA framework can be a powerful tool for game designers to gain value when making design decisions by conscientiously considering the aesthetic goal. For example, the asset I will be talking about is called “harpoon missing” and is the the sound of the fishing boat’s harpoon projectile not hitting an enemy and plunging into the vast sea. It’s purpose is to provide negative feedback to the player that she was not successful in hitting an enemy or crate after firing the harpoon. But how does a harpoon missing sound like? The actual sound it makes is probably not suitable in the context of “Umibōzu” since in reality a harpoon missing may be too quiet (not giving the player feedback) or too boring sounding (not aligning with the aesthetic goal). Therefore, one must design a sound that provides the player with feedback while being consistent with the aesthetic goal. Using the website freesound.org, I searched for “splash” and “swirl”. The splash is supposed to make the harpoon plunging in the water sound impactful and exciting while the swirl serves to emphasize the impact as well as leave behind a lingering sound of mystery. Once I found two suitable sound clips I imported them in to “Ableton Live 10”, a music application software used for recording, editing, mixing, and a bunch of other cool things. To make the splash and swirl sync up with one another, I warped the longer sound to make it approximately the same length as the shorter one. I merged the clips into one and significantly shortened the duration. By spiking the volume at the beginning of the clip, the initial impact became more noticeable. I also added a reverb effect giving the clip more depth and space. The described process was a collaborative effort thanks to my teammates, who continuously tested the clip in game and provided me with constructive feedback enabling me to iteratively refine the sound.  I am not completely satisfied with the outcome because I don’t feel it successfully captures the ideas I intended to convey. Nevertheless, it’s “good enough” for now and I must soon begin working on the next asset before this week’s Sprint is over. All in all, I have really come to enjoy the process of creating sounds in Ableton Live and I’m am excited to learn more! Peace out. ∼ thedudeleo  |