Project 2 – Some thoughts – Non-linear sound

we may want to be able to hop off at one station and hop onto another train going in a new direction. We may not get on at the end of this new train, but perhaps on one of the middle cars. The train may choose to speed up at night, or slow down through built-up urban areas.
——Karen Collins, 2007

It is a process without the beginning, middle, and end. However, the non-linear sounds in the game have ambient sounds in addition to music. The early-stage games tended to have direct splices and abrupt cuts between cues, but this was uncomfortable for the player. Assuming the player is fast enough to keep up with the game, the player will hear two tracks fading in and out, which can also be uncomfortable. This is the same problem I’m facing now. I can’t predict the player’s behaviour. If a player still no pass a level, no matter how long I make the ambient sound, he will hear the break in the middle of the sound loop. So how do making music or ambient sounds natural and unobtrusive?

In Red Dead Redemption, composers reduce transition time and enhance musical flexibility by writing hundreds of cue pieces. So when the player is moving in the game world, a single loop will fade in and out depending on where the player is and what’s going on, and when there are enough layers, it’ll alleviate that discomfort. In addition to the problem of transition, there is one more concern.

When playing games, especially adventure games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, you often need to enter the same map repeatedly, so if the sound environment is always the same at this time, it will make players feel it is so boring, and it also feels like the world is not real. The sounds in the natural environment are unique. It is because the sounds are randomly combined and they also can not be replicated, even if it is in the same place and at the same time. Nature can not produce the same phoneme again in the same way. Therefore, the sound environment experienced by players entering the same game scene multiple times should be different, which requires building a system that can randomly play sound materials in the game engine.

Then for this project, a new technical problem arose, producing a sufficiently realistic natural environment. My current idea is to split the individual elements of the ambient sounds and put them into the game separately, writing code that plays randomly so that the background ambient sounds are also randomly combined. It’s time to start working on the code again. The problem of the breakpoint in the middle of the ambient sound loop should be solved as well. If I let the individual element sounds fade in and out randomly anytime, then the breakpoint should be non-existent.

• Update 12.5 – Bibliography – Karen Collins. (2007).  “An Introduction to the Participatory and Non‐Linear Aspects of Video Games Audio.” Eds. Stan Hawkins and John Richardson. Essays on Sound and Vision. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press.  pp. 263‐298
• Update 12.5 – Game work reference – Red Dead Redemption – Rockstar Games, 2010 & The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – Nintendo Entertainment Planning & Development, and Monolith Software Inc, 2017