Hello to all readers! In previous articles, I have already talked about the difference between music in films and games, about the sound environment and now the time has come for weapons. Before starting, I want to say that the best gratitude will be to watch the video version of this article!
If the environment is in the background and it is difficult to notice it without listening, then his bad sound will spoil the impression of the game, but will not become critical. While the weapon in such genres as shooters and action of the game is a corner of an element, if it sounds bad, then the pleasure of the main aspect of the game, namely, we will not get firing.
If you do not believe me, look at the example and tell you you to play with the first weapon or the second.
I think 99.99% of people would play with the second weapon. Now when we figured out that a bad sound can ruin the impression of the game we will move on.
Types of weapons
First, weapons in games can be divided into several categories. This is a cold, throwing, firearm and magical, for the especially picky I want to explain in this case the weapon is what you can kill and what the player directly controls. Faerbol, lightning and other spells are also weapons, but in this article I will not affect the magic.
Move from simple (according to the structure of weapons) to complex. Cold weapons include all close combat items and the creation of such sounds is a rather simple activity. We need an object itself to allow a knife, something similar to a wave of a hand like “igh” and the sound of a blow on the surface with the necessary object (earth, concrete, human flesh). If this is a bit, a sword, etc., then nothing changes. You can see how such sounds are made in my video.
The same principle and with throwing weapons. The exception can only be bows and crossbows, there are moving parts that would be nice to voice, but there is nothing complicated in them.
Now let’s move on to firearms. Pistols, https://rhinobetcasino.co.uk/ revolvers and machine guns are ordinary weapons. Their design has its own difficulties, but they are all based on what exists in reality and if you need the sound of AK-47, then you can take a real automatic recording, subject the processing (later we will analyze which) and use it) and use.
While with futuristic weapons this will not work. We do not know how it sounds, so it needs to be designed from scratch. All sorts of plas because of this type of weapon are suitable for this type of weapon.D. You all probably know how the laser gun should sound? For this, we can thank Ben Berth Sounds of the Star Wars designer, who came up with a cult sound of shooting from such weapons.
And already if they tell you what it is
laser weapons, tell me that it is wrong. Of course, not all laser types of weapons sound the same, but the principle of creating such a sound for many is similar. As for other types of weapons, energy, wave, and whatever, there is a full flight of fantasy and can sound in different ways.
So how can we fix the situation with bad sound in the example of the article at the beginning of the article? Write down the sound of a weapon on a good microphone, and preferably several to accurately get the desired sound? In truth, this was a recording from a microphone, raw and unprocessed. To give her power, we need to use the main instrument of the designer’s sound – the leering (laying of sounds).
To achieve the best result, the sound of shooting can be divided into several frequency groups. The first group – they are needed low frequencies in order to give the weapon impact and power, a kind of low -frequency kick “UMF”. The second group – the average frequencies they add liveliness to the sound, make it wider and more voluminous. The third group, as you could guess, this high frequencies are needed in order to increase the readability of sounds. In addition to these three main groups, we still have a very important group of groups, namely the tail of the reverb. In another way, this is a tail with an echo that helps to understand gd we are in a large room, in a small or open space. Add to each group for a certain number of sounds and see how everything will change in the end.
I want to note that the first three groups belong to almost all sounds in principle. Dividing the sounds into groups: low, medium, high we structure our work to create sounds and it becomes simpler. It is much easier to work when you know that you have enough low frequencies in the sound and you like them, but some kind of tall ones are not like that. This helps to quickly find the problem and solve it. And if we created sounds randomly connecting everything that comes across, then finding a good sound becomes more difficult.
In addition, the proportions are important here, not every sound will have a pronounced low -frequency component, otherwise we will get dirt and tambourine, from which the ears will begin to get tired quickly. Or loud high, from them I begin to get sick instantly from them. In APEX Legends there is a gun that sounds terrible in my ears due to the abundance of high frequencies, which without exaggeration make my ears painfully? Even if you play at normal volume.
Now when we added all the necessary layers, you can listen to what happened, whether we managed to achieve the same sound as in modern games?
This sound is already more like what we hear in shooters, but still he is far from perfection. We need to process the sound slightly, add heat with a saturator, use an equalizer that is necessary to secrete frequencies or cut them out of the sound spectrum. We will also use the Multiband Compressor. A compress is a thing that glues everything into a single whole. After all the processing, you can listen to what happened to us.
Perhaps it is not perfect, but honestly, even this sound is better than you can hear in Far Cry 5, and in general this game is an example of how AAA Game should not sound. The sound there is very flat, a toy weapon, if you are interested in learning more about the sound in this game, let me know.
In the last article, I slightly touched on the theme of spectral disguise, during shooting the sounds of the environment can create porridge if they do not become quieter during shooting. The games use a dynamic mixing system, since each time the game situation is different and you need to adjust it somehow so that everything sounds in the balance sheet. For this, sounds are divided into groups and assign them the degree of importance. From less important to the most important thing: embosses, steps, weapons, dialogs. And if you shoot, then the sounds of the environment go into the background or even turn off, also steps. This is necessary because of the features of digital sound, so that there is no porridge and cacophony. As you understand, shooting from weapons can easily drown out any voice, so the dialogs have the greatest priority. NPC or the phrases of another player (not voice chat) can have very important tactical information during the battle.
This separation will work well in a regular game, where all players are equal, in terms of opportunities. This is not the case in Overwatch, it is obvious that some characters there have less health, some more, someone does more damage, someone less. There are also various abbers. For a non -standard shooter, a non -standard sound system is needed.
The developers decided to divide the sounds in the game into groups that pose a direct threat to the player. If you settled on the map somewhere and you decided someone crept up to you, then you will hear his steps louder than the shots of the character you aim.
In the last video, I already mentioned how the sound can help when shooting, I will briefly say that in some games, for example, APEX Legend during shooting, when the store ends, begins to change, thereby telling that it would be nice to reload.
In Last of US, for example, inattention can cost you life, because if you click an empty store, the enemies will immediately hear this and start to attack you. Thank you all for reading this article, better gratitude for me, go to my channel, watch a video, like and subscribe. See you in the next article or video.