Wednesday, April 23, 2008
By: BurnTheBlueSky
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We've gotten our hands on an exclusive blog from Don Veca, the Lead Sound Designer for DEAD SPACE, doing the audio and the score for the upcoming space horror game that will be released on Playstation 3, Xbox 360, and the PC on Halloween 2008. Read past the break to find out some excellent information about the game and check out an awesome piece of concept art.
Don Veca’s Second Really Scary Blog
Last time I promised you a little more discussion on the specifics of the different sound and music elements and techniques we’re using in Dead Space.
OK, so what does Dead Space sound like? Well… in a nutshell, it sounds dark, creepy, tense, quite, loud, organic, synthetic, and disgustingly gross. But more precisely, what gives Dead Space it’s signature “sound” is it’s dark and dissonant music, it’s eerie ambience, futuristic and gory sound effects, hideous creature sounds, use of dynamics and contrast, and more than anything: a very flexible authoring system that gives designers and composers more control over their sounds than any game I’ve ever worked on.
The first thing that I wanted to nail on this project was the music. Glen and I listened to score after score of some of the most recent and some of the most classic horror movies available. Some were full-range orchestral, some ambient/synthetic, and some more on the hard-core metal side. In addition to sounding creepy and tense, what we were looking for was a sound that was “classy” yet dissonant, dark, and very intense. The final musical X turned out to be a cross between Christopher Young’s work on The Grudge and Jerry Goldsmith’s music from Alien. While the music from The Grudge was dark and dissonant, it didn’t quite have enough dynamic intensity needed for Dead Space; and while Alien had the intensity, it was too “full-range” orchestral, and just too “pretty” for our game. But with those two styles in mind, plus Bela Bartok’s work used in The Shining, we were able hone in on the overall musical style. To contrast, we switch to a more synthetic style to emphasize the zero gravity sections of our game (zero gravity with air), and use no music at all during zero gravity/zero air.
The other unique aspect of our music is that very little music was “pre-composed.” That is, I very rarely tell the composer to write an N-second cue for a particular scene, and then go out and record and orchestra playing it. For Dead Space, we’re working completely the other way around. I went through quite a few different scores, and clipped out some of the coolest, creepiest, most intense, and most dissonant “techniques,” and then sent them off to the composer to use as recording guidelines. Then, we’d go into the studio with a full orchestra, usually once section at a time, and record each of these techniques, which could be anything from a frantic unison run, to several seconds of random pizzicato, to percussive instrument noises; e.g., tapping the back side of the violin, or bouncing the bow off the strings, etc (we even recorded them breathing). The idea was that we could then use these techniques, along with the composers vast symphonic sample library, to re-compose the techniques into an actual piece of music. But actually, each piece of music is really four layers of music that we mix “on-the-fly” algorithmically based on current game-play or the current “fear-level” of the game. This is how we are able to seamlessly build up bring down the music density over the course of the game-play. It’s really a player-driven score.
The Second thing I wanted to do for the game was build up a library of uniquely disgusting sound effects emphasize the dismemberment aspect of the game. About a week after I started on the project, Dave and I took a little field trip to the local Safeway, and picked out about $40-worth of produce. We brought it back to our recording studio, layered down a big blue tarp, and proceeded to cut, tear, squish, and fist everything from cabbage, to corn, to cantaloupe. A couple of the other audio guys have since gone to a fancy-schmancy professional foley stage and came back with some really great stuff too, but there’s most of the stuff you need can really be found at your local supermarket. (I sent an email to the game team asking for volunteers for real dismemberment, but nobody responded.) BTW, it took a professional cleaning service to removed the stains off the carpet (and the wall… tomatoes tend to project), and the awful stench still lingers a bit (kind of reminded me of the pig farm I worked on for a couple of weeks in high school).
Another aspect that we are really going for in Dead Space is contrast. Sure, contrast works great when things are really really quiet, and then a creature jumps out and scares the hell out of you with loud roars and a huge music stinger; but I was looking for areas of the game where we could use contrast without any threat what-so-ever. The first zero-air/zero-gravity moment in our “Green Light” demo was the perfect place to try this out. In this sequence, we go from normal ship ambience to completely dead (or near dead) silence when the player enters zero-g. But I wanted really drive it home coming out of zero-g. The exit from the zero-g area was still in it’s “block-world” state, and didn’t seem to have much game-play meaning yet, so we decided to make it LOUD AS HELL to completely contrast the quiet, muted sound of the no-air/no-gravity area. Now… what sound to use?
Being a native of the San Francisco Bay Area, I’ve been an occasional BART passenger (Bay Area Rapid Transit), since I was a kid in the mid-70’s. One thing that I always though was so cool was riding in the tunnel underneath the bay. To think that I was really under the freakin bay used to really trip me out (hey… it was the 70’s). On top of that, for some strange reason the tracks really start to squeal down there in that tunnel; I mean really really squeal. It’s one of the most “evil” sounds I’ve ever heard – chalked full of dissonant overtones – it almost sounds satanic at times (like I said, it was the 70’s), and for the last several years, I’d think to myself how cool this would be in a game. So… Dave and I, each armed with a professional portable direct-to-disk recorder, headed out one night to ride the under the bay. I remember the look on Dave’s face just before we went under the tunnel… just waiting for this really cool sound that Don’s been talking about for weeks. I also remember the look on his face when we actually went in there… ...nothing. Out of every time I’ve ridden the damn thing, it decided NOT to perform tonight! So, Dave tried it again later; next to nothing… again. I was about to give up on the whole thing, but I thought I’d try one last time. So one pleasant Sunday afternoon, I went out, solo, and rode the train, not really expecting anything new. Then the train went under the bay – and there it was! Just like old times: loud and freaky as hell. It was so cool, I decided to open the door that separates one car from the next (ignoring the sign that says “Do not stand between cars!”). There I was, between the cars of a crowded high-speed commuter train, holding this strange futuristic-looking device. I’m sure I got a few strange looks, and was half expecting security to stop the train boot me off.
The next day, we edited and mixed the sound into quad with a few other elements, and then triggered it in the game the moment the player opens the air-lock door exiting zero-g. Total contrast.
We’ve been doing a lot interesting recording sessions on this team. Lately, we’ve been having lots of fun with big metal dumpsters. Our rock-star intern, Marcus Egan, actually hops inside with a portable recorder; we close the lid, and proceed to kick, scrap, and pretty much beat the hell out of the thing. I love interns.
Great recording source and world-class sound design is a must, but I have said again and again over the years that it doesn’t matter how fantastic your sounds are if you don’t have any control of how they are played back. As a colleague of mine used to put it, “If you give Itzhak Perlman a student model violin, he will make it sing; but if you give a me a Stradivarius, all you’ll get is s**t.” This is so true of game audio. The industry spends millions of dollars every year making great sounds, but seems to invest so little in tools, systems, and education that allow sound designers to control the actual play-back of their sounds in-game. In the Dead Space spirit of bending the rules, stretching, and taking chances, however, we have had the privilege of developing a system that gives the Audio Artist at least degree of magnitude more control.
So my fingers are getting tired, and it’s way past “cabernet-o-clock,” so I’ll leave more about our super-cool Lua-based audio control system for Dave Feise’s next blog, along with some words on his totally amazing sound effects work. And maybe one day we’ll get to talking a bit about the creature sound design that’s so crucial to Dead Space. BTW, Dave and the other guys on the sound team are what makes this game sound so awesome; I just run around and say, “ummm… a little more blue, please.”
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Source: BD Video Game News
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