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Re: [microsound] Music Technology graduate interested in Game Audio
Damian Stewart wrote:
any
microsounders are familiar with this industry? Any suggestions on
how to
improve my skills specifically for game audio?
i worked as a C++ programmer for a company making PlayStation2 /Xbox
games a number of years ago. the hours are long, the pay is dire, the
management is often of the squeeze-you-until-you're-dry type. what's
more, sound is all too often overlooked (notable exceptions include
the original Half Life.)
True true.
I got very tired of asking for 10% of the CPU for audio in meetings and
being laughed at. 10%! On a positive side I did learn a lot and had a
lot of fun writing audio engines.
Make yourself a demo with something like OGRE 3D and OpenAL. Make the
demo standalone but also put an emphasis on how the audio can be
prototyped externally with something like PD using OSC or some such
communications protocol.
Also show how you can expose functionality to the game logic in a non
musical and non SFX way. E.G. The game logic can call
audioLogic->environment->IncreaseTension() or
audioLogic->sfx->FootStep(FOOTSTEP_TYPE_HEAVY).
Although it's been a while since I worked in that field the one thing I
always found was that the game developers normally wanted very little
understanding of how the audio guy did his thing. So to make them
happier I always exposed interfaces that worked from their perspective
and not from mine. That way you get to have all the fun of figuring out
what something like IncreaseTension() does :)
Oh yeah and although this is a little less applicable nowadays learn to
love state engines and try to avoid doing too much platform specific in
your audio engine.
your best way to avoid the rat-race, crawling over other people's
backs and generally having no fun, is to volunteer to make sound for
community-driven projects. there are loads of games out there that are
being developed by groups of enthusiasts, sometimes as mods for
existing games, sometimes as fresh projects. don't worry about making
money, you can do that later. yeah, the rent needs to be paid, and
food needs to be got, but there are ways; you're in the UK, which is
one of the richest countries on earth and by far the easiest place to
earn real money for creative output in the whole world. if you run out
of money do some soundtracks for some artist friends and ask for a
reasonable fee. just don't do work you don't want to do, it's never a
good idea.
what i'm advocating really is a pick-your-own-path life. if you want
to do interesting work in games, you don't want to be anywhere near
any of the major studios. and you'll find the smaller studios are by
and large operated in a way that is heavily reliant on networking,
word-of-mouth, and prior effort, and will perhaps not want to talk to
you unless they have a reason to. just get out and do what you want to
do. if you're doing your own thing, doing something unique, and you're
doing it consistently, just keep at it for long enough and keep
telling other people about it, and soon enough things good will come.
I won't speak too much about the life/goals side of things as it would
take to long but I do agree with the above and prepare to be exhausted
and frustrated a lot.
d
http://www.frey.co.nz
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...steve...
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