By Billy Yates

Sound Task – 8-Bit DubThe role of sound in video games in beyond being grasped. It gives the effective of emotions, mood, and tone. Is a game without sound even a game? Loudness is a key thing to keep I mind when making sound the way the term works is that you do not want to wear out your audience with the same sound on repeat, variation, change is key not the volume of the sounds. They majorly effect the users experience as it determines whether or not they are going too actually enjoy the sounds they hearing or feel uncomfortable. Timbre is another term, what Timbre does is give an item or character a vibe with their sound accompaniment. They are used whenever a character comes on screen for the first time or when an object is used to give the vibe. It affects the user experience by allowing the audience to know how the object or person is with the use of a single sound, tone of the sound, the colour and some sounds are harsher and colder where as some are warmer and friendlier. Pentatonic and non-linear sounds, the meaning of pentatonic is sounds that for example appear on reward or happen when something happy is going on in game, changing the users experience in a positive light as they feel good when these sounds are triggered. For example when gaining a power up in Mario (Nintendo, 1983). Non-linear are things that distress the user or make an alien like sound, things beyond the range of an instrument/voice. This again effects the player positively as it makes them feel scared or worried, concerned as to what happened even. For example Slender ( (Parasec Productions , 2012).

In this task we first took a look at a fight scene from the movie the Princess Bride. We had to watch the entire scene and then choose one minute from the movie and go through and analyse the sounds heard and how we can make it all 8-bit. In the lesson in general we were learning about the sounds in games overall and we learnt about diegetic and non-diegetic.

We were asked to watch the sequence and choose 1 minute from the movie (The Princess Bride, 1987) and use that to make 8 bit, we had to sit and analyse the one minute we chose and look in detail at what sounds were going to be needed and which things made the sounds, we are going to be using BFXR a site or a standalone download to make our sounds, we had to pick apart the entire 1 minute, from jumps, to rocks falling, sword clashes.

For each individual sword touch or footstep, pick up everything in the clip we had to create our own sound for and go through and make everything a 8-bit dub, when they speak we had to create a dialogue sound and apply that over the speech. The most frustrating part was going through and adding a sword clash sound every time their weapons clash. I feel it was difficult as from a distance it is hard to tell when the weapons touch without zooming in, this task was near enough impossible!

The reason we were doing this was because we needed some experience with sound, so when we used sound for our games we can effectively make it work and make each sound fit the certain object we are linking it with, for example if we attached a sound to an enemy dying I would want this sound to be the best it can be. I feel the task was effective in giving us some skills in making 8-bit sounds using BFXR a site we can create sounds in a mixer and where we can get sounds with the click of a button.

By Billy Yates

I have learnt a great deal by doing this, mainly about how to make sounds become effective and give a sense of emotion. When it comes to skills in Adobe Premiere Pro I have had a lot of usage with the program already therefore I am able to use those skills. Another key thing I learnt was how to break down a clip and go through and pick out each individual sound, and how I could re-create this sound in BFXR.

I could take what I have learnt and use this in the future of my game as I can use sounds I have already created and make new ones for the game by using BFXR. The site is simple to use and allows you to freely make some unique and sometimes alien sounds, by changing frequency’s and vibrations and many other assets.

The sounds I made I feel were unique, I made a pickup, a person landing, the sword clash, speech, footsteps, rocks falling, swinging and a few more, I am going to attach the sounds for a preview of each. I have added the ones I did not use as well to show that you ca change these whenever you want.

My dub with all my sounds looks like this In Premiere Pro.

By Billy Yates

(The Princess Bride, 1987)

Each green block is a sound I have added and most of them are sword clashes! On the bottom left all my sounds and the main clips are located I can drag and drop them into my sequence whenever and I can also add more into the sounds for later. The top left is where you can get the original clips up and watch them to know when to add certain sounds. As you can see I have used 3-4 different audio lines underneath my clip for my sounds, meaning I can have more than one sound playing at once.

Overall I have had so much fun with sound, and alongside environment art I feel I would enjoy this long term. It is very enjoyable and is a very good skill to have as sound adds effect to your game like crazy. Ranging from music, to average sound effects.

BibliographyThe Princess Bride. 1987. [Film] Directed by Rob Reiner. United States of America : Buttercup Films Ltd.