With the imminent playtest session upcoming, the question of updating and creating new sounds for Scrimshaw came to mind. Given the fidelity I was hoping to achieve for the rest of the project, the sound design would have to match the quality of the other assets in the game, and for this reason, I reached out to the individual who did the original sound design for the project, to book in another session.
Firstly, I gave him access to the current build of the project to allow him to test and check from his perspective which sounds were communicative, the actions and environmental aspects that required sounds, and any other bits of information he could gather for our work.
Our goal with sound design was to create sounds for three primary reasons:
- Create Feed Forward: Communicate ancitipation for things like explosions, attacks, and communicate when actions were available i.e. harpoon reload and cannon reload.
- Create Feedback: Give feedback for actions, from simple things like movement, turning and refueling, to more complex feedback like moving items around your inventory, to harpoon hit confirmation.
- Ambience + Tone: Create and maintain the ambience and tone that the game requires to elevate the narrative expeirence.
Design
When approaching the sound design, there were a number of sounds to create with a variety of complexity and importance. The sounds needed were:
- Ambience
- Ocean Lapping/Waves
- Musical/Tonal Elements
- Creaking
- Chattering of Characters
- Clanks and Whirrs of machinery
- Environment
- Gate Mechanism: Gears/Pulleys/Clanks
- Dock at Ports: Confirmation of Docking/Undocking
- UI
- Dialogue Open/Close
- Voice Acting
- Inventory Move Sound Update: Multiple Sounds
- Fuel Deposit Sound
- Scrap Deposit Sound
- Pause Menu Sounds
- Weapons
- Cannon Firing Sound Update
- Better Cannoball Collision
- Reload Sound
- Harpoon Better Miss into Water
- Reeling Sound: Complex and Parameter Based
- Collision Sound: Hit Confirmation + Grappel Confirmation
- Vessel
- Better Engine Sound
- Automation based on speed, turn velocity and other
- Gear Changing Sound
- Collisions: Dynamic based on velocity and impact material
- Better Engine Sound
For these sounds we booked a studio at Adam’s (my sound designer) university BIMM, and started collecting foley needs. We had a rather eclectic list of needs that entailed:
- Water bottle with thin neck: For Glub Glub Glubs
- Flask: For metalic hollow clangs and water
- Twigs: For snapping and cracking wood sounds
- Aluminium Cans: Crumpling and Stomping on them produced excellent transient and textural sounds for any design that involved metal crushing/smashing which in our case was a lot.
- Oids: They sound cool
- Snapping caps: For opening and closing sounds and impactful transients.
- Box of Cards: Sounded good for rustling and thumping sounds
- Glass Bottles: Twist cap made satisfying tonal pop sound, and the glass hit sound is satisfying, and can be used in multiple instances.
- Ourselves: We decided to record some simple voice acting samples from the dialogue currently present in the game.
- Misc: A random assortment of other objects to get textural sounds to add to the sound design: Coins rattling, caps twisting, pen lids snapping, train whistle (cause I had one) bell ringing, and more.
We recorded the sounds in tracks of common needs like: Metal, Snaps+Pops, Wood, Impact, Textural, Ambient and so on. Adam directed us in what sounds we’d need as we had both trained in FMOD sound automation so combined we figured out what kind of sounds we’d need in order to construct both the simple and complex effects.
Regretfully, but also thankfully I guess, when it came to the voice acting, I found we were sorely lacking in acting talent, as well as proper direction, and more importantly the voice lines that had been written came off as forced and overly theatrical. This is something I’ll have to fix for our main VO session on the 18th, and I will do so in combination with Adam as he is our sound lead, and has extensive experience with the regional accents that will be common to Scrimshaw.
While Adam works on the mixing of the sounds, I will now turn back to work on implementation of the project, as the UI rework has been going back and forth and is now almost ready to be put in.