The original
intention was to create a 1940s street scene sandwiched between circular castle
walls. My original idea was to use a
fantasy theme set in the 1940s and using technology from that era. I thought that it would be good to set
fantasy in a different time period. High
fantasy is often set in mediaeval environments such as World of Warcraft and
Dungeons & Dragons. The circular
castle walls were chosen to create contrast.
I used Mount Saint Michel and Alan Lee's drawing of Minas Tirith from
the Lord of the rings as inspiration.
The level was going
to be very expansive with the multitude of apartment buildings in which one was
only accessible to the player with two warehouses and a tram line. The player could explore a storm drain. My original idea was to use a bridge with the
drain running underneath it. In the
final concept storm drain is blocked off at both ends. The level that I ultimately created consisted
of three apartments, a warehouse and a path to one side. The plan was originally going to be a railway
track but it ended up being a road with pavement. Due to issues of time the railway track ended
up as a road. This was also the issue
with the storm drains and the number of buildings. The Environment that I have created has the
potential to offer a gamer with lots to explore.
The sounds I wanted
to use were the sound of traffic, footsteps, steam, machinery and running water
from a burst pipe. The sound of traffic
would be ambient sound coming from outside buildings. The recording I made of traffic would need to
be manipulated to make it more muted so it became more like background noise. To get footsteps I recorded crowd noises in
Drake Circus. The sound I collected was
good but in the end was not relevant to the theme. Most of the sounds that were to be used in my
level were obtained from browsing the Internet for free sounds. It was not easy because most of the sites
required me to pay a fee to download the audio and other sites had sounds that
were not up to my liking. In the end I
managed to get some decent sounds that I will mention below. I got the sound of steam from the Internet on
a website called Sounddogs. The sounds
were royalty free and therefore would not break any copyright laws. I also found the sound of a spaceship door
opening which I used for a piece of machinery below the walkway, a buzzing
noise for the machines at the back of the warehouse and the sound of rushing
water to be used for the burst pipe leaking water from soundbible and soundJay.
The sounds that I
gathered myself came from three sessions when I went out to record sound. I used an ME67 directional microphone which
is good for picking up distant noises and a Zoom to record sound
digitally. This was stored as a 24 bit
WAV file. This file type is appropriate
to use with the Unreal Development Kit.
By recording selected sounds myself I was able to gather material
specific to my needs. On the first
recording session I wondered around the city centre, looking for random sounds
that could be incorporated into my level somehow. I first travelled to the bus station just
behind the bank to collect the sound of footsteps in a stone tunnel accompanied
with an echo. These sounds weren't
usable in the end because of the sound of voices and music that emanated from the
speakers and from the disco. I then left
the bus station and made my way around to the front of the bank. I used the location to record traffic sounds
which I have mentioned previously. I
proceeded towards the shopping centre where I recorded the sound of the crowd
passing through the main entrance and the sound of running water from a tap. On the other recording sessions I travelled
down to the market at the bottom end of town in order to capture more crowd
sounds in a vast, enclosed space. After
that I proceeded towards the overhead road crossing and onward to the
multi-storey car park. The environment
there was expansive and empty which made it the perfect spot for recording
echoes. Around the outside of the car
park was a tunnel that went along outside the car park and back in again, it
then travelled over and through the toy shop and into the charity shop where it
ended at a locked gate. Near the sealed
gate was a coin vending machine that permitted a buzzing noise which I thought
would make a great addition to my level's ambient sounds. Finally I travelled to the subway under the
roundabout near the hotel. I used this
location to record echoing footsteps to be used around the indoor sections of
my level. On returning to the studio
some of the recorded material was very quiet.
The sounds in question were obtained during my second excursion in which
I went to the market, multi-storey car park and the subway. The main recordings seemed to be louder from
the Zoom but not when I play them back from my computer. This might have been because of the format
the audio was saved in which was stereo not mono. It was possible to manipulate the sound levels
towards a higher volume in the studio.
This was achieved using Adobe Audition which is designed to record and
edit sound.
Adobe Audition was
used for meddling and altering sounds which I gathered from the three recording
sessions and the Internet. I slowed down
and stretched the sound of the spaceship door opening in order to synchronise
the pulsating buzz with the slow moving light of the cylindrical machine inside
the warehouse, below the walkway. I also
reduced the speed of another buzzing noise for use with the machinery. I stretched the sound of rushing steam to add
latency to the audio. I decided in the
end that the audio that ended up being too quiet to use for the level was not
worth editing because I didn't really need them in the end due to the fact that
none of them had any real practical use for my game environment.
Adding sounds into UDK was a very straight forward process once i learned how it works. I had to use triggers to initiate sound and Unreal Kismet to program the triggers to start and stop the sounds in response to the player's position. I thought the chosen sounds were appropriate to the level I designed. This sounds inside the warehouse help to maintain the industrial theme. I think that the inclusion of creaking door sounds would have added to the ambience of the level. I really would have liked to record all the sound myself but it was difficult to know where to find some of the noises or how to create them artificially. As levels become more complex this process also becomes more involved. I am pleased to have finished this project on schedule. I have found the assignment useful with regards to learning the process of recording sound. If I were to retry this project I would spend more time planning the recordings and making decisions regarding what to record. I will also investigate the sound files held in the college library which i only discovered it at a late stage in the project.
