A Release and a Small Secret Revealed

Men Can’t Make Beds

I have a few announcements I just wanted to get out into the public domain, and two of the three relate to Men Can’t Make Beds. Firstly, on Monday 11th March, Men Can’t Make Beds made it’s premier screening as part of the Borderlines Film Festival, at the The Courtyard in Hereford. This was a huge deal for all involved as it was a project that ran for about 18 months, and for some/most people involved in the project it was the first time having work shown to the public (at all, or at least in such a fashion).

Personally, the first film I worked on was screened at a cinema as part of a showing of students’ work – this was completely different, and nerve-racking, because it was the first project that I had done 100% of the audio post-production work. I couldn’t help but listen intently to the audio track, waiting for a mass of problems. I was quite relieved to find that there weren’t any glaring mistakes, and I relaxed all the more when people started to laugh (at all the right moments, I might add). It was also rather strange to hear such a round of applause afterwards, but it’s a feeling I think I could easily get use to.

The second announcement is that on the day following the premier, director David Jones released the film to the public! You can find it by following the link HERE or, to make it even easier, you simply watch it below:

 

TOP SECRET

At the start of 2012 I made mention that I had some involvement in a film project, and that I wasn’t allowed to leak any information about it until the film had been released. Well that time has come, and so below I shall give you a small clue:

If you didn’t get it, the film was indeed: Cloud Atlas. I do realise it was released last year in the US, and in February here in the UK – with the restriction given to making anything public, I decided to wait a little longer after the UK release before doing this.

Now, I want to make my involvement clear, because I simply don’t want to sell myself on false assumptions. Fiona Johnston (director of Killing Time) was contacted via a UK production company and asked to make a small clip of a news report – this was asked of several filmmakers around the UK, with the idea of only a select few being included in the final feature. So, sadly, I didn’t get to work with the main filmmakers but to get the chance to do something for such a big project was still amazing, as were the team Fiona put together for the making of our clip. When I can, I’ll put out the time within the film where our clip features.

The filming of our clip took several hours during the evening of a very cold December day in Edinburgh, and I was brought in as Boom Operator. Ross Buchanan, of whom I worked alongside for Killing Time, was also present as Sound Recordist.

Men Can’t Make Beds

Hello ladies, gentlemen, and other.

It has been approximately 6 months since my last post on here, but I would like you to know I’ve not completely disappeared. Actually, I have returned with big news about one of my projects – Men Can’t Make Beds has been completed!

For those who may not have read my previous posts about this project, it is a short comedy film by Wind-up World Films. It was filmed in mid-2011 over three days, and has now taken about a year and a half to finish. This sounds like a long time for an (approximately) 8 minute film, and it is. Sadly, progress was stunted due to various people’s other commitments and unforeseen circumstances. But it has been completed nonetheless.

Now is the time for Wind-up World Films to look into the future. For Men Can’t Make Beds, the first official public screening of the film has been arranged to be at the Borderlines Film Festival (March 2013). In other news, along with several music video projects, they are now planning their next short film. They have uploaded a post discussing all of this (click here).

I am planning to go back over the work I did for this project and put together a post detailing some of the interesting parts (or, at least, what I found interesting). Fingers crossed it won’t take me another 6 months to post on here. Also, toward the end of next month (clue?) I’ll finally let leak what I was working on in Edinburgh for one evening in December 2011.

Lost Key Games presents: Cubey

Everyone, please welcome the first game to be release by Lost Key Games:

Those who have been keeping up with my blog may already be aware of a project I have been involved in for Lost Key Games, called Betrayal’s Wings. Around the time I started my break away from my sound work, this project got put on hold and ideas were being thrown around for something new to work on while waiting for things to pick back up with Betrayal’s Wings.

This lead to the development of this time-based puzzler. Essentially, the player controls a cube and has to navigate it through 30 levels, dodging obstacles and using jump pads, lasers, etc. It has already been developed for Mac and PC, but there are also plans for it to be released for Android and iOS in the future.

The game is set to be released tomorrow (9th July, 2012) at 20:30GMT*, and will be available to purchase on Desura by clicking the button below. All details about this game, demos, and videos can be found at it’s Indie DB page.

 

* EDIT: Due to unforeseen circumstances the release was been delayed until the 11th July.

Returning to Form

Hey there fellow lovers of sound, music, film, and games!

I just wanted to put up a quick post regarding my recent absence. Over the past couple of months there has been a lot going on in my personal life that has taken me away from both keeping up with this website and the projects I have been working on. I don’t want to go into the details here though because this isn’t that kind of blog. I will state that I have recently moved back to my home county of Herefordshire and, although this isn’t planned to be a permanent move, it is looking to be my base of operations for the foreseeable future. Also, those who follow my Tweets may have seen that on June 20th I graduated from Edinburgh Napier University with an MA in Sound Production (see the embarrassing evidence below).

Now that things are starting to finally settle I am hoping to get back on track with my current projects, and possibly start looking into lining up more projects for the future. I have been extremely lucky to have found those running the projects I am currently involved in to have more patience with me than I probably deserve, and I want to see that I do everything I can to repay them for having such patience while I sorted everything out. As for this website, I do have a couple of drafts of posts that need finishing off and, obviously, I’ll be back to keeping everyone up to date about the progress of my projects and any new ones that crop up (e.g. Contamination Europe recently launched an official website that can be found here).

A Couple of Updates

Men Can’t Make Beds

Over the past week or so I’ve been exchanging messages with David Jones regarding what is left to be done with Men Can’t Make Beds. This lead to a Skype session the other day whereby we further discussed these details. It turns out that there isn’t a great deal left to do as far as the sound design is concerned. A couple of the scenes have been altered so, obviously, the sound has to be edited to correspond with these changes.

It has also been decided that both myself and David have been over-thinking the use of sound in the film, in that we both were thinking that with it being a live-action film all the sounds have to be diegetic and realistic. At the same time, we were trying to create a more cartoony feel to the film and thus subtly adding more cartoony sounds. We have now come to realize that the original idea for this film was to create something of a live-action cartoon and, with this in mind, we agreed that there should be a lot more freedom in terms of how sounds are used. So I am now in the privileged position to go back through the film and be even more experimental – these are exciting times!

It may turn out that only a few things get added and kept, but (as I’m sure other sound designers would agree) its definitely a good position to be in. Besides these sonic tweaks, we are just waiting on the original music to be completed, and the illustrations for the final credit sequence. Once all these are in the bag we will be able to move to the final mix and actually getting it out to you beautiful people.

 
Contamination Europe

The big news for Contamination Europe is that there will soon be an IndieGoGo campaign to raise money toward actually hiring some programmers to work with the current team, so as to increase productivity. The team is still working on a few things before creating a demo video that should be used with the campaign, and an official website is being developed – the IndieGoGo campaign should be live once the website has been completed and put online. Obviously, I will be keeping you updated as to when that will be, and I do hope people will help with whatever they can afford so as to help get this game off the ground, and to further show your support for the team.

Game Dev North 2: Dev Harder

On March 17th I found myself in Chester, walking into the Pitcher and Piano bar in search of a group of people for the (originally titled) Northern Game Talkery Time 2. Not long after asking a member of staff where the meeting should be taking place was I approached by Samuel Mottershaw (of Toxic Games), the event organiser. I was soon lead over to our reserved area and increased our group number to a strong 4 (from here the number did quickly increase beyond this).

At this point I would like to state that I wasn’t sure what to expect from attending the meet-up. I’m relatively new to working on games, this being the first meet-up I would have attended, and the fact it was originally set up to get those from the North-East of England in attendance and I had travelled from Glasgow; part of me was expecting to be laughed out. I instantly felt at ease being introduced to those already there, and continued to receive friendly greetings as other came to join our group.

Talk started by concentrating on the event itself. Obviously, everyone would like to see as many people as possible attending, so the first topic was about spreading the word of this monthly meet-up. It was quickly agreed that Twitter is pretty much the center of communication these days, especially amongst those within the games industry, which lead to hashtag talk, and the idea of playing on film titles for the event name (note the title of this post and a bit further down to see how this idea has been implemented).

Over the course of the evening I couldn’t help but be amazed by how approachable everyone was, the constant banter that anyone was welcome to jump in on at any time, and the fact that everyone appeared to give everyone else the same amount of respect and attention (including my own newbie thoughts, ideas, and random banter). It almost had the air of a group of age-old friends getting together after not seeing each other for years.

Time seemed to pass all too quickly and most of the group had to leave a little bit prematurely. Everyone eventually said their goodnights and left in high spirits, with the thoughts that the next meet-up would only be a month away. Even though I ended up spending a painfully cold night standing at a bus stop til 6am waiting for my bus home, I still feel it was worth it to get to meet some great guys, and to spend some time discussing games and the projects we are each currently working on.

This is a meeting for those based in the North-East of England but, as has been proven, anyone working with games is welcome no matter where you’re travelling from. The next meet-up has been arranged for April 21st, titled ‘Game Dev North Meetup 3: Dev With a Vengence’, and details can be found here. Also, if anyone is interested in keeping up to date about the meet-ups, the official Twitter account can be found here.

Sadly I won’t be in attendance for the next meet-up, what with the distance I have to travel, but I will definitely be keeping contact with those I met this time around and I will be sure to attend another as soon as I can (and this time I will remember to pick crashing on a sofa over standing in a freezing bus stop). Also, this experience has definitely got me looking at attending game meet-ups closer to home – GameDevEd anybody?

Game Audio: Part 1 – The Beginning

On this occasion I would like to welcome you to the first of a series of posts dedicated to looking at game audio and how sound is implemented during the development of a game. I wanted to talk about something in more detail rather than simply give some updates on the projects I have been working on, but I was more than aware that I still hadn’t got around to writing anything about the sounds I’ve been recording and/or creating, or the techniques I’ve been using. That was until I had a bit of a ‘eureka’ moment – why not take the time to look at what is used/needed while working on sound for video games?

Let me set this up better. As it may already be known, last year I was taken onboard by 4th Wall Games to create sounds for their first game (Droggon Attack), and from there we have been in talks regarding my involvement in their future projects. This rekindled an interest in me I’ve had since high school (some *mumble* years ago) – working with computer games!
Sadly, through my years at university, none of the courses I attended covered game audio (in fact, my Masters course was meant to but the tutor left before my academic year started). This, and my own ignorance, meant that I never learnt anything about the ins and outs of game audio.
This is where my ‘eureka’ moment comes in. Anyone who read my last post will remember I mentioned that I had been taken on board to create sounds for Betrayal’s Wings (Lost Key Games); I have also joined another independent team (msGameDevelopment) in the development of Contamination Europe (originally a pen-and-paper style game, which can be found here). As I have been talking to the teams, my interest in the area of game audio has been increasing and leading to me wanting to be able to do more…but what does that entail?

Audio Editors
Unlike when working with music or film, there isn’t really a standard DAW for the industry – people use what they are confortable with. It can, however, be seen that there is a particular favorite when it comes to an audio editor – Sony Creative Software‘s SoundForge is used by most (especially as an audio editor, at least after a sound has been created/compiled). GoldWave is another audio editor I have seen recommended.

Development Engines
Unreal Technologies‘s Unreal Development Kit (a.k.a. UDK) is one of, if not the, most popular game engines used. This is both due to how powerful it is, and the fact it is available to download and use for free (licenses only needing to be purchased once selling a project commercially). Another notable engine is Unity – both Betrayal’s Wings and Contamination Europe are being developed using this engine, and due to this it will be the engine I first explore for game audio implementation.
Other engines worth mentioning are: Gamebryo, DICE‘s Frostbite, Havok, Unigine, Synapse Gaming‘s SunBurn, Crytek‘s CryENGINE, Bethesda‘s (just released) Creation Kit, Microsoft XNA Game Studio, and YoYo Games‘s drag-and-drop engine GameMaker.

Digital Asset Management Systems
Asset management systems allow developers (and sound designers) to have all elements of a project kept in order and to see the changes being made. Popular choices for this: Perforce, Alienbrain, Apache‘s Subversion (a.k.a. SVN), SmartSVN, Razuna, Temerity, Southpaw Technology’s TACTIC, ShotRunner, and Give Software’s Project Overlord.
According to one source, it is felt that Alienbrain is the most expensive yet not so good when working with games. Razuna has the advantage of being open source and free; it is also seen as in league with others mentioned above, but still not the best. The most popular suggestions seem to be for using SVN with TortoiseSVN or Shotgun, or SmartSVN with Tortoise.

Audio Implementation Middleware
Middleware is often used for implementing interactive audio into video games – the most popular of these are FMOD and Audiokinetic‘s Wwise (tutorials on using Wwise can be found here). Other programs worth noting for this section are Creative Technology‘s OpenAL and RAD Games Tools‘s The Miles Sound System.
According to Wikipedia, OpenAL has a disadvantage whereby it does not account for sound propagation delays, and because of this it cannot be used to calculate sound arrival time differences. [I should note I am well aware that Wikipedia isn't always completely reliable, and on the page mentioned above there isn't a reference given for the statement, but I still felt it was worth mentioning.]
Before completing this article I also came across XACT – this appeared confusing to begin with as I kept seeing articles claiming it as middleware and didn’t seem to be tied to anything. Wikipedia further caused confusion with stating that it is no longer supported by Windows. I ended up going through the tedious line of contacting Microsoft to get answers. Eventually I got a response stating that it is actually a part of the Microsoft XNA Game Studio. According to this source, XACT is an implementation tool that is useful for sound designers who have little-to-no knowledge of coding, or they lack the desire to code. For detailed information on this either follow the links here, or here.

Coding
It has been found that a certain amount of coding can also be required, depending your level of involvement and/or the manner in which audio is being implemented. Languages for this, quite obviously, revolve around the languages used to program the other elements of games – so the likes of C/C++, and Java (information on Java sound can be found here). XML is another coding language found to be used for audio programming – a simple introduction to using XML with games can be found here, and an introduction for audio scripting in XML can be found here. Lastly (at least the last I am mentioning), is Python – this is a language that is free to use (even commercially), and runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux/Unix.
Along with the above-mentioned languages, there are an abundance of text-editing programs to replace Notepad/TextEdit and to increase productivity, etc. While looking around I’ve only seen UltraEdit being mentioned, but a comparison list of the available programs can be found here.
Also, as previously mentioned, there are possible work-arounds for those who don’t know how or want to code – i.e. XACT.

So I’m going to be putting up posts now and again about particular things I’ve been looking at and learning, and anything I happen to think of particular interest, regarding game audio and audio implementation. I would like to state that this is a learning experience for myself, along with it being for people who might be interested in game sound to get some insight. With that being said, if anyone sees any information I have given that is incorrect or would like to advise on anything that may be useful to look into and/or use then do please get in touch (either by leaving comments or sending me an email).