Sound Design
From Project Shrink
About the sounds
SHRINK will make use of a combination of recorded and synthesized noises for the sound
effects featured in the game.
Contents |
Ambient Noise
The ambient noise or music of the game will be similar to a horror film where the soundtrack has a suspenseful, uneasy feeling to it. The instruments of the ambient noise will consist mostly of stringlike instruments that have long attacks, sustains, and decays. Drums and other instruments will also be used to give more depth to the music.
List of sound effects
General noises
- Jump:Sound that plays when the player jumps.
- Land:Sound that plays when the player lands from a jump.
- Switch Target Noise:The noise made when the player switches the enemy they are targeting to shrink/grow.
- Shrinking/Growing Sound:The sound that plays when the player shrinks or grows. Will vary based on if the character is growing or shrinking.
Weapon noises
- Stabbing hit:This noise will be used when a character is stabbed with one of the many stabbing objects.
- Blunt Object hit:This is the noise of a character being hit with a blunt object.
- Gunshots:The noise made when an enemy/player shoots with a gun. There may need to be more than one variation if there is variety of guns.
- Flamethrower noise:The noise made when a flamethrower is spewing fire.
- Explosions: The sound of something exploding. Depending on what explodes, there may need to be multiple variations of explosions.
- Magnet Noise:A noise that is made when using a magnet. This will sound like an electronic or buzzing noise.
Item noises
- Pickup Item Noise:The noise made when the player picks up an item. Will sound like the player is putting something in his pocket.
- Drop Item Noise:The noise made when dropping an item. Similar to the Pickup Item noise.
- Switch Item Noise:This sound plays when the player switches their active Item. Like the other item related noises, this sounds like the character is moving stuff around in his pockets.
- Item Use Fail Noise:The noise made when the player tries to use an item that they cannot use. It will sound "negative" to let the player know that what they are trying to do cannot be done.
Voices
- Nazi voice:The nazis in the game may say spoken lines of dialogue as they react to events in a level. For example, if the character is spotted by a guard, the guard might yell for backup to alert the other guards.
- Animal sounds:Various noises such as a cat meowing, or a dog barking.
Menu noises
- Cursor noise: This sound is made when moving the cursor about the menu to select different choices. It is a simple beeping noise.
- Confirm/Back Noises: The sounds made when confirming a choice in a menu or going back to a previous choice in a menu. Also simple beeping sounds. The confirm noise sounds more "positive" while the back noise sounds more "negative"
Recording process
To create the wide variety of sounds, multiple recording techniques will be used. Some sounds, such as the gunshots flamethrower, and item noises can be synthesized by manipulating white noise with filters or modifying simple waveforms such as squarewaves and sinewaves. Other noises such as voices and animal noises will require recording. The voice work found in the game will exclusively feature the talents of the dev team.
Coding
To make sound work in SHRINK there is a sound manager that handles playback of all sound effects and music. In addition to playing sound, it plays sound differently based on whether it is a sound effect or music. Sound effects will be loaded in as SoundEffect objects and played back using the SoundEffect funtions. Music will be done with XACT instead of the SoundEffect class. By separating the sound effects from the music, this enables the sound manager to set the volume levels for the music and sound effects separately.
