generative vs. pre-recorded?   We didn’t want to have just a music track playing in the background, we wanted to have the audio react to the players behaviour. The music you hear in the game should be a result of the pathes you choose – a dynamic soundscape.The question was: Should every bit of the audio experience be synthesized from data gemerated during the play? (That would mean reading out variables from the game’s scripts and using them as audio parameters.) To what degree should the audio then respond to the respective aspects of the game?

music vs ambient?   What should prevail in the overall audio experience? Should CLARK be more like an atmospheric dungeon (since it’s a 3D factory you’re walking through) or do we want to emphasize the puzzle-aspect of the game by playing some rather subtle/happy tunes the whole time?

You can read more about the process of figuring out what our game should sound like >> here, if you’re interested. There’s also some examples you can listen to, and – as always – youre are invited to discuss our decisions and leave comments. Let me know what you think of my approach, doesn’t matter wether you’re a trained expert or just someone with an opinion, my ears are wide open!

Cheers, Philipp

read more about the sounddesign for CLARK here

I hereby declare my debut to this blog and also th the game-audio-world. I’m Philipp, the latest entry to the Golden Tricycle Team and i’m here to complete the audoivisual experience of CLARK the game.

Düdelüdeldidü!™

In this blog i’ll post about the overall layout of how the games audio works, as well as the details. We here at the Golden Tricycle think that the process of designing a game becomes more interesting for the audience as well as for ourselves if we open it up the most we can. We would like to share our experiences with an interested public, to discuss different aproaches and really get in touch with other peoples thoughts. So feel heavily invited to leave comments and share your thoughts, whatever they are!

A machine that whistles

When i arrived at the Golden Tricycle, the first thing i said to my fellow co-designers is that i find it dead and uninteresting to have the game just play some two or three tracks in the background. I wanted to create an experience where the sound of the world you are wandering in is constantly shifting between music and the ambient-sounds of a factory (since CLARK takes place in a factory site). The machines you hear become the music of the game. I want this to happen smoothly while you explore the levels and to adapt to the players motion. I want to have an interactive game driving audio environment that’s more than just a soundtrack, a world that has an immersive and appealing sound, that shifts to music and backwards and thus rounds off the in-world experience.

Soon i will blog about the technical side of things here, how i set out to do all the stuff i just talked about…

That’s all for now, folks!

Philipp