It's a great time in game audio these days. After steeping in the current console generation, several examples of best practices in audio implementation have been exposed through articles, exposes, and video examples. In an attempt to overview some of the forward thinking front runnings in the burgeoning field of Technical Sound Design, I've been pulling together examples of inspirational audio in games as a way to highlight innovative techniques and the process behind them.
Spiderman Web of Shadows - Shaba Games
-The Sound of Good vs. Evil
With a powerful prototyping toolset at the Sound Designers disposal, the ability to try out various concepts in realtime without the aid of a fully developed game engine is a thing of beauty.
In the recent Spidey iteration, Shaba Games Lead Sound Designer Bradley Meyer was able to use the player character good/evil affinity, in addition to the dynamic "mood" of each level to determine the sound palette used as well as the sound OF the effects using the Wwise toolset. By tying the transition between Spiderman and Venom to a Switch/State in Wwise, a DSP modification of the sounds triggered could be applied. The change could be easily auditioned with the filp of a switch within the Wwise toolset, allowing for prototyping in parallel and outside the confines of the game engine and gameplay iteration. This ability to mock-up features is a key component in the current generation, where iteration and polish allow for the development of robust audio systems and highly specialized sound design.
"To explain what I (ended up doing) on the implementation side...was drop the pitch of Spider-man's sounds by a couple semitones when he switched to black suit, and also engaged a parametric eq to boost some of the low-mid frequencies. The combination of these two effects made Black suit sound stronger and more powerful, and red suit quicker and more graceful. The effect was rather subtle in part because it happens so often I didn't want to fatigue the player's ears with all this extra low frequency information as black suit, but I think it works if nothing else on a subliminal level."-Brad Meyer
The fact that we are at a place in the art of interactive sound design where we can make subtle sound changes based on gameplay in order to attempt to better immerse the player is a testament to the creativity of audio implementers, and the power of the toolsets.
Also see:
Sound Concepting: Selling the Game, Creating its Auditory Style