If we really are stretching to replicate reality with video games and attempt to infuse interactive sound, then we must give consideration to every aspect of an activity and attempt to model it realistically to convey information about what the gameplay is telling us. When we can effectively model and communicate the realistic sounds of the actions portrayed we can step closer towards blurring the line between the player and the screen.
Cook or Be Cooked - RedFly Studio
-Sizzle steps
What we are starting to see pop up more frequently in audio implementation is the ability to take sounds to a level of subtlety and fidelity that was previously either very difficulty or impossible to achieve due to memory budget or CPU constraints. It's not uncommon for someone in game audio to comment and expound on the "tiny detail" that they enabled with sound to enhance the gameplay in way way that may not be obvious to the player. We are seeing similar scaling across all disciplines whether it is with enhanced particle systems, or ambient occlusion. More than ever we have been given an opportunity to enhance the games being made with sound and interactivity in creative ways.
"One of the really cool things we got to make use of for it was the real time parameter controls that you can use in Wwise. These are things we actually hand scripted into the level for each food item. I tied these in with the cooking times so when a steak sizzles, it actually sounds more realistic than fading in a loop over time. This allowed me to actually change the state of the sound needed over time to give a more realistic representation of the food cooking as it's visual state changed. It's totally subtle, and most people will never notice it, but there's actually a pretty complicated process going on behind that curtain."explains James Barker from Gl33k Audio in Austin, TX.
"I (had) roughly 4 states per cookable object that went from beginning, all the way through burned. There were loops for each of those states that fed into each other. These were also modified with one shots, for example, flipping an object or moving it to the oven. We tried to provide as much variation as we could fit into the game, so almost every sound has a random container accompanied with it."
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