Phil O'Keefe Posted November 10, 2005 Share Posted November 10, 2005 Bump... because I can. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members GuineaMcPig Posted November 14, 2005 Members Share Posted November 14, 2005 I'm so glad I stumbled into this topic...this is my first visit to this section of the forum. I'm an English Major, jazz studies minor about to graduate this May. I'm looking at possibly going to audio engineering school, not solely for the purpose of working on video game sound, but that's definitely a direction I would like to go. I guess I have some general questions, like: how does one get his/her foot in the door in this industry? What can one expect in audio engineering school and upon graduation? Is this something that a person can make a living doing, and what is the outlook for the next 10 years or so? Fierce competition for jobs? Rampant cronyism? I know next to nothing about this industry but it seems like the possibilities are really starting to bloom. I think we're at a really exciting time now with videogames, just like the early 1900s were an exciting time for film. Atari and Nintendo may have been the equivalent of nickelodeons, but there have been some titles that I've played recently that I thought were incredibly artistic and immersive. I don't think a whole lot of depth was possible when you were working in an 8 bit medium, but now that platforms have become this powerful, the worlds being created are starting to be populated with the kind of details that you'd expect in a good novel. Finally, this is kind of a n00b question, but I'm curious about it nonetheless: are the possibilities for sound shaping in convolution reverb likely to be tapped in the next generation of consoles? What I mean is, lets say a character in a game is walking through a prison, or a cathedral, or some other reverberant space: would it be possible to take a series of impulse responses from a real acoustical space and use them in the game to affect the reverb applied to the character's voice, or footsteps, etc.? This might be ridiculous and way too processor intensive for a console (I don't know much about convolution effects other than the basic principle), but it seems like the next level of immersiveness when it comes to sound design. Looking forward to reading the rest of this thread! ~Jordan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Chris Groegler Posted November 15, 2005 Author Members Share Posted November 15, 2005 Hi Jordan,I can tell you that audio engineers are in high demand right now for a few reaasons. Not too many engineers have a background in sound AND programming, and with the new consoles coming out we are needing more and more features in the games just on the audio side. It seems that the industry is requiring more specific talents and disciplines, so back in the day one guy would be the AI, physics, and audio engineer where now we have a few engineers just for audio.I think, specifically audio engineers, will be in high demand for a long time and you can make a really good living by doing that. The cool thing about these new consoles coming out is that we are just learning about what each platform can do and handle. If you look at one of the first Xbox games that came out and then look at one that just came out recently, you will see that there is a huge noticable difference with the graphics and audio. Just think about 2 - 3 years from now how the games will look, sound, and play. Really exciting times for sure.ChrisP.S. Thanks Phil for the bump! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members gsHarmony Posted November 15, 2005 Members Share Posted November 15, 2005 Finally, this is kind of a n00b question, but I'm curious about it nonetheless: are the possibilities for sound shaping in convolution reverb likely to be tapped in the next generation of consoles? What I mean is, lets say a character in a game is walking through a prison, or a cathedral, or some other reverberant space: would it be possible to take a series of impulse responses from a real acoustical space and use them in the game to affect the reverb applied to the character's voice, or footsteps, etc.? This might be ridiculous and way too processor intensive for a console (I don't know much about convolution effects other than the basic principle), but it seems like the next level of immersiveness when it comes to sound design. I think convolution reverbs will definitely be possible on next generation platforms from a processing power perspective. However, I would think the main limitation would be memory. I still think it was a mistake to not include a hard drive and support virtual memory. Even if there is enough memory to handle this, I doubt it will happen because the processing power required to do this is likely to be used instead to further improve graphics, pathfinding, AI, etc. However, the multiprocessor environment of both the xbox360 and the playstation 3 is very appropriate for this feature, especially considering that nobody really knows how to utilize the extra PowerPCs in the xbox or the synergistic processing elements in the Cell. I just saw two talks on the Cell processor at a conference last week which discussed the tremendous processing power of this architecture. However, this performance is very theoretical because it assumes the main processor and all co-processors can be fully utilized. In practice, it is very difficult to write a program with enough concurrency (and a small enough amount of communication between processes) to take advantage of these extra processing elements. Doing a convolution reverb on one these extra processors would be a great idea, but the benefits may be limited by the amount of required communication with the main game engine running on the main processor. Hopefully, somebody will be able to achieve this, because I would personally like to see more improvements in game audio, instead of throwing all of the available processing at better graphics. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members GuineaMcPig Posted November 16, 2005 Members Share Posted November 16, 2005 Chris- I sent you a PM. Thanks for all the helpful information so far! ~Jordan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members valkyriesound Posted May 8, 2006 Members Share Posted May 8, 2006 Chirs (or anyone else) are you going to be at E3? Let me know where you will be... I'd love to meet you. Anyone else going to E3? Valky Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members DJDM Posted May 8, 2006 Members Share Posted May 8, 2006 Hey Valky!I'm not but if Chris is you two really should hang out. He's a great guy! Have fun down there! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Killadey Posted May 9, 2006 Members Share Posted May 9, 2006 This question is aimed at anyone really..You were talking earlier about transitions between certain music governed by game interactions, and i was thinking, is there a way so that the music can be set up so the transitions are seemless (in a musical scense) so that when the music changes its not a case of switching from one audio track to another, the music is i suppose edited on the fly?I guess you could compare it to a live 'pit' band playing along to something that isnt on a fixed time scale,Is this possible?, is it already implamented?Could you explain the process of how you would do that,or what are your views on that?I hope that acctually made scense, it was kinda difficult to wright Adey Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members olejason Posted May 9, 2006 Members Share Posted May 9, 2006 Chris, what kind of programming background is usually looked for in a sound engineer? Although I'm a long way from being a sound engineer I've recorded digital music for around 9 years and dabbled with various programming languages. I'm also about to graduate with a degree in music merchandising, which leads me to my next question. Do you think having a degree in a related field helps get your resume looked at?Cool thread Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Chris Groegler Posted May 11, 2006 Author Members Share Posted May 11, 2006 Hey guys! Valky, sorry I haven't responded sooner. We've spent the last few weeks doing field recordings so I haven't been in the office. Been having a lot of fun outside enjoying the sounds of nature and recording them. Been doing a lot of impulse response stuff as well. Cool stuff. No, I'm not at E3 this year. We (Red Storm) aren't showing anything this year so there weren't too many people from our office going. Killadey, there are some pretty extensive music systems being implemented in today's games and is something that takes time and a lot of thought. There are many ways to get the effect you are talking about. You can score a bunch of tiny pieces that will cut to the next feel, create a crossfade over a measure (or more) that'll get you into the next section, or create the score with certain hits in them that will transition to the next section. It all depends on what you are thrying to accomplish. A simple system might work for one genre and not another. One thing is for sure, many games are implementing some really cool systems for playing back their music. Chris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Chris Groegler Posted May 12, 2006 Author Members Share Posted May 12, 2006 DJDM you rock. Thanks for the kind words, but if anyone should meets another forum member they should meet you!! Ok, they could meet both of us. olejason, I have some more info for you but it'll have to wait until Monday. Ive asked my audio engineer about schooling and he said a four year computer science degree from any university is essentail. I have other info about that, but I'm currently not in the office (still in the field) and won't be until Monday. Chris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Chris Groegler Posted May 16, 2006 Author Members Share Posted May 16, 2006 Ok olejason, I asked my audio programmer about an education background and this is what he said: While the two most important courses in the Computer Science curriculum are Data Structures and Algorithm Analysis, you'd want to take some electives that will be helpful to a game programming career: Operating Systems (absolutely essential) Introductory Computer Graphics Intro to Computer Engineering (digital logic etc) Theory of Programming Languages Compilers (helpful for console programming) Nearly all game programming is done in C++ these days. Some mobile games use Java. But a decent grasp of object oriented programming is essential. He also said there is a book that has some good material in it, although it might be a few years outdated. The book is Game Audio Programming by James Boer. I hope this helps answer your question. Chris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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