by Stacy Jones on Nov 28, 2012
Ever wondered how all those sounds in your favorite games are made? This week Audio Director Charley Lanusse explains where the audio team gets all of those lovely sounds that helps create the atmosphere of WildStar. From subtle growls to snarling creatures, WildStar embodies audio from a number of different sources ranging from a commercial, field recordings and even the personal collections of the sound team. Using the various sounds, the team layers them into the game to create unique and distinctive audio.
Ultimately, we would love to gather it all through field recording, that is, to go out with a recorder and capture sounds in the world around us, for example by visiting an animal trainer to get real growls. Although we do some field recording, it's not possible to do for every single sound, especially given the scope of an MMO. It's safe to say that MMOs are one of the most demanding types of games for sound designers purely because of their size. Instead of recording everything in the field, we source many sounds from our collection of sound libraries and then spend a lot of time layering and tweaking to get the final result. Much of our sound library is commercial but some of the best sounds are brought in by our sound designers from their personal collections.
If you have an ear for sound or a curiosity about the process, check out this weeks WildStar Wednesday to learn more.