Alpha Dev. & Test Plan

Wednesday 18, 2012

My team Healthinauts where putting the final touches this week for our Alpha and our presentation for Tuesday. We where putting together our parts that we had update and making sure there was no bugs in our Alpha.

For my part I tested my audio in a couple of places to make sure it was running right. After my recording sessions I would bounce the sound effects or mix the music to two track from Pro Tools to a wave file and play them back on iTunes to check levels. If all was well I would test sounds on my Mac at home and then my PC laptop. Why I did this is because the studio Mac would be running on studio monitor so you would hear sounds so clear and loud. When I run it on my Mac at home I would just run it on the though the Mac monitors which is the standard Mac Pro monitors. They give about an average amount level in these speakers that the listener can hear. The PC laptop is the last place I test, because the speakers in the laptop have the softest. If I can not hear the sound or music very well that means I have to go back into the Pro Tools session to fix the audio by mixing it louder without distorting the art that I created. Otherwise I remix everything until it is prefect.

I then brought my audio to the guys on Monday to test and program the audio inside our Alpha, which we are using Flash. Sometimes Pro Tools bounces its audio in a different sample rate or resolution that the game engine does not like and I have to go back to my audio files and convert them to what the engine wants. I did not have to do this, this time. Flash took the audio files and played them and was able to program the audio into the script with no problems this time.

I worked with Geoff one of my team mates on the Captain Heart game and tested this out. Everything went smoothly when programing the audio into our Alpha this week.

  Screen shot of the Script inside Flash



Things I would change is maybe the length in some of my sound effects. It is very had to estimate how long to have a sound effect for each mini game with each different team member wanting something different every time.

We did our team's presentation yesterday, I hope we did well enough with the teachers to get a good grade. Though they gave us a lot to think of areas that we need improving in (graphics, mini games, etc.) of our game.

Well that is it until next time.....

Sounds

Sunday April 15, 2012
Once again I was once again in the studio working on sound. This time I was working on sound effects in the studio. I sent out about over a week again a sound sheet of what everyone needs for each of their mini games. This went more smoothly ask about sounds then music, since my team mates are not musicians or into sound like I am. I got a pretty long list from everyone, plus I added some sound effects of my own that I thought maybe work in our teams game. In total I worked on 42 sound effects, will we use them all probably not.

This session went much faster then my mid-term project. The sounds where a little more doable and if not I used royalty free sound effects. For instance I need a firework sound for when a level or game is complete is show the player they did well. This was not possible to get this sound this time of the year and Illinois bans fireworks, so I would have to cross the border to Indiana and buy and use the fireworks there. This was not going to happen, so I got legally free sound effects of fireworks and layer the sound into a track into Pro Tools and then I mixed until liked what I heard.

This happens a lot in creating sound effects, not getting always what you want out of your sounds. Another instead I had to create a sound effect of breaking bricks. I had Mike (the studio owner) get some bricks from outside and hit them together and grind them together. Well, the sound came out kinda weak so I use the recording I made and layered it with other royalty free sound effects of grinding and hitting of bricks until it sound strong enough to be believable. From there I mix in Pro Tools with some plug-ins and I got my sound.

Mike hitting two bricks together to get the breaking of brick sound in the live room at Vnote Studio



I finished all the sound effect expect two, because they where not sounding right when record. The are a little weak when I record them ,which I will have to find another way to get the sound I'm looking for.
The rest of the sounds where work in studio with Pro Tools and using the program Reason. When I recorded my sound effects I used a AKG 414 microphone. This microphone has a multi-pattern mic. I mainly used the cardioid pattern, except for the crowd and cheering sound. I used for those sound effects was the super cardioid pattern, mainly because it picks up more of the room but not too much.



supercardioid pattern

The session went smooth and was done fairly fast. These where more of my easiest sessions. There is more to come with sound. Until later....

Recording the Music for Captain Heart part 1

Last week Saturday some of the music for our senior project, Captain Heart was recorded, edited, and mixed. The music was recorded at VNote Studio in Des Plaines Illinois.

The music that was recorded was for the Main Menu and two of the mini games for the Captain Heart game, make totally of three songs. Since the Alpha phase of the game is due on this coming Tuesday April 17, 2012 I wanted to make sure that the main menu and a couple of songs where done for this phase.

Each of these songs took about 2 1/2 to 3 hours to record, edit, and mix. What was used to record, edit and mix with was Pro Tools.

Screen shots of my Pro Tools sessions on the Captain Heart project

For each song I created a session on Pro Tools. For each of these songs had multi-layers of instruments, MIDI, and effects to the tracks. I used live musicians for the recordings of the Captain Heart music. I used very little of MIDI effects in the songs to keep the realism of sound. I don't think you always have to do everything in MIDI; nothing beats the real sound of these instruments. The MIDI program that I used to create certain elements to the music was a program named Reason. Reason has the most realistic sounds in its program.

For my live musicians I used my friend from College of DuPage (we were in the music department together) Chris Castillo and the studio owner and musician friend Mike Vujasin. Chris did the majority of the playing of the music, where Mike just filled in some parts of the music on the Rhythm Game and the Platform game only.

My friend Chris Castillo in Live room at VNote Studio on 4/7/2012 at 2:30pm

For the Main Menu song, the team wanted a low key background music sound. We just used guitar and violin as the instruments of choice. The guitar 1 and 2 was mic with an AKG 414 at the guitar amp near speaker with a distance of 3" between. Used the cardioid pattern on this microphone, since this mic can change its pattern and this pattern is best used when you want a direct sound without capturing other areas of the room.

cardioid mic pattern

The guitar part 1 was a repeating part of eight notes of a plucking sound. Guitar part 2 was a swell sound of a single note, but with different notes from time to time throughout the song.

The violin parts (which there are 4 for them) where mic with an 414 microphone as well. The 414 microphone was setup with a Omni mic pattern to capture the violin and room sound to get the warm sound of the violin. The mic was setup near Chris about 2" away from him, since the violin is not a loud instrument. The closer you are the this instrument the more frequencies and clearness you can pick up from this instrument.

Omni mic pattern

For all three songs that where done, I used this mic, mic patterns, and techniques on these instruments.

The violin had two parts playing the same part, but in two different octave ranges. The other two parts where swells and choppy sound on the violin. The effects I put on this track was delay and verb and both instruments, but only on certain tracks. I then edit when I wanted to hear each part to come in or just founded a section of the track and cut, copy, and pasted on how many time I wanted it to play. This was then bounced to a 2 track Wave file.

For the Platformer game was a little more complex than the Main Menu theme. This song was to be low pitch. An mystical song for the background music since the game has an ancient pyramid/temple theme. Violin was the only real instrument in the song; Chris did the violin once again. The violin was the main instrument with three tracks. One was picking the strings sound, track 2 was a violin sustain, and the third part was the lead part. The rest of the sounds in this piece were used by using the program Reason. Mike played these parts on a keyboard. We put the a low male voice as low as it would go to give the mystery eerie sound. Also what was use was a bell sound to create the temple sound. When finish recording and editing my sounds I mix these sounds with verb and a short delay.

The last song that was recorded was the Rhythm Heart game. That was a bigger production. This piece was supposed to be a background song with a clearly defined beat. Possibly something that sounds like a heart beating. When working on this song we put together bass guitar, three guitar parts, drums, MIDI sounds of heart beat, and an synth sound (swelling). The drums where already mic up, before I was there at the studio with Earthworks DK50/R DrumKit System. The bass guitar was patch up through the board inside the control room directly into Pro -Tools, no amp was used. The guitar was mic up as previous in the past to songs. The Synth was going through Reason and patch through the keyboard. I played drums, Mike took over on the keyboard again, and Chris did the bass and the guitar. After the tracks have been recorded, I made a decision to cut the guitar parts out it got a little too much. It had a hard rock sound and didn't feel that it fitted into what the game was shooting for. My team also agree that the guitar parts where too much. Everything else stayed and was mixed.

I also was going to record the voice over talents for the voice parts of the storyline for Billy, Grandpa, and the Doctor, but it was on Easter weekend an people either cancel because of that reason or they had the stomach flu which put this part on hold for another day.

Well that is it until tomorrow....