Responding to questions posed before our crits;
Whether you have met your production goals so far?
Our goal was to create simple but satisfying sound design. The MA students said their big inspiration was Flappy Bird. Which is an incredibly simple one button game for mobile devices. It was hard to think of how to approach this initially due to its simplicity, eventually we drew on inspiration from Nintendo sound design. As well as aesthetic influence from Gameboy games, and similar SNES games like Paperboy and Frogger. We tried to blend classic 8 bit music elements with more modern high quality ambience, using a mixture of foley and field recording.
We are happy with how the game sounds, but are aware some minor tweaks may still be needed. One of our loops isn’t between the requirements the spec gave, for example. Perhaps things could be finessed a little more.
What aspects you will address in post-production?
Final check of levels, and that the EQ balance is correct between files. Make sure ‘action’ type sounds have more priority of the low end, so they are more impactful. Making sure each level has a distinct feel. Double checking all elements are in the right place and that the overall tone is correct. make.
What feedback or testing will be useful and if you can use this crit to gain these insights,
If any sounds stick out – feel repetitive. If some of the more foley produced sounds are noticeable as that or go unnoticed. Mostly due to the looming deadline these will be for consideration on future projects.
What has changed through problem solving?
Foley aspects, when creating the engine sounds we had to get quite creative… Making wind sounds from a mixture of foley and noise generators with notch filters and using synthesizers to help build ambient textures.
After showing the video in class Szymon requested a change to the delay on the final level which I will amend before hand in. It was said there could be more ambient sound in the crits, so I will try to boost for the final video. Overall I am happy with the work we have created. It is essentially an 8 bit game and I think an element of our sound design definitely reflects this, with some subtle level design to differentiate. If we had more time these differences could have been expanded on, with a few extra background sounds for each level to fully account for objects… However, it is a balancing act and looking at flappy bird…. we were much closer to overdoing it than under doing it.