How Sound Gets Into Games

How Does Sound Get Into Games?

In order for players to hear the sounds that we create they need first to be implemented into the game. You can think of the sound as a lightbulb that needs to be plugged into the socket before it glows. The process of implementation is exactly that but instead of a light, we have our sounds that need to be connected to the game so they can play at the right time.

However, implementation is more than just getting sounds to play back, and the ability to edit and process sounds in real time can help us to adapt our sound design to the player’s input.

For example, consider a gunshot sound with a long tail, that plays each time the gun is fired (1. red audio track). If we wanted an automatic firing sound, we could just play these sounds repeatedly, but the long tails of the sounds would interfere with the transients of the ones that follow, creating a muddy and indistinct mix.

Instead, we can separate the transients from the tails and play a continuous loop of just the transients for as long as the player holds down the trigger. Once the player releases the triggers, the loop stops, and one of the tails is selected at random to finish the sound (2. blue audio track). This method can give a much cleaner automatic firing sound, by taking advantage of the implementation tools available to us.

Please follow this link for the example image: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZwxlY2kGcdpM0AiWK_MCQh3o17eSWL0_/view

Check out this video which breaks down the entire process and covers all of the fundamentals: https://youtu.be/kPDXmWxnFKY

I also highly recommend watching this short primer video on adaptive audio: https://youtu.be/p-FLWabby4Y

And finally. here is an amazing overview of the different elements of video game audio: https://splice.com/blog/elements-video-game-audio/

Want to learn more about game audio?
Check out our Learning Roadmap!