[Pendente] Grand Theft Auto IV: Audio Q&A
Enviado: sábado mai 31, 2008 1:41 pm
Answered by:
Matthew Smith, Craig Conner and Will Morton, three senior members of the Rockstar North Audio team.
What effect did the shift to more powerful hardware have on in-game audio?
MS: Perhaps the biggest change was the amount of environmental effects we can apply, by using Digital Signal Processing that was too expensive last-gen. For example, every sound in the game has its own filter, so it can appear muffled, and a unique amount and size of reverb - so a car horn coming from a tunnel 100m away sounds very different to a car horn right next to the player, instead of just being quieter as it might have been previously.
It also let us scale up the complexity and amount of sounds that play at any one time, letting us flesh out a world as varied and detailed as GTA IV ? at times we?re playing thousands of individual sounds simultaneously. Stand in the street and you?ll hear three different radio stations at any one time coming from passing vehicles, all sounding appropriately tinny or boomy, depending on the type of vehicle and whether its doors are open, its windows broken, etc.
The ambient sound in GTA IV is one of the key features in making it seem like a believable place. Do you use a generic city sound, or is the background thrum made up of individual sounds from individual, identifiable sources? i.e. if I hear a police siren does that mean there is a police car in the next street, or is it just generic city noises?
MS: Most of the time what you hear is really happening - what?s so great about GTA IV from an audio team?s perspective is that you hardly ever need to fake anything ? the world?s so rich and so busy, that if you make individual things sound right, the whole ambience pretty much just appears by itself. But we do also have a system of ambient sources to make the more distant city feel alive - what makes the two fit together so well is that they use exactly the same sounds, with exactly the same environmental effects, so it?s very hard to tell which is which. The ambient effects change dramatically based on your location in the city, the time of day, and so on ? so it?s very dynamic, and obviously not just a pre-canned loop of ?city ambience?. It was our aim that you could place the player in a random position on the map, shut your eyes and listen, and be able to tell where you are, and what time of day it is, and I think we?ve achieved that pretty well.
Do you know how many individual sound effect files are in GTA IV?
MS: We have around four-and-a-half thousand individual sfx in the game, which are combined into around 19 thousand different combinations. That?s ignoring the insane amount of dialogue, cutscenes and radio content. Rain sounds alone take up around a third of the entire audio budget for San Andreas!
I remember hearing distant gunfire and the noises subtly changing as I got closer to the battle. How do you create the effect of distance on each sound?
MS: Gunfire is a good example of how complex videogame audio has become; a single gunshot typically consists of around 10 individual components, whose volume and placement we control independently with distance, to create a bright, wide, punchy sound up-close, and a more reverberant, muffled sound at a distance. For multiplayer, we balance this so that guns only really sound dangerously beefy when they?re at a distance you can be hit from, so it?s intuitive what?s threatening and what?s someone else?s private war.
How does the team work with the written script? Do changes and edits happen throughout the development process?
WM: Changes can happen all the time, particularly with the pedestrian dialogue. In the case of the peds, each character is given a back-story, his or her behaviors are sorted out, and then using this information a script is written. This can be anything from 20 lines of dialogue (for peds who are used only in very specific situations) up to 300 lines. An average ped will have about 200 lines of dialogue. While the script is being written, actors are cast and studio time is booked.
As we are dealing with hundreds of voices at a time when it comes to the peds, the recordings are done in three or four large sessions, rather than a couple here and a couple there. It?s quite amazing to witness it from start to finish ? we?ll have three studios booked for a week and will usually record about 100 peds in that time. Most peds take about an hour to record, so at any one time there are three new actors arriving at the studio and three others leaving. Franceska, the producer of the VO sessions in NY, will be running between the three studios making sure everything runs smoothly, ferrying the talent in (and out) on time, and waving her magic wand at anything else that needs attention. Each studio will have a director from Rockstar Games to take care of getting the right character and performance from the actors, plus Craig and I from the audio team at Rockstar North are on hand to ensure that everything recorded is exactly what is required for the game. As manic as it is, everything runs like clockwork and not a second is wasted.
Most changes will be made to the script during recording. Lines may change for many reasons, because they are too long or they are too funny for a serious situation, but sometimes lines change simply because an actor performs them differently. We always get multiple takes of lines, and the directors work hard to give us more choice when it comes to putting the best takes in the game.
Once the peds are recorded, the best takes of each line are selected and the lines edited, mastered, and implemented into the game. As there are so many peds in the game, we have to start recording them months before the game is complete. Sometimes new features will be put into the game which will mean that peds who have already been recorded need more speech to deal with them. The peds continue to grow and evolve until the game is finished.
How many speaking parts are there in the game? How much dialogue?
WM: It?s difficult to quantify how many speaking parts there are, but at our last count there were over 740 unique voices in the game. There are over 80,000 individual lines of dialogue, more than 7000 of which are Niko?s lines. If you were to listen to each line back to back, it would take over 29 hours. Also, these figures don?t take the radio, TV, and mo-capped cut-scene dialogue into consideration.
What?s different about the pedestrians in GTA 4 compared to previous games?
WM: The pedestrian AI is much more complex in GTA4 than it has been in previous games, and we have to create dialogue to cope with this - peds now do a lot more than they could do previously, and can react in more ways to what happens in the game.
We also decided to make the pedestrian dialogue more realistic in GTA4. As an example, peds in previous games would walk around and randomly chat to themselves if they weren?t doing much else. In real life, people (generally!) don?t go around talking to themselves, so we dropped this behavior from GTA4. However, we realized that the random chat of old GTA games was a good way for the player to pick-up on what sort of personality a ped has, so we created the cell-phone conversations in GTA4 as one realistic way of portraying personality.
The GTA series has a reputation for having incredible soundtracks that really set the mood for the whole game. How do you decide what tracks to put in?
CC: Sam Houser had a clear vision for the music on GTA IV. It was very important to present a soundtrack that displayed a contemporary, fresh sound that reflects Liberty City, its residents, cultures, fashions and locations. It was decided early on that contemporary Hip Hop, Dance Rock and Russian music should take up a lot of the airwaves.
Ivan Pavlovich and Andi Hanley (The Soundtrack supervisors) are two guys who know the NY music scene inside and out. They sourced the music for IV by searching for some of the hottest new sounds around - and found them. Together with Sam and I, we listened to tons of different styles of music until we found a vibe that would work for each station. It was a very long process, but at the same time very exciting and simple, a track either works in the game or it doesn't, it either fits the vibe of its station, or it doesn't. When we have a few good tracks that fit together, it creates a strong vibe and we build a station from that.
As well as an abundance of new and exclusive tracks, a lot of care went in to finding classic sounds of NYC. We've touched on classic music from the likes of CBGB's, Studio 54, Hip Hop, jazz and afro beat just to name a few...
What?s new about the radio stations and how they are assembled?
CC: The DJS have far more AI than previous titles. They know what time of day it is, what the weather is like and what?s going on in LC. They've even done their research on their playlists, some of their own tracks appears on them. In fact all the DJS are either famous singers or musicians (or both.) They have plenty to say about their chosen genre of music as they've lived it, loved it, or are living it.
Weasel News brings news to a whole new level. The broadcasts offer plenty of info on LC with up to date interactive bulletins of what is happening throughout the story.
The majority of the stations play dynamically, kind of like a massive Jukebox selecting tracks randomly, it works similar to SA radio, but with a larger number of tracks, DJ speech, commercials, idents, weather and news reports. In addition to the dynamic stations, Ivan tracked down some of the hottest DJ acts in NY to create exclusive mixes for certain stations.
As some tracks are pretty obscure and were very hard to find, the player doesn't have to do any leg work surfing for these tracks, simply tag the songs you like in your mobile phone using ZiT (GTA IV?s brand new feature ) preview the song via Amazon and buy it if you wish. It?s that easy.
Do any artists approach you hoping to be included?
CC: Yes, lots of artists (signed and unsigned) approach Rockstar Games for inclusion in the soundtracks. All material is listened to and taken on board if it fits the vibe of the current game.
What is your favorite radio station in the game?
CC: It has to be Vladivostok. This station has some of the most bizarre and fantastic Russian tracks I've ever heard. It really sets the mood for Niko and Roman and the first section of the game.
Apr 18, 2008
Fonte: gamesradar.com
Matthew Smith, Craig Conner and Will Morton, three senior members of the Rockstar North Audio team.
What effect did the shift to more powerful hardware have on in-game audio?
MS: Perhaps the biggest change was the amount of environmental effects we can apply, by using Digital Signal Processing that was too expensive last-gen. For example, every sound in the game has its own filter, so it can appear muffled, and a unique amount and size of reverb - so a car horn coming from a tunnel 100m away sounds very different to a car horn right next to the player, instead of just being quieter as it might have been previously.
It also let us scale up the complexity and amount of sounds that play at any one time, letting us flesh out a world as varied and detailed as GTA IV ? at times we?re playing thousands of individual sounds simultaneously. Stand in the street and you?ll hear three different radio stations at any one time coming from passing vehicles, all sounding appropriately tinny or boomy, depending on the type of vehicle and whether its doors are open, its windows broken, etc.
The ambient sound in GTA IV is one of the key features in making it seem like a believable place. Do you use a generic city sound, or is the background thrum made up of individual sounds from individual, identifiable sources? i.e. if I hear a police siren does that mean there is a police car in the next street, or is it just generic city noises?
MS: Most of the time what you hear is really happening - what?s so great about GTA IV from an audio team?s perspective is that you hardly ever need to fake anything ? the world?s so rich and so busy, that if you make individual things sound right, the whole ambience pretty much just appears by itself. But we do also have a system of ambient sources to make the more distant city feel alive - what makes the two fit together so well is that they use exactly the same sounds, with exactly the same environmental effects, so it?s very hard to tell which is which. The ambient effects change dramatically based on your location in the city, the time of day, and so on ? so it?s very dynamic, and obviously not just a pre-canned loop of ?city ambience?. It was our aim that you could place the player in a random position on the map, shut your eyes and listen, and be able to tell where you are, and what time of day it is, and I think we?ve achieved that pretty well.
Do you know how many individual sound effect files are in GTA IV?
MS: We have around four-and-a-half thousand individual sfx in the game, which are combined into around 19 thousand different combinations. That?s ignoring the insane amount of dialogue, cutscenes and radio content. Rain sounds alone take up around a third of the entire audio budget for San Andreas!
I remember hearing distant gunfire and the noises subtly changing as I got closer to the battle. How do you create the effect of distance on each sound?
MS: Gunfire is a good example of how complex videogame audio has become; a single gunshot typically consists of around 10 individual components, whose volume and placement we control independently with distance, to create a bright, wide, punchy sound up-close, and a more reverberant, muffled sound at a distance. For multiplayer, we balance this so that guns only really sound dangerously beefy when they?re at a distance you can be hit from, so it?s intuitive what?s threatening and what?s someone else?s private war.
How does the team work with the written script? Do changes and edits happen throughout the development process?
WM: Changes can happen all the time, particularly with the pedestrian dialogue. In the case of the peds, each character is given a back-story, his or her behaviors are sorted out, and then using this information a script is written. This can be anything from 20 lines of dialogue (for peds who are used only in very specific situations) up to 300 lines. An average ped will have about 200 lines of dialogue. While the script is being written, actors are cast and studio time is booked.
As we are dealing with hundreds of voices at a time when it comes to the peds, the recordings are done in three or four large sessions, rather than a couple here and a couple there. It?s quite amazing to witness it from start to finish ? we?ll have three studios booked for a week and will usually record about 100 peds in that time. Most peds take about an hour to record, so at any one time there are three new actors arriving at the studio and three others leaving. Franceska, the producer of the VO sessions in NY, will be running between the three studios making sure everything runs smoothly, ferrying the talent in (and out) on time, and waving her magic wand at anything else that needs attention. Each studio will have a director from Rockstar Games to take care of getting the right character and performance from the actors, plus Craig and I from the audio team at Rockstar North are on hand to ensure that everything recorded is exactly what is required for the game. As manic as it is, everything runs like clockwork and not a second is wasted.
Most changes will be made to the script during recording. Lines may change for many reasons, because they are too long or they are too funny for a serious situation, but sometimes lines change simply because an actor performs them differently. We always get multiple takes of lines, and the directors work hard to give us more choice when it comes to putting the best takes in the game.
Once the peds are recorded, the best takes of each line are selected and the lines edited, mastered, and implemented into the game. As there are so many peds in the game, we have to start recording them months before the game is complete. Sometimes new features will be put into the game which will mean that peds who have already been recorded need more speech to deal with them. The peds continue to grow and evolve until the game is finished.
How many speaking parts are there in the game? How much dialogue?
WM: It?s difficult to quantify how many speaking parts there are, but at our last count there were over 740 unique voices in the game. There are over 80,000 individual lines of dialogue, more than 7000 of which are Niko?s lines. If you were to listen to each line back to back, it would take over 29 hours. Also, these figures don?t take the radio, TV, and mo-capped cut-scene dialogue into consideration.
What?s different about the pedestrians in GTA 4 compared to previous games?
WM: The pedestrian AI is much more complex in GTA4 than it has been in previous games, and we have to create dialogue to cope with this - peds now do a lot more than they could do previously, and can react in more ways to what happens in the game.
We also decided to make the pedestrian dialogue more realistic in GTA4. As an example, peds in previous games would walk around and randomly chat to themselves if they weren?t doing much else. In real life, people (generally!) don?t go around talking to themselves, so we dropped this behavior from GTA4. However, we realized that the random chat of old GTA games was a good way for the player to pick-up on what sort of personality a ped has, so we created the cell-phone conversations in GTA4 as one realistic way of portraying personality.
The GTA series has a reputation for having incredible soundtracks that really set the mood for the whole game. How do you decide what tracks to put in?
CC: Sam Houser had a clear vision for the music on GTA IV. It was very important to present a soundtrack that displayed a contemporary, fresh sound that reflects Liberty City, its residents, cultures, fashions and locations. It was decided early on that contemporary Hip Hop, Dance Rock and Russian music should take up a lot of the airwaves.
Ivan Pavlovich and Andi Hanley (The Soundtrack supervisors) are two guys who know the NY music scene inside and out. They sourced the music for IV by searching for some of the hottest new sounds around - and found them. Together with Sam and I, we listened to tons of different styles of music until we found a vibe that would work for each station. It was a very long process, but at the same time very exciting and simple, a track either works in the game or it doesn't, it either fits the vibe of its station, or it doesn't. When we have a few good tracks that fit together, it creates a strong vibe and we build a station from that.
As well as an abundance of new and exclusive tracks, a lot of care went in to finding classic sounds of NYC. We've touched on classic music from the likes of CBGB's, Studio 54, Hip Hop, jazz and afro beat just to name a few...
What?s new about the radio stations and how they are assembled?
CC: The DJS have far more AI than previous titles. They know what time of day it is, what the weather is like and what?s going on in LC. They've even done their research on their playlists, some of their own tracks appears on them. In fact all the DJS are either famous singers or musicians (or both.) They have plenty to say about their chosen genre of music as they've lived it, loved it, or are living it.
Weasel News brings news to a whole new level. The broadcasts offer plenty of info on LC with up to date interactive bulletins of what is happening throughout the story.
The majority of the stations play dynamically, kind of like a massive Jukebox selecting tracks randomly, it works similar to SA radio, but with a larger number of tracks, DJ speech, commercials, idents, weather and news reports. In addition to the dynamic stations, Ivan tracked down some of the hottest DJ acts in NY to create exclusive mixes for certain stations.
As some tracks are pretty obscure and were very hard to find, the player doesn't have to do any leg work surfing for these tracks, simply tag the songs you like in your mobile phone using ZiT (GTA IV?s brand new feature ) preview the song via Amazon and buy it if you wish. It?s that easy.
Do any artists approach you hoping to be included?
CC: Yes, lots of artists (signed and unsigned) approach Rockstar Games for inclusion in the soundtracks. All material is listened to and taken on board if it fits the vibe of the current game.
What is your favorite radio station in the game?
CC: It has to be Vladivostok. This station has some of the most bizarre and fantastic Russian tracks I've ever heard. It really sets the mood for Niko and Roman and the first section of the game.
Apr 18, 2008
Fonte: gamesradar.com