Video Game Questions

[M.C.Gray]

A friend of mine is trying to put together a game design and has asked me to do all the sounds for it. Excited as I am about trying a new project, I do have a couple of questions?

1) is the mixing process for music tracks going to be the same in terms of mixing as we would do for a cd?

2) would the mastering process be different due to the fact the content would be played on tiny speakers such as laptops, tablets and ear buds?

I am just clueless on the whole process goes for making music for video games. Pardon my ignorance.


Thank you,
M.C.Gray

 

[Wapiti]

To me audio is audio. You never know what kind of sound system this game will be played on. Make it as best sounding as you can IMO. Master as any other track or sound to listen to. If your game designer friend asks for a smaller file down the road you can get one then. The higher quality you start with the better it'll sound by the time the people playing the game will here it. Imagine if you made it terrible sounding audio to begin with how awful it would sound by the time it was heard on earbuds

 

[M.C.Gray]

To me audio is audio. You never know what kind of sound system this game will be played on. Make it as best sounding as you can IMO. Master as any other track or sound to listen to. If your game designer friend asks for a smaller file down the road you can get one then. The higher quality you start with the better it'll sound by the time the people playing the game will here it. Imagine if you made it terrible sounding audio to begin with how awful it would sound by the time it was heard on earbuds

OK, agreed. That's why I subjected it to smaller speakers like TV's, Comp's, portable Consoles, ear buds, or any other forms. Its not a matter of file size? I do not want to imagine how horrible a sound would be on ear buds? I would like some insight on how to make it better, due to lack of the frequency. You wont hear sub bass or any of the lower end really.

 

[bandcoach]

mix is exactly the same as for any medium

mastering would be done by whoever packages the final version of the game, as they will likely have a better grip on what the target playback environments will be

however, if this is an in-house job, then your mastering would still be done for best quality across greatest number of playback environments.

you will need to know now what file type your audio is going to end up in as that can affect some of your choices :some games use wav, others aiff others still have to use flac or ogg-vorbis or (dare I say it) mp3

good luck