Dolyak Express Feb 21, 2014

Dolyak Express Feb 21, 2014

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Mark Katzbach

Mark Katzbach

Content Marketing Manager

Next

Greetings,

We are excited to bring you the Dolyak Express Community initiative! If you’re not familiar with the Dolyak Express, you can read the original post about it called Many Questions, So Dev. For the first batch of questions, the Community Team searched all four language forums for a variety of great questions. You can see the follow up with answers here!

We are maintaining an archive of all Dolyak Express Q&A sessions. The archive is a stickied post, and will be updated each time we post new topics.

In the future, we may pick questions again from our forums, but for most Dolyak Express Q&As, we’ll open them up to specific topics. We’re now opening up a thread for questions and here’s your topic: Audio Production

Please refer back to the Many Questions, So Dev post for guidelines on asking your questions.

Dolyak Express Feb 21, 2014

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Inculpatus cedo.9234

Inculpatus cedo.9234

Has there been any progress on finding and alleviating the odd sound ‘bug’ (the loud, crashing or book-dropping-in-an-empty-room sound), yet? It keeps many of us from being able to use headphones, to our dismay. It is also quite startling, when it happens. Sadly, it does not respond to any audio-volume adjustments, either in-game or out. Thanks for your consideration. =)

Dolyak Express Feb 21, 2014

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Lilith Ajit.6173

Lilith Ajit.6173

Is there any chance you would start offering the soundtrack for sale on amazon or iTunes as a digital download? I love the music, and could listen to it all day, but can’t seem to get the soundtrack anywhere!

[ARES]
And all who stood by and did nothing, who are they to criticize the sacrifices of others?
Our blood has bought their lives.

Dolyak Express Feb 21, 2014

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Ravious.4269

Ravious.4269

How do you go about deciding how many variations of a sound to have a for an event or action? Is there any tech in the Guild Wars 2 engine to vary a sound?

Kill Ten Rats – an MMO blog

Dolyak Express Feb 21, 2014

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: mercury ranique.2170

mercury ranique.2170

I have heard a lot allready bout the influence of voice acting during the living story. I personally think the actors are doing a great job. What I don’t hear a lot bout is ambient sounds, sound effects and music.

1: I have noticed some pretty special and cool sound effects during the living story. How does this work?? for example the sound off a twisted nightmare. Are the sound effects found after the creature and animations are done?? or is it actually a part of the devellopment proces??

2: Currently, for the background music you used the existing background music (Or I’m incredible mistaken). Is it ever considered to make some specific music for the living story content?? Or are there plans to do so in the future??

3: I’m a big fan of Fear not this night. Are there any plans to give this more screentime in the future?

Arise, ye farmers of all nations
Arise, opressed of Tyria!

Dolyak Express Feb 21, 2014

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: LiveSpartan.8206

LiveSpartan.8206

Is there any chance you would start offering the soundtrack for sale on amazon or iTunes as a digital download? I love the music, and could listen to it all day, but can’t seem to get the soundtrack anywhere!

Gonna have to ask Jeremy Soule that since hes got exclusive rights to sell it and any songs he composes are usually made only available on Directsong which he owns its been this way since GW1.

Dolyak Express Feb 21, 2014

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: DJSushi.5406

DJSushi.5406

Currently the ambient music is GW2 starts and continues to completion regardless of map change. Since various areas have particular sets/styles of music (Krytan, Shiverpeak, Ascalonian etc.) this can lead to a song playing across multiple areas it may not represent thematically, or even a prolonged silence.

I’ve always found the music in the Guild Wars world to be an important locational queue – something that really gives of sense of where your character is physically. This is very important in an otherwise virtual space, especially when travel is unrestricted and instantaneous.

Would you consider changing the way in which music is triggered throughout the game, especially in relation to map/locational changes? Or is this an intentional design to keep the music as free-flowing and varied across the game-world as possible?

(edited by DJSushi.5406)

Dolyak Express Feb 21, 2014

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Curae.1837

Curae.1837

Are there any plans to release a book with sheet music some day? (I can understand if you can’t bring out the music that was produced by Jeremy Soule, but if I recall correctly some/most(?) music from the living world was produced in-house)

As a guitar and violin player I would love this

“When we remember that we are all mad.
The mysteries dissapear and life stands explained.”

Dolyak Express Feb 21, 2014

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: timmyf.1490

timmyf.1490

I loved some of the videos from way-back when that showed how you recorded certain sounds. The swinging fireball comes to mind. Any chance you’ll do more of those in the future or give us a tour of a VO session?

Karaoke – Guild Leader – [MEGA] Super Mega Happy Fun Time
www.getunicorned.com / northernshiverpeaks.org

Dolyak Express Feb 21, 2014

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: wookiee.4631

wookiee.4631

1. I heard that there are plans to add new songs and make current tracks better match their locations, is this true?

2. Will there be a greater mix of songs in the future in general? Like say more battle anthem (ones that are preferably more epic than the current ones).

3. If new regions/zones are added, will they get their own unique songs or would current ones be used?

Guild: Northern Wolf Clan [WOLF]

Dolyak Express Feb 21, 2014

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Darmikau.9413

Darmikau.9413

Have you ever considered expanding the dialogue for player characters, or adding different-voice options to be purchased for further customization (giving your character a totally new voice, both for yourself and for other players to hear)?

Who currently composes the music for GW2? I’ve heard Soule departed a while ago, leaving only his prior GW1 + 2 music available from him, and the rest from new producers.

(edited by Darmikau.9413)

Dolyak Express Feb 21, 2014

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Exosferatu.2961

Exosferatu.2961

Ever thought of hiring “Two Steps From Hell” for music? Their music has great sense of epic adventure and battle. The most viewed Two Steps From Hell video on YouTube that I know is “Protectors of the Earth,” and it has the White Mantle artwork. =)

Dolyak Express Feb 21, 2014

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: katubug.6378

katubug.6378

Is there a chance you guys would ever consider adding an alternate voice option for player characters? I find it jarring that my characters of the same race and gender sound identical. I also find it incredibly immersion breaking every time my norn female says anything, because I don’t picture her sounding anything like the female norn voice.

Second question: Where do you look to hire voice actors? Would you ever consider an open casting call? I do a pretty mean Asura voice…;)

Dolyak Express Feb 21, 2014

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: darkfiremew.5937

darkfiremew.5937

Could you please find a way to get the characters from the Ghosts of Ascalon book, that are still alive, in a Living story release?
Could we have another music contest but this time the players make a music piece that could be implemented later in the game in another Living Story update?

(edited by darkfiremew.5937)

Dolyak Express Feb 21, 2014

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: CureForLiving.5360

CureForLiving.5360

Is there a chance you guys would ever consider adding an alternate voice option for player characters?

On another note, how much unique audio do our characters have? In terms of hours I mean. In essence I’m asking to get a general feel of how much time and effort would have to go into adding an entire new voice to a character.

Dolyak Express Feb 21, 2014

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Serophous.9085

Serophous.9085

Will you be allowing a sound board any time soon? Ive been looking everywhere for sounds to do gw2 story vids, or to use on my phone for alerts and such, but to no avail.

Dolyak Express Feb 21, 2014

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Griviues.5980

Griviues.5980

Why firearms in the game have such a complex and variable sound effect for the shell hitting the ground, if most (if not all) firearms in the game are muskets, flintlocks and revolvers that should not eject shells. Also, if they would in Tyria’s version of things, why not have a graphical representation of the said shell?

Dolyak Express Feb 21, 2014

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Lasur Arkinshade.4107

Lasur Arkinshade.4107

How much post-processing goes into the charr voices? It’s clear that many of them are pitch-shifted and have some snarl sound effects layered in – how much work and how many effects go into this process?

Dolyak Express Feb 21, 2014

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Konig Des Todes.2086

Konig Des Todes.2086

  1. What would you say is the most complicated sound effect/track in the game, and why?
  2. Is there any plans to add more soundtracks to the generic music playlists (e.g., ambient, night, fight, boss, etc.). Although there’s the custom soundtrack ability, having evolving soundtracks in the open world would be a great improvement, rather than having new soundtracks just to new areas or activities (e.g., Labyrinthine Cliffs).
  3. Speaking of the custom soundtrack mechanic, is there any possibility of having it be about more specific things (e.g., a specific location akin to how approaching Gwen’s Grave in Ebonhawke plays her GW1 flute music, or even just specific regions per each current capability – e.g., Ascalon ambient/etc. and Maguuma night/etc.)?
Dear ANet writers,
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.

Dolyak Express Feb 21, 2014

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Teofa Tsavo.9863

Teofa Tsavo.9863

Is there any effort being made to integrate the Destruction of LA into the larger game?

Havens are still protecting trade to LA. Lionguards in the world are protecting trade routes to LA. They allude to this in chat, in heart letters, in flavor text. At this time, they are blissfully unaware of any pressing problems in LA.

Also, flavor text in general. I laughed for 5 minutes when the Claypool Villager announced they wanted to move to LA “to be safer”.

A world changing event should… change the world perhaps?

Ley lines. The perfect solution to deadlines and writers block. Now in an easy open Can.

Dolyak Express Feb 21, 2014

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Henri Blanche.8276

Henri Blanche.8276

Is there any effort being made to integrate the Destruction of LA into the larger game?

Havens are still protecting trade to LA. Lionguards in the world are protecting trade routes to LA. They allude to this in chat, in heart letters, in flavor text. At this time, they are blissfully unaware of any pressing problems in LA.

Also, flavor text in general. I laughed for 5 minutes when the Claypool Villager announced they wanted to move to LA “to be safer”.

A world changing event should… change the world perhaps?

This. Contradictions like this make the Living World seem like a facade. My friends and I were discussing this very issue over the weekend.

Dolyak Express Feb 21, 2014

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Hermes.7014

Hermes.7014

I posted the first question in the Audio forum as well, but since there’s this topic and it was intended for developers, I’ll post it here as well.

1) I was wondering if the track “Here be Dragons” featured in the battle against Zhaitan will be used again in the future battles with other elder dragons. It’s a pity such an epic track is heard only once in the personal story.

2) As another question, after Soule left his position as composer for Guild Wars, who has replaced him?

3) Are there plans to furtherly improve the custom soundtrack feature in Guild Wars 2? Perhaps making playlists more specific and situational? (Ambient based by area, PvP battles, etc…)

Whether something is either wrong or right, someone will always complain about it.

Dolyak Express Feb 21, 2014

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Wanze.8410

Wanze.8410

My Charr Warrior is making a puking sound, everytime i activate my new healing skill Defiant Stance. It sounds just like after he has eaten too much candy corn or Zhaitaffy.

I wonder why this sound was recycled for a healing skill.

Tin Foil [HATS]-Hardcore BLTC-PvP Guild
Bloin – Running around, tagging Keeps, getting whack on Scoobie Snacks.

Dolyak Express Feb 21, 2014

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Velijan.9061

Velijan.9061

1. Will there ever be another run of the GW2 art book? A lot of truly jaw-dropping art was made in the production of this game, I’d say easily the best of any MMO to date. It’s a disservice both to the fans and the artists that created it that the book isn’t available anymore.

2. Could boards be made in the Lore forum for the Orders? It makes as much sense as having ones for each of the races.

Dolyak Express Feb 21, 2014

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Mark Katzbach

Previous

Mark Katzbach

Content Marketing Manager

Next

Thank you for submitting these questions. We will review the questions from this week’s thread, as well as those from the other language forums. We will chose a group of them to hand over to the various Development Teams. Their replies will be posted in all language forums on Friday March 7.

Dolyak Express Feb 21, 2014

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Mark Katzbach

Previous

Mark Katzbach

Content Marketing Manager

Q: How big is the audio production team in total, and how do they keep up with the two week release cadence with all the voice overs in four different languages?

James Ackley: The team has grown over the near 6 years I’ve been here. When I started in 2008 there was no internal audio team, it was all outsourced. For the first 2-3 years it was mainly just Drew Cady and I doing the sounds, Jeremy Soule writing the music, Jim Boer programing the audio engine and tools with a couple of contract workers here and there. As we got closer to ship the team grew and grew, and now with our 2 week cadence we have quite a lot. In no particular order, we have Aaron McLeran working on the audio engine and some tools, Robert Gay also working on some tools and sound design/implementing, Cody Crichton as a Sound Designer/Implementer, Brecken Hipp on VO processing and import/export, Jerry Schroeder as a Sound Designer, Drew Cady as a Sound Designer, Keenan Sieg as our Audio QA, Maclaine Diemer on music, Amy Liu in audio production and myself as the Audio Director. We all do a lot and even though some may have specialties, we share the work and most of us have a few other roles as well.

Q: Who currently composes the music for GW2?

Maclaine Diemer: My name is Maclaine Diemer, and I am the in-house composer at ArenaNet. After Guild Wars 2 shipped in 2012, we contracted a composer named Stan LePard to write some music for our first few Living World releases (Halloween, Lost Shores, and Wintersday). I contributed some music to those releases as well. Since then, I have handled the majority of new music in support of the Living World releases, and I’ve had some additional help from one of our game designers, Leif Chappelle. Leif is a composer in his own right, and has helped me with music for Wintersday, Super Adventure Box, Bazaar of the Four Winds, and some future Living World content. We have lots of big music plans for 2014, so thanks for listening!

Q: Where do you look to hire voice actors?

Bobby Stein: We work almost exclusively with L.A. talent, though we have a few actors from other parts of the U.S. in our cast. Much of the casting organization is handled via Blindlight, our VO partner, and Eve on the Editing Team.

Q: How do you record all your audio files? Do you do this locally or do you travel a lot to find the perfect piece?
James: We still go off-site for a lot of our sounds and the location is usually depending on what we are recording. Most all of us take recorders with us any time we go on vacation or just leave it in the car, you never know when you’ll get something cool. We are also fortunate enough to have a nice quiet Foley room at ArenaNet that we use a lot as well.

Q: I loved some of the videos from way-back that showed how you recorded certain sounds. The swinging fireball comes to mind. Any chance you’ll do more of those in the future or give us a tour of a VO session?

James: Yeah, I loved doing those videos and yes, we plan on doing more. It’s just time sure is hard to find lately. We did a VO video a while ago, before we shipped, I’m not sure if we’ll do another one of those, but you never know.

Q: If you would introduce a new monster, and you would like to make it sound very new and very exciting, would you take archived assets and remix existing sound pieces, or would you start recording something new that fits your expectations?

James: There have been times in the past where we look at old assets and maybe use those as guides but I’d like to think each new creature needs a new sound set. Jerry has been hitting a lot of our big bosses lately and I think he’s done an amazing job working with and expanding the technical limitations while creating new sounds. The marionette is a perfect example. She was definitely a full new set of sounds and even a new way to play those sounds. Sometimes we record animals, people, and machines with the intent to use on a creature. Sometimes they work, and sometimes they don’t. It’s hard to know until it’s in the game. I may be jinxing myself here, but I’ve been dreaming of recording a “Jake Brake” from a big rig truck and using that as a creature sound for a long time. In my mind, they could sound like a huge creature with very little processing, but I won’t know until I get out and record one and see if it works. Maybe that will be our next video…

Q: Living World has a unique and high cadence in video game industry. How does it work for sound production in this regard? How did you manage to make the updates release pace work together with the character voiceover (since the persons giving their voices to the characters must not be available at all times)?

Bobby: We sometimes write and record ahead of schedule, though sometimes those scenes don’t make it into the game where/when we originally intended. So far we’ve been pretty lucky regarding actor availability.
James: The two week cadence has been a learning process for us all. We definitely couldn’t do it without people like Amy Liu making sure all the disciplines that affect audio (which is all of them) give us enough time to do our job. Communication is key. Talking with the teams early and continued tracking while the development is going is what seems to be working for us. If we can meet early and get an idea of what’s coming, and keep up to date as work is being completed then we have a better chance of getting our job done.

Q: What would you say is the most complicated sound effect/track in the game, and why?

Robert Gay: Amazingly, one of our most complex tracks in the game is what sonically is considered by most to be our simplest, our ambience. But it’s just a few birds and wind right? Well, what kind of wind? Cavernous wind, city wind, interior wind, forest wind, alpine wind… and birds only occupy a subset of regions in Tyria, not to mention the variety therein! Jokes aside considering the vast variety of source material and sounds themselves, when designing an audible world, ambience can be vastly understated.

It has to match the physical world it embodies feeling mechanical where fitting and organically semi-random where nature takes its course. Tyria has over 8,500 ambient audio zones and sources, all intermingling and layered in different ways. The world utilizes a plethora of game state information to breathe life into this crucial segment of sound design, including time-of-day, combatant activity, event state, boss health, and player location to name just a few. From the creaks under foot when mastering that jumping puzzle to the screams and moans of distant ghosts while exploring ancient catacombs, inhabiting a living world only works if the bed of sound it provides is believable. And if you are not listening too actively to it by default, then that’s usually a good sign we’re doing our job right!

Q: How do you go about deciding how many variations of a sound to have for an event or action?

James: We try to think about how much the player will hear the sounds and if they are something that could get fatiguing over long hours of play. Some sounds may be able to have only a few variations and be fine, but some are very unique sounding or get heard a lot and those are the ones we work on more to give variation to, either through more sound files, or random runtime dsp, or both.

Q: I have noticed some pretty special and cool sound effects during the living story. How does this work? For example, the sound of a twisted nightmare. Are the sound effects recorded after the creature and animations are done, or is it actually a part of the development process?

James: This was a perfect example of us getting a heads-up before the creature was ready for sounds. We met with the designers early and talked about what the plan was and what the lore of the creature would be. Then as the model, FX and animation were being created we were able to see and adapt our sounds. We set up a few Foley sessions, worked with the animation and FX teams to build the implementation strategies and tried our best to line up our work flow with theirs.

Q: Have you ever considered expanding the dialogue for player characters, or adding different-voice options to be purchased for further customization (giving your character a totally new voice, both for yourself and for other players to hear)?

Bobby: We’re getting a programmer to look at PC voice outside cinematics. If that works, we’ll also update/expand current PC chatter.

James: We have a lot of dreams and ideas for this and I really hope we get time to do half of what we want.

Q: How much post-processing goes into the charr voices? It’s clear that many of them are pitch-shifted and have some snarl sound effects layered in – how much work and how many effects go into this process?

James: The VO process is a lot more complex that you might think. This one could get really long, I’ll try to keep it short enough that you still want to read it. We started using the standard batch processing in Sound Forge and even built some fairly complex plug-in chains, but were never really happy. Fortunately we are lucky enough to have Drew Cady and he took it upon himself to create a custom Reaktor plug-in so we could use Nuendo for all our VO processing. Nuendo had just updated to being able to batch export from markers so we wanted to take advantage of that. So, with the help of Rob we now have this process for all our processed Voice in the game, which is a lot. Here’s an abbreviated list of what happens.

  • We get the files back from the studio already named and cropped.
  • We use an internal tool to import the files which also creates a concatenated file of each set of sounds that need processing. For example, the Charr will get huge Concat file(s) exported at the same time that it’s imported, and then we import into Nuendo.
  • Along with the concatenated wav files, we also get and import a CSV file that holds all the file names, actors, file lengths, etc.
  • The custom Reaktor plug-in then uses the wave file(s) as a guide to modify any number of other plug-ins like pitch, volume, reverb, etc. Those values get sent out as Midi controls. We can for example have pitch that modifies along with or against the pitch of the stock sound or the volume, or whatever.

We can also set the volumes on tracks to come on/off based on any of these values as well. An easy example of this is the slurps at the end of some of the charr lines. Sometimes that was the actor and sometimes it’s us. We have a track full of snarly-slurpy-slobber sounds that get turned up for a moment if the last part of the stock sound is loud enough and quick enough to make room for our sfx. We can also do things like set the pitch to climb or drop based on volume, so if someone yells maybe the pitch goes up, or if they whisper we bring in some buzzy robot sounds like on the Golem. Basically, we track the live performance to modify a lot of post processing so it’s not just a blanket batch process that always sounds the same. This gives us a lot of creative freedom, but comes with a bit of a time price. Since the “midiyoke” we use to route internal midi doesn’t run on export, we have to record real time track of all the VO we are going to export, then use the CSV to export the files. Most of the time this is fine, it’s just a double time pass, but for characters like the charr that have a lot of lines, it can take a while. Let’s just say I’ve run more than my share of 14-hour recording sessions.