Stevens R., Raybould D. – The Game Audio Tutorial. A Practical Guide to Sound and Music for Interactive Games (PDF) [ENG]

Design and implement video game sound from beginning to end with this hands-on course in game audio. Music and sound effects speak to players on a deep level, and this book will show you how to design and implement powerful, interactive sound that measurably improves gameplay. If you are a sound designer or composer and want to do more than just create audio elements and hand them over to someone else for insertion into the game, this book is for you. You’ll understand the game development process and implement vital audio experiences-not just create music loops or one-off sound effects.

We wrote this book because we love games. We also love sound and music, and we love what they can bring to games to make them thrilling, involving, and moving. We want you to be able to try out your sound and your music in a real game. For a book whose examples are based exclusively around one piece of software, it may appear contradictory to say that actually the tools are not important. Once you’ve had experience with any game editor or audio middleware package, the concepts you learn are easily transferable to others. We chose the Unreal Development Kit (UDK) for this book, as it’s a serious game development tool, it’s used for lots of games, it’s free, and it’s fun. In terms of sound and music there are easier tools to use, but unless you’re already working for a games developer, you can’t get them to work in an actual game. Putting your sound and music into a real game environment = cool. Having to be already working for a games developer to get access to the tools to get them in game = not cool.

We want to put control into the hands of sound designers and composers and to show what you can do, and how far you can go, with the standard tools that come with a typical game editor. As a sound designer, composer, or game designer (we hope there are a few of you reading too!), you have to be an advocate for audio. The good thing about audio is that it tends not to be noticed that much. This means we can affect the player on a powerful subconscious level. The bad thing about audio is, well, that it tends not to be noticed much. You will have to constantly convince people of the importance of investing in sound and music. You’ll have to be able to make your case, explain and persuade people that better use of audio makes a better game. You can do this by talking, but you can do it better by showing. We’ve tried to give you not only the sound and music systems themselves but also an introduction to a number of gameplay systems. By having the means of production, you won’t just be the passive provider of assets but can understand the game design process, experiment, and get involved in building systems to demonstrate your ideas effectively.

If you want to create great sounds or music and then hand them over for someone else to put into the game, then this book isn’t for you (and P.S., your days are numbered). Game audio is about a system of sound or music elements that interact in real time with game events. If you want to be part of the future of game audio you need to learn how to produce interactive audio, not just one-shot sound effects or music loops. You can’t separate asset creation from implementation. A note on genre. There are many genres of games appealing to many different people. Although we’ve tried to mention several, we have not exhaustively explored the particular aspects of implementing sound for each one, as the principles here are intended to be applicable to many. The biggest-selling, highest-grossing games are undoubtedly first- and third-person shooters. As this is the case, they also tend to be the areas where the most investment is being made in taking the technology of games, and game audio, further. If this is not your preferred genre we can only apologize for the amount of gunfire, death, and explosions in this book, but we hope you understand our reasoning.