For those who seek the short answer: because it’s the best solution for your game audio.
In this blog post, I would like to write about our most comprehensive, most fun, most challenging, and at the same time, most rewarding service—full-cycle game audio development.
Recently, one of the most exciting projects we have begun working on at Clean Cadence Audio is Revenge of the Mage, developed and published by the Turkish game studio SinginGiant. As the title of the post hints, we are collaborating to provide full-cycle game audio development services for their fast-paced, bullet-hell roguelite first-person shooter. Revenge of the Mage puts the player in a hellish situation, constantly battling hordes of enemies as they develop their character and shape their playing style with each level gained. Of course, one of the obvious challenges with Revenge of the Mage is that a roguelite game in an FPS setting creates some difficulties that must be managed. But our full-cycle audio development collaboration with SinginGiant helps us navigate and eliminate these problems efficiently. But without getting ahead of myself, let me briefly explain what full-cycle audio development is.
What is Full-Cycle Audio Development?
Full-cycle audio development means that Clean Cadence Audio takes the lead in developing the entire audio experience for your game, integrating fully into your game development process. I’m talking about syncing with your Git repository, working within the game engine, reporting and communicating via your team’s communication tools, and overseeing the process through your project management tools. Of course, we’re involved in team meetings and provide weekly reports, becoming a seamless part of your development workflow.
This approach allows us to be the most efficient version of ourselves because we gain access to the development process from start to finish. We can determine the audio requirements for core game mechanics, implement the right solutions, test, bug-fix, and optimize as development progresses.
Why Full-Cycle Audio Development Matters
Aesthetically, it allows us to be freer with sound design, music, and audio integration, figure out what works best, what improves the gaming experience, and potentially determine some of the more intricate and nuanced audio mechanics that the game will benefit from—things the developers might not be able to pinpoint quite as easily.
We essentially become sound designers, composers, and audio programmers for your game. And with Revenge of the Mage, we believe the results speak for themselves.
The Challenge of Speed in Revenge of the Mage
In Revenge of the Mage, the speed of the game was the primary challenge. It’s safe to say that hearing (audio) is our second most informative sense, especially in a game context. Sound plays an essential role in providing feedback to players about what’s happening around them and guiding them to make the best judgment call on how and what to act upon. But in a Quake-style, fast-paced game like RoTM, precise audio cues are essential, not only for the player to react at the right moment but also to synchronize visual cues with auditory ones.
To achieve this precision, we utilized FMOD Studio’s powerful tools: Max Instances, Instance Stealing, Cooldown, Priority, and various Trigger Behavior conditions. These tools allowed us to fine-tune the audio experience and ensure that the player hears only the most important sounds during critical moments of gameplay.
Just take a look at this short gameplay video. You have an enormous mummy boss attacking you, hordes of minions on your tail, missiles flying at you nonstop, and wooden stake traps scattered around the map, all waiting to catch a body.
The Principle Behind the Audio Design
The principle is simple: Almost everything in the game emits sound, but the player needs to hear only what’s most relevant to their gameplay at any given moment. This is achieved through rigorous testing and optimization of various audio elements, including enemy sounds, environmental emitters, spell effects, and music triggers across different game scenarios. Additionally, we selectively curate, prioritize, and limit the occurrences of audio events to make sure that the player isn’t overwhelmed with unnecessary sounds.
Collaborating with SinginGiant
Working with SinginGiant on Revenge of the Mage has been and still is a joy. Their team of dedicated professionals challenges us to push our craft to the next level, and we thoroughly enjoy every moment of it. We look forward to collaborating with more game studios and developers in this hands-on, comprehensive, and intensive approach to full-cycle audio development, helping them create the best audio experience to elevate their games.
Thanks for reading, everyone. See you in the next blog post.
— Can
