Blog 7: Audio Analysis of Bioshock (final part)

For the final part of my audio analysis of Bioshock I will be talking about navigating the underwater environment of Bioshock and the sounds that it provides. A certain points in the game the player will have to leave the innards of the city of Rapture and navigate the ocean floor. While on the ocean floor every aspect of the sound changes.

The whole world becomes almost silent. All sounds are muffled and the loudest thing you can hear is the sound of yourself breathing through your diving suit.

While on the ocean floor you can hear the sound of the ocean current flowing past you. One of my favorite sounds on the ocean floor is the sound of the air bubbles constantly around you making sounds like a "bloop."
The most common sound effect that is used in the outside world of Rapture is the muffling effect on literally every sound that is made by the player, enemies and the environment. It really gives off the feel that the player is truly underwater.


 

Blog 6: Audio Analysis of Bioshock (part 4)

One of the main enemies in Bioshock is the Big Daddy. These enemies are genetically enhanced human beings with their skin an organs molded into a giant diving suit. The sound of the Big Daddy is that of a deep whale call with a long, low drone. It's a very eerie sound that gives me chills. You always know when a big Daddy is near because you hear the whale-like groan along with the sound of giant footsteps that make the ground shake.

The Big Daddy will not bother you until you provoke it and the calmness of it's nature changes along with the sounds that it makes. If you leave the Big Daddy alone and let it pass it will continue to make the calm whale-like noises, but if you provoke it the sound changes drastically. The Big Daddy's whale-like groans turn into more aggressive roar and it erupts into a blind rage. After you provoke the Big Daddy you will get a change to hear the sound of his giant drill that is attached to his right arm.

Another form of the Big Daddy is the Big Sister. By contrast the Big Sister is much thinner and faster and her sound is much higher pitched than the Big Daddy. The Big Sister sounds more like a dolphin or a modified screech of a dolphin.

Blog 5: Audio Analysis of Bioshock (part 3)

When Bioshock was released it showed that the game industry was focusing a lot more on the narrative in video games and creating a robust story in the game while driving the player forward. This helps the player stay focused on the game and wanting to know what happens next with the narrative.
The story accomplishes this by placing audio diaries throughout the game for the player to find. These audio diaries explore the games backstory with events that happened before the game takes place. What is good about these audio diaries is that they are played in real time. Which means that they play once you pick them up and the game doesn't pause for them. So when you pick one up you don't want to get into any action and you want to explore your immediate surroundings and look for supplies. This will make you slow down and really appreciate the sounds of the world around you.

Game Design Blog 4: Audio Analysis of Bioshock (part 2)

Bioshock can be a pretty intense game. There is plenty of killing, blood, gore and unethical experimentation going on inside the crazy underwater metropolis of Rapture. But the music in this game is a different story.

The music featured in Bioshock is old-timey 40's and 50's music and can set the mood in a variety of different ways. Personally I think that the music comes off a bit creepy mixed with the dark environment of Rapture. Some may take it a bit comical, but opinions aside there's no arguing that the choice for music in the game is perfect. One really interesting choice for sound design in Bioshock is that it doesn't rely on a musical score to evoke emotions while playing the game. Bioshock relies entirely on atmospheric sounds of the ocean to immerse the player. The music that is heard in the game is in the game itself. There is no score composed for this game. For example: The player is walking through the city and he hears a faint sound of music playing. As the player gets closer to the sound the music gets louder. The player then discovers that the music had been playing on an old time jukebox or record player. This is a great sound design choice and makes the player fully immersed into the world of Bioshock and the city of Rapture.

Interesting Sounds from Star Wars: Episode II

There are so many unique sounds in the Star Wars films, from blaster pistols to lightsabers and speeders. The sound effects that are found inside the Star Wars movies are iconic and how these sounds are obtained may surprise you.

One very interesting sound in Star Wars: Episode II was the sound of the speeder diving. This sound was obtained by using a 1942 gas air raid alert siren in a parking garage, which created an echoing sound. Without knowing anything about how they obtained this sound and watching the movie, you wouldn't notice that it was a siren making the sound of the speeder diving, but after knowing what the sound is I can really hear the siren. It's amazing the sounds that we miss and don't think twice about while enjoying the experience. I wonder how many other familiar sounds we hear every time we watch movies and never notice.
For the sound of the gunships a biplane was recorded taking off and accelerating. I think that this choice of sound effect really compliments the sound of the gunship because they are both air vehicles and the sound feels natural to me when I hear the sound of the biplane matched with the gunship on screen.
Another really interesting sound design choice was in the Geonosian factory scene. Sounds of an actual factory was mixed with the sounds of drum percussion. This created a very convincing factory environment and the drums really complimented the sounds of heavy machinery smashing down the assembly line.

Game Design Blog 3: Audio Analysis of Bioshock. (part 1)

For this blog I chose to focus on the audio of a certain video game called Bioshock. To me the audio in this video game really stood out. The setting of the game takes place in 1960, in the fictional underwater city of Rapture.

 Being a city underwater the sound of water is very abundant throughout the entirety of the video game. The sound of running water coming out of a big broken pipe and flowing on to the ground, into the room and down a flight of stairs has a very interesting dynamic sound. Because it starts with a very violent sound and then ends with a very calm sound. The water coming out of the broken pipe is flowing very rapidly, so the audio of the water is a very violent and rapid sound. As the water hits the floor and begins to more across the room to the stairs, it turns less violent and more reserved. The extremity that the sound of the water from the pipe is now almost silent. The water is moving across the floor with very little sound and the only thing that can be heard are little splashing sounds. As the water moves out of the room and down the flight of stairs the water starts to get louder and sounds like a gentle flowing stream.
Another sound of water that can be heard throughout the exploration of Rapture is the sound of the ocean from inside the city. You can hear the sound of the water flowing around the city constantly. If you choose to walk up to a window as close as possible, ( as if you're pressing your face up against it) you can hear the sound of the ocean even more. It's similar to the sound of putting your ear against a conch shell and it's an awesome feature that they decided to include in the game that can further the immersion of the player and make this fictional world feel even more real than it already does.

Writing Challenge Blog Comm 399B

Shepherdstown: Small town gem

Shepherdstown isn't the biggest and most excited town in West Virginia, but it is a great place to visit if you like a nice quaint little town unburdened by the stress of the big city. There are many activities to do in Shepherdstown if you know where to find them.

You could go to the main attraction of Shepherdstown, German Street, and visit all of the local and privately owned shops up and down the street. Or you could visit the Rumsey monument with a beautiful view of the mountains and the Potomac river. If none of those activities interest you, try and check out the Shepherd University campus.

Game Design Blog 2

While reading through different sound designer interviews I came across a sound designer that was comparing the difference between sound in movies and sound in video games. The key difference between the two is the player versus the watcher. A player grasps and gains satisfaction from the sound effects because the player is 'inside' the gaming world and experiencing sound effects based on the decision they make in the game. A watcher is simply along for the ride. While watching a movie the sound effects are the same no matter how many times you watch the movie. When you play a video game the order of sound effects will different every time.
The player can choose to do different things like pushing a button to fire a weapon, and then hears a reaction and sequences of sounds to correspond to that action. For example, the sound designer may implement a multitude of sound samples for one action, like an explosion. For explosions at a distance, a latency effect might be implemented, or an explosion behind a wall the sound might be blurred or dampened.

COMM 399B - Kayaking Picture

Kayaking Picture

You and your friends going kayaking in the ocean? That's one of the most manly activities on the face of the earth! You should pump up that manliness and scuba dive with man-eating sharks while eating bacon and doing hammer curls! If you want to turn up that manly notch even higher ditch your kayak and go Sharkaking! It's a sport you invented because you are too manly for the sport of simply riding a kayak, you need to pumped TO THE NEXT LEVEL! 

Blog 1: Editing the digital signal

     The size of a sound wave determines the loudness of the track. This correlates to the use of compression. Compression appeared in my project with every midi sound track that was used in it and I think that it was a very useful tool and ultimately made my project sound a lot better. From my experience, I  believe that compression is an essential tool that must be used in every sound project and it's definitely something that digital signals should not be without.
     Interactive-sound design can greatly enhance the sound experience for the user. The midi track that I picked for this project was taken from an old video game called, "Doom." It's a midi track that sounds dark and heavy and has a striking resemblance to a metal band of the metalcore genre of music. It has heavy guitar riffs and a drop tuned guitar sound. This sound track relates to the game well because Doom is a very dark game and the metal sound really compliments it.
     When evaluating the final product, every aspect of it should be balanced. I made sure that I balanced all of the tones and ranges as well a the quality of the track one I was finished. I believe that this is the most important part of a project because there is no point in working on a sound track just to find out that what you edited sounds different and not as good as the release medium. You really have to make sure everything is balanced right. This might require you to balance the track after you have exported it, and export it again until you get the right balance for the release medium.

Totally 90s Skates

Totally 90s Skates! A new company reviving an old hobby.


Welcome to the company that is trying to bring back 90s inline skating!


We are a new company that seeks to be the #1 resource for news, reviews of inline skating products. We offer a variety of products ranging from rollerblades, roller skates, street hockey gear, and many replacement parts for your rollerblades and skates. Discounts can be offered to members ($20 a year for membership.)

Audio in Video Games

After researching through how the audio is created in video games I have found that the majority of game developers use the popular recording software called Pro Tools. Pro Tools is mostly used by studio producers for recording music as well as mixing and mastering the audio tracks. There are a lot of plug-ins for Pro Tools that are essential for making the sounds that are heard in video games and some of the most popular ones are: Pitch 'n Time, Pultec EQ, McDSP, FilterBank and Compressor Bank, Waves and Altiverb.
Altiverb is used for sampling acoustic spaces and is mostly used for voicing effects to make them sound more organic and realistic. Pultec is used to dirty up sounds with heavy compression, so it's used to create gritty effects like footsteps on a dirt and gravel road or the sound of a campfire burning with the crackling sounds of the firewood. These plug-ins allow you to twist sounds with gritty, realistic sounding effects while still maintaining the organic feel of it.
A lot of sound designers don't actually go out and record their sounds themselves. Most designers typically rely on their library of sounds when creating sound effects because it is more efficient. They just have to get even more creative when editing them to make them sound unique and original. When field recording is done by hiring studios to go out and do the field recording for them and all of the sound effects we hear in video games are almost always recorded in a studio.
The process of recording sounds and implementing them into a video game is as follows: Recording, editing, creation of the in-game audio system, implementation and finally balancing. A sound designer must have a very good relationship with the animators and visual effects team, because one change in animation could mean a whole group of sounds must be replaced for new ones so the animation can perfectly match up with the paired sound for that animation. A games audio is not done in post-production but along with the development of the game, so it's very important to keep track of the work flow between animators and sound designers.

Wright Brothers, The First In Flight

By: Nick Frendzel

The Wright brothers, two ingenious brothers have made the first human flight possible! They have invented the worlds first practical fixed-wing aircraft, which means it's the first aircraft to feature aircraft controls. They achieved this great feat on December 17, 1903, in Kitty Hawk, NC, in which they made 2 successful flights from ground level.  The first flight flew for 37 m and lasted for a whole twelve seconds!

The Sound of Video Games

     How a game designer creates the sound effects that we hear in video games has always interested me. It's really cool to look behind the scenes and see what a designer had to go through to create a particular sound, from a gunshot to the sound of a character's footsteps moving about the game world, there's no telling what the designers actually did to get the final product of a certain sound.
     That is what I am going to be focusing on for my research and I will be investigating various types of video games via interviews and exclusive content that is released online to find out what is done to create these sound effects. I will focus more on the action/adventure genre because that is definitely the most action packed and exciting types of video game, which will also provide more opportunities to see what developers do to obtain the sounds that are in these video games

CBS - Wordpress

     The website that I chose to review that uses Wordpress is the CBS New York website. Looking at this site initially I couldn't tell that it was a website that used Wordpress. I feel like I should be able to spot when a website uses Wordpress, but apparently Wordpress can really look like anything if the designer wants it to.
      This website looks like many other websites that I have seen before. With that being said, this website is not very pleasing to the eye and it has the feel of an older website from the year 2000 or something. There are no drop down menus, the website just has a basic horizontal menu bar located at the top of the page. I know that this is a news website, so there has to be a bunch of stories on the main page, but all of the stories are very scattered throughout the home page and have no structure to them. It looks like they just threw text about in random places on the page and isn't very pleasing to the eye. If someone would come to this site for the first time it might be a little discouraging to try and find a certain story, but thankfully they added a search bar at the top right of the home page.
      The navigation of the site isn't too bad, it operates like you'd expect a site to navigate, so no problems there. My main problem is the look of the site. I think that if this site was constructed with something like Drupal, it could be further customized into a site that looks more professional and organized.

Ideas for graphic novel

I want to make a graphic novel that depicts my everyday life with my band. I was going to take pictures of me and my best friends and just make up some story because I thought that would be the easiest way to do things. But then I realized that my best friends are my band mates, so I thought it would be a good idea to just make a day in the life graphic novel of what we do. My novel would include us hanging out, practicing, being on the road, and playing shows. I'm going to have to formulate some story that will be taking place behind all of our regular activities. So I was thinking that there is a big show that we have to get ready for, and this show is coming up fast. So we barely have enough time to get ready and we're stressed and we're late for the show, which we are eventually late for. In between us getting ready for the show a whole bunch of bad things happen, but in the end we get over the obstacles and everything is alright. Those are my basic ideas so far for my graphic novel and I'm sure to have more ideas come to me eventually, so I'm going to start with what I have now and expand.

My 3 graphic novel choices

The graphic novel that I am most excited about is Black Hole. I actually just picked this one up a few weeks ago, but I haven't started to read it yet. I'm not a big graphic novel person, but I'm just starting to get into them. This one has really caught my attention though, because of the craziness I've seen just flipping through the pages. All I really know about this one is that it's about some STD that mutates people. It should be a good read. Another one that I wanted to check out was Blankets. I've read through the plot online and it's a very real story. I really wanted to read one of these novels and get a real life (or something close to it) story out of it. I'm excited to get into this one. Exit Wounds is the final graphic novel that I want to get my hands on. It seems like it will be a very raw story and that's what I'm looking for. With these graphic novels I wanted to make three choices that weren't similar to each other. And I think that I've picked some really good ones.

Dreamweaver

Dreamweaver is the only web development tool that I have used. So far the program has given me a multitude of problems, but I don't blame the program itself. Last semester I learned the basics of coding and we weren't taught how to use anything that we are going to learn this semester. I know that learning these new things on Dreamweaver will also give me a bunch of problems but I'll get through it. I wouldn't say anything that I have learned so far is necessarily difficult, just tedious. But I expect this class to be much more difficult and I'm up for the challenge.