Category: Collaborating VR

OST stands for Original Soundtrack; a soundtrack can be vital to a game and how it immerses you. Some games may rely more on sound design, whereas games like the one we made is supposed to feel very overwhelming and have lots of different sounds mixed in.  

The soundtrack plan originally was for Henri to complete the whole thing, but as the project went on, we decided to mix a couple tracks each. So, the work doesn’t get piled up on Henri and the game will also have a more varied soundtrack. This also works with the collaboration element of this unit.  

The pieces I composed were a mixture of ambient songs I have already previously created but had never used in anyway, they were just sitting on my desktop. The track list (In alphabetical order of the composer) for the OST goes… 

1. Violent Eno – Henri Brewer  

2. Zed Leppelin – Henri Brewer 

3. Don’t Go There – Theo Power 

4. Welcome, I guess – Theo Power 

5. Blue Velvet Tears – Theo Power  

6. Warm River – Theo Power 

7. Its All So Much – Theo Power 

8. Explore – Theo Power 

9. The Dancing Pig – Theo Power 

10. Dun Dun Dun – Uniseann Mould  

For my tracks there are reasons behind their titles. Don’t go there is a detuned and distorted version of the next track on the OST ‘Welcome, I guess’. I did this as having a distorted and creepy version then juxtaposed by a happy and more ‘normal’ version is quite fun and a smart way to play with the viewers emotions. Don’t go there means do not come here, leave, which I think in the start of the game is quite apparent. As people are screaming, and the building is derelict. ‘Welcome, I guess’ is supposed to be a sarcastic title, taking inspiration from the satirical nature of the game. The songs ‘Blue Velvet Tears’, ‘Warm River’ and ‘The Dancing Pig’ were all made before this project started, I felt their names were appropriate and did not stick out too much. The song ‘Its all so much’ is a double entendre. The first meaning being the money and gold you find throughout the game, university is a lot, and with the cost-of-living crisis. It really is all so much. The other meaning is the fact that the game is a walking sensory overload. Constantly barraging the player with a wide array of sounds and visuals, making for an intense sensory experience. Which might be too much for some people.  

The soundtrack pieces I composed (bar from the dancing pig) were all made on Ableton live 11. The way I would record these pieces would be intentionally as simple as possible, to not overload the track. For all the tracks I would use a synth preset I thought fitted the sound of what I was going for. And would use the Valhalla supermassive reverb alongside it, to make it sound huge and magical. 

This project was a very insightful and enjoyable experience for me. Before this I had never worked in VR or anything to do with video games, so it was a big learning curve for me. Luckily, we paired up with Ana, who was our VR collaborator for this project. She was very open to ideas and made it a point to work with us sound arts students when it comes to the story, visuals, and everything to do with the VR aspects. And we did the same with sound, sending her examples, and what could be done with our abilities. Working with her was a very positive experience.   

Though there were lots of communication issues with the other sound artists throughout the project, I am still proud of the sound my classmates and I have created.   

One thing I would do differently would be to not take on all the work if people do not do it, I found myself doing this and it adds a lot of stress and overtime which I found rather tolling. For my next collaboration project, I want to have a clearer and stricter timetable with my peers, which I think could make it easier to get people to do the work.   

One thing I thought went well was the workflow between Ana and me. There was a mutual respect for each other’s craft, and we were both open to ideas for one another, which helped further both the sound and visual aspects of the game.   

Another thing I thought went well was the presentations and crits. I get rather shy when presenting in front of people, and can find myself avoiding looking at the crowd, or tripping over my words when speaking. The crits were a good way of putting myself up in front of my peers and people I respect, and to try and overcome that fear. Luckily it was not just me doing the presentations. So, I always had someone to bounce off during presenting. This made presenting in front of the class smoother. 

Overall, I am very happy with the final product, the skills I have learnt, and most of the collaboration experiance.

I was ill during the first lecture of this unit, so I did not get to meet my group until I was added into a group chat. We planned a meeting for that week and Ana described to me the ideas of the game that the group had. One of those being a LCC themed horror game. We all clicked with this idea, as we all go to LCC, it would be very fun to see what it would be like as a horror game. In a group we all talked about what we thought the game should include, one of the first things mentioned was a satirical critique of LCC and the higher ups of UAL. Tom and I described the satire we should aim for in a similar way to a show like South Park (just less outrageous). What we mean by this is to poke fun at ideas and concepts but still have in impactful and clear message, like many episodes of South Park. 

Above some rough concept drawings by Ana, drawing out ideas that could be used in the game. In the fourth picture you can see ideas of money, food, books and posters. These ideas originally were supposed to be things we could poke fun at, money and posters. As a group we thought the idea of having posters that UAL used in a completely worn-down and abandoned LCC could be quite funny. As the posters are supposed to be supporting, everything else around it is nothing like the poster says. Which could very much be attributed to the real-life university experience.  

After a couple weeks of conceptualising the game ended up being less of a horror game, but being an abstract view of LCC, and its 3 schools, Design, Media, and Screen. The idea of an elevator popped up, in which you could walk into an elevator and go to these three floors. Each floor being one of the different schools within LCC. We still wanted to have the critical satire of LCC and UAL in the game, but it became less of a cookie cutter horror game and a more abstract interactive experience, which I personally think worked out much better than a horror game would of.  

Below is our idea proposal for our game that we presented to our lectures, this presentation has great information of the early stages of this game. 

Foley editing is something I have experience doing in previous projects such as Sound for Screen. Though this foley editing job was much more straightforward to my previous experiences as we were only recording simple sounds such as footsteps, button clicking, and speaking.  

The foley editing was not my original job, but as it never got sent to us, after two weeks I decided to do it myself. The foley was all edited inside Ableton Live 11. I used Ableton as for some of the sounds such as the speaking, we wanted it to sound very odd and Ableton is built for experimentation.  

Something important to remember when editing foley, is what needs effects and to be messed with, and what just needs to be trimmed and eq’d. For examples, the footsteps were just edited and was faded straight after to make it sound clean. 

Meanwhile the speech in the game was transposed up and was warped (warp is a function in Ableton in which a sample can be warped to it stays in time with the sessions BPM, or unwarped so it is not quantised to the BPM of the session) I kept the speech warped, as the speaking glitched and tripped up over it self, creating a jarring sound. It was then transposed up +10 semitones, creating a high pitch, childlike voice. Here a snippet of the speech with no processing, here is a snippet with processing. 

One of the challenges I ran into while editing the foley was the fish sounds. We were tasked by Ana to make some fish noises for the game. Tom (one of the sound artists in our group) started to flick his cheek with his mouth in a O shape, making a noise like a fish. The issue with the sound was that I did not have the microphone turned up enough on the H5 recorder. So, in turn the recording was incredibly quiet. The issue is with this is that if you put the file into Ableton and turn up the gain on that file. You hear all the background hiss and noise, making the recording noisy and difficult to use.  

I started to try and cut down the excess noise by using an 8 band EQ on the sound, to try and EQ out all the high frequencies. This worked at first, but since there was so much background noise, it started to sound like you were underwater and the actual fish noise was being altered in a way I did not want.  

As you can see above, this is my effects chain for the fish sounds audio. I ended up using a built in Ableton plug in called ‘Remove’ which lets you have the ability to remove low, mid, and hi frequencies. I found this quite easy to use and ended up removing most of the hiss without ruining the fish sounds. I then used the Valhalla supermassive reverb to give more space to the fish sounds. Finally, I used a plug in built into Ableton called ‘Make It Loud’, which does as the name says. This gave the sound a boost in volume to match the over sounds in the game.  

Due to the foley not being mixed and having to do it myself, Ana put in some placeholder sounds while we were waiting. Some of these sounds are in the walkthrough, like the elevator doors, some of the sound effects and some of the NPC talking. Though most of the sounds heard were made by us.

Overall, I found the process of editing the foley very enjoyable and a fun way to experiment with editing and experimenting with the sounds that we recorded. 

The foley recording took place in the composition/foley rooms in LCC. It was recorded by Tom, Matt, Henri, and I. We had a 3-hour session booked, but the first hour and a half was spent trying to figure out why no sound was picking up from the composition room. With only an hour and a half left we decided to go pick up a Zoom H5 field recorder, when arriving at the kit room I was also recommended to use the MixPre 6 kit. I rented both out and when trying the MixPre6 we were struggling with the interface. So we resorted to using the Zoom H5. I would like to get to know the MixPre6, as it seems like a great way to record multiple sources at once, especially when field recording.  

MixPre 6  

We used the Zoom H5 as an interface, for the microphone we used the Sanken CMS50 Stereo Microphone to record the sounds. This is a stereo shotgun microphone that was a dream to work with, due to it being very high in quality. The Zoom H5 recorder microphone is quite standard and is not best for high quality recordings, especially foley recording as over a certain gain level it produces lots of artificial hiss which can interfere with the recordings.  

The recordings we did were based off a list sent to us from Ana. This list was great as it let us work in a very quick and efficient manner. The great thing about foley recording is the fact you must think outside of the box constantly to create these noises. For example, we needed fire recordings, Tom grabbed a plastic bag and rustled it by the microphone. This was then manipulated in Ableton with a small reverb and slight transposition down. Techniques like this is what makes foley recording so fun, interactive, and creatively liberating. 

Today we had our final crit/presentation, in which we were supposed to give a brief rundown of the game, and how both the VR and sound arts courses worked on it with examples.  

The presentation consisted of Ana (VR) and I only, which is a shame but as we did most of the work was not too bad as we both had the most context and information behind the creation of the project. The crit started off with Ana reading this text… 

“Enter this first-person virtual reality experience of ‘London College of Communication” and explore each of the three schools: Screen, Media, and Design. Stroll through the streets of the screen school city while running into students and otherworldly entities. Go face to face with greedy corporations in the media school and visualize the stars as music within the design school. Years and years of built-up tears, laughter, whispers, and stories buried deep within the layers of paint. Let us peel these off for you, layer by layer, chip by chip, and story by story. Immerse yourself into the universe of London College of Communications and its impacts on the world and its own students.” 

This paragraph gives a more nuanced and professional overview of the project and what the game entails. This felt much more enticing to hear compared to an off the cuff explanation of the project. It is much more put together and reads better then how our other explanations in previous crits were.  

In the presentation I showed examples of my atmospheres and ambiences I created for the game, including pictures of the equipment I used and the context behind the sounds and how they would be used. 

Today we had a WIP presentation in which we were all tasked to show the whole class our work so far. It was interesting to see my peers work and to finally visualise what they’ve told me about their work. `At this point in our own project things were starting to come together, and some of those who have been absent in the sound making department have finally started to pick up some slack. I have a fear of presenting and find it uncomfortable to show people work that is still a work in progress, though I find these sessions useful to put me outside of my comfort zone.  

In this presentation I showed the class my work using the Moog Mother 32 and the Soma ETHER. These are the harsher and drone-based sounds for the horror aspects of the game. The feedback from Matthais was good, he said he enjoyed the sounds and talked about what other sounds I could be recording, and how the sounds I showed him could be used. In the beginning of the game, we are in war torn LCC which has these floating ORBS scattered around the building. These orbs will contain the noises I created using the Soma ETHER and Moog Mother 32.  

Just after this lecture a google document was created for sounds that we need to create, Ana needs these sounds by the 15th/16th of May. So, she can assign them in Unity before the final class crit on the 22nd of May. This is good as it stops people from doing stuff last minute, although this does mean we have to record quite a few sounds in a short amount of time. But with people hopefully stepping up to do their work should be easily achievable. 

Most of the primary atmospheres I recorded whereby using the Soma ETHER and Moog Mother 32. The Moog Mother 32 was recorded into my audio interface into Ableton Live. Meanwhile the Soma ETHER being an instrument that thrives on being moved about was recorded into a Zoom H5 handheld recorder. All these sounds were moved into Ableton live and edited to good sized sound files. 

The Soma ETHER recordings were done in one continuous half an hour take, so when exported into Ableton I took parts of the sounds I thought would work for the game. I kept the processing to a minimum but used these effects primally, Eight EQ (8 Point EQ), Valhalla Supermassive, and transportation of clips. The reason i kept it minimal was to not get the sounds too muddy. The ETHER microphone picks up on all types of frequencies so using the EQ was handy to subtly change it so some of the pitches weren’t too low/too high. Put not used heavily so it doesn’t alter what is so great about the ETHER. 

The Moog Mother 32 is a semi analog desktop synthesiser, the mother 32 is great for low brooding drones, and ambient space passages. Which are 2 sounds that are used heavily in the game. I experimented with the ‘cutoff’ and ‘resonance’ knobs on the Mother 32. This experimentation led to this sound. I found this sound rather intense and scary, which I thought would work perfectly for this game. It reminded me of the sound design created by David Lynch and Alan Splet in Lynchs movie ‘Eraserhead’. Which is a big inspiration for me artistically. 

When collecting sounds of a place there are things to take into consider, when are you going to record, what are you going to record with, and how will you go about it?

Early on in the VR project Ingrid introduced us to multiple microphones that are good for recording sounds for VR, I chose to use the Zoom H3VR. The Zoom H3VR is a ambisonic mic that records a whole 360 radius using it’s 4 microphones. This is much better then using something like the Zoom H5 field recorder, that only records whats directly infront due to its X/Y mic setup. I got to experiment using the Zoom H3VR in the lecture with Ingrid and it was a very simple machine to use which was a relief.

On Wednesday 26th April I walked around the whole of LCC and collected multiple sounds with the Zoom H3VR. I started recording in the stairwell outside of the kitroom, I chose this place as it is quite echoy so it produced lots of boomy sounds of people walking around and the genreal bleeps and sounds of LCC. I also recorded in the hallway of the sound arts and interactive arts hallway. There is also a stairwell at the end of this hall which has a constant beep and has lots of reverberation in the stairwell.

After recording I put the sounds into a programme called ‘Zoom Ambisonics Player’. Which is a app you can download of the zoom website, where you can export the audio you recorded and also change the direction. As it is a 360 microphone. I then expoerted these sounds out of the player and into ableton. I did no altering to them after as I wanted them to so natural compared to the more artificial sounds.

Today we had our midterm crits in which we were to show our rough drafts of our sound assets and game design. We were the first group to go, which is always a bit nerve racking. I personally struggle with giving presentations in front of a classroom full of people, especially a room of friends and collaborators who I respect endlessly. When we got up Ana started the presentation in which she led the class through the concept of the game and the inspirations behind it. She then got a volunteer from the class to run through the rough sketch of the game, apart from a few technical difficulties it went well.  

I showed the class through some sound assets I have created for the game, or just as a placeholder. I am the primary creator of the ambiences/soundscapes for the game. With that job I have to create the general ambience of the game which will vary a lot throughout the game as it becomes more intense. I provided the class with some ambiences made from manipulated tube field recordings, and the sampling of old opera vinyl records (in a similar vein to artists like The Caretaker). The sounds were made for the more intense parts of the game, where the game acts more like a horror game. The sounds aren’t going to be used, but act as a good starting place for me and my peers to work up from. 

I feel the presentation went well, although I wish it went smoother. I was the only one who uploaded sound assets before to the lecture, although we did get another sound uploaded to the drive. I do wish it was a bit smoother. I think I came across quite anxious and I tend to ramble when presenting as I feel if I don’t speak it will be awkward. I do think I started to settle in the longer I was talking for.  

We got some good feedback, especially for sound. One thing our lecturer Ingrid mentioned was the use of the SOMA ETHER electronic magnetic microphone. I am lucky enough to own one myself, so I will be using this to collect harsher electronic soundscapes. 

This is our final lecture before our easter break, which is about 3 weeks long. I have made a list of sounds to achieve over the break which you can see here. Throughout this break I will work on these sounds and send them to my group to get any feedback. Though we have specific roles in this project everyone is encouraged to collaborate with each other, as it is a collaboration project, and it is good to work with your peers.