By letting me build new SoundFX for the upcoming Paladin class, the team accidentally opened an entire can of undead worms XD
There are so many different ways to build sounds for games. The trick I came up with, is one of the stranger ones. Warlic and other devs walked behind me, did a double take at my screen and said, "WOAH! How did you get your audio program to work with Unity?" I told them, "I did not. This is Adobe Premiere." They gave me a puzzled look and said, "You edit SoundFX in... video editing software?" I said, "Yeah! I video captured footage of the game, using every skill while I was playing as a Paladin, then imported the video. I lay-down and mix my rough soundFX to the video so I can see and hear it in action. Then I export the bits individually as uncompressed WAV files and do my mastering in Audition." #CleverCookie
When your weapon strikes an enemy, you hear a sound which Warlic and I call a "meaty thwack". Sorta like full force hitting a a burlap sack filled with chunky soup with a baseball bat. (That may have been how we created the original sound... I do not remember.) While working on the Paladin skills, I started experimenting with some new combat sounds since I was already in the sound project. Warlic sat with me for lunch and we fiddled with a bunch of options. He showed me some of his audio editing tricks. It was Dage, who was listening while working on his upcoming AQ3D armor collection, who said, "The sounds are really long, what if you sped them up?" O_O We instantly doubled the speed of all the new sounds and it was incredible! Funny how you just stumble onto this things by chance. We quickly realized this is what a lot of other games had been doing too-- it has a very unique tone to it. Zhoom is posting a version of the game for us to try with the new sounds-- cross your books and blades!
A skill does not use a single sound. For example, when you swing your sword it makes a SWOOSH! When you hit it makes a MEATY THWACK! Or... perhaps you score a Critical Hit and get an entirely more rewarding sound all together :D There are multiple points during the animations which play different SoundFX. This is especially important with spells. (NOTE: I snuck the original AdventureQuest & DragonFable * AQWorlds "Heal Sound" into the newly mixed majestic Paladin heal spell.) Rabblefroth and I worked on making more places where spells can have sounds. In doing so, we realized there are a bunch of skills and things in the game that are missing SoundFX. Also, while carefully studying the sounds in my videos I noticed a lot of our sounds are off by about 300ms (milliseconds). We quickly figured out what the problem is. We need to go edit the original sound files to fix it though. So we are scheduling a day to go fix ALL of the sounds and skills-- which will be a big ticket item to cross off from the official AdventureQuest 3D Game Plan :D
It is Dage's Birthday ...and we are going to the underworld! This special new area will become permanent in-game content. We are aiming for release mid-next week.
Until then, you should check out the Ashfall Poster Dage painted for HeroMart.com and the huge release they are doing in our 2D MMORPG, AdventureQuest Worlds.
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Pun-slinging Paladin
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