As part of a university project I have created an interactive system using Wwise and used the game Baldurs Gate: Enhanced Edition as a reference point for creating the sound assets. As part of the evaluation part of my project I need some feedback from varied sources and wondered if any of you kind people would be so nice as to give me some!? In the Sound cloud playlist below I have four sounds from my project and four sounds from the original game. All I would ask you to do is listen to the very short clips and identify which sound is from the original game. Please answer honestly, negative critique is necessary and welcome!
Footsteps, 01 or 02?
Spell, 01 or 02?
Staff, 01 or 02?
Ambience, 01 or 02?
Secondly I have posted a video below of me demonstrating the Wwise project, if you could answer these question based on what you see it would really help me out to complete the evaluation stage of my project. Please try and answer as honestly as possible!
Do you feel the sounds are appropriate for the game?
Are the sounds mixed well in the interactive system?
Are the sounds varied and non-repetitive?
Is the music appropriate?
Does the music transition between states quickly and smoothly?
Is the music mixed well with the sound assets?
Thank you so much for your help, it really means a lot!
02 sounds like Baldur’s Gate in most cases but I am most unsure about the footsteps because both sound considerably more crisp than what I remember of the gameplay. However, the first sounds considerably more repetitive.
For the first video, the fire sounds less crisp than the remaining sounds. I would use shorter footstep foleys for the fast animations so they don’t overlap so much, personally. I would personally go for as many variations as possible but you said you’re trying to save on memory… the repetition is quite obvious with the footsteps. The ambient music is pretty cool but the battle music doesn’t sound at all similar to it, so the transition is very abrupt. The battle music is also quite repetitive. The combat audio sounds overtuned and too loud compared to the rest of the game audio. Using Baldur’s Gate as a source for your inspiration is great, but the spell audio is nearly incomparable, so I think that’s the weakest part. They sound very cheap to my ears.
Second video, the speech doesn’t sound like real speech, so that caught me immediately. It sounds like a bunch of the same sample repeated in different tones. The rest of the audio is pretty solid though, but similar to the first video in other respects.
Hopefully that gives you a bit of feedback to start off with! Good luck with your project, and a great game to start off with. Baldur’s Gate has some of the best audio I’ve seen in games to date.
Source - I did sound engineering/voice acting for mods and campaigns for 17 years.