With a soft eared attention to detail we'll delve into the details of movement design from a systems perspective, and try to define some common practices.
Lately, I've been taking stock. Not the usual “What have I done with my life?” or “Where is everything headed?” (although those questions perpetually tumble around my brain stem on a regular basis); I somehow found myself obsessed with the minute details of movement sound and system design. If you're working in games today, chances are good that you've recorded, implemented, or designed systems for the playback of character footsteps and Foley at some point during the course of your career. It's even more likely that you've played a game where, at some point during your experience, footstep sound wrestled your focus away from the task at hand and demanded your listening attention.
Yet, let it be said, all footsteps are not created equal – which seems obvious given that no two games are exactly the same, neither should their footsteps or the way in which they are implemented be (necessarily) the same. At the end of the day, as content creators, we should be slaves to the games we are helping to make and not showboating unnecessarily in our own art by accentuating or spending time of things that have little consequence outside of our own satisfaction; however, for a sound type that may be heard for countless hours across every level in a game, surely they deserve more than a passing thought. (or maybe I'm trying to justify my current obsession!)
Interested?
Make the jump over to the full article including links to over a dozen video's focused specifically on footsteps and movement in current generation games.
Lost Chocolate Lab: Footsteps – Informal Game Sound Study
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lcl
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