There's a fantastic long-term thread of discussion running on footstep sound implementation in games going on here:
Every sound designer working in games should definitely give it a gander at some point. It's one of the basics that rarely gets much thought or attention, and is in fact often considered something of a chore, like the grocery shopping of sound design. Some people, of course, elect to simply eat out, while others go shopping at the fanciest deli in town. It's fascinating to read all the great justification behind all the different preferences and viewpoints.
I myself belong to the school of thought that footsteps should be very low in the mix and inaudible 90% of the time. To paraphrase one of the posters that put it best, in real life you only really notice footsteps when:
1.Staring at your feet
2.Wearing hard soled shoes on a ceramic or tile floor
3.When someone's wearing high heels
4.In the snow (marshes/mud/puddles would also apply here I expect)
5.On a catwalk (though truthfully, that's more the catwalk's movement than the foot impact)
6.If there's a squeak or some other audible abnormality in the shoes
7.When running
Only half of those are likely to apply in any given game - and I would even argue that running footsteps, depending on how far back the camera is, could be done away with. Of course, you have to take into account a lot of other influencing factors such as gameplay and style and overall mix.
But for NPCs especially, I think the mix works better with no footsteps (again with the exceptions, barring oversized NPCs). It's valuable memory (and voices) spent on something you'd want to mix out of existence as soon as more than two NPCs wander into the vicinity, or anything happens at all.
If you're lucky enough to be working on a game with ninjas, of course, the point is moot. :)
No comments:
Post a Comment