5. Audio Bible - DevCrumbs/Warcraft-II GitHub Wiki
The majority of the music and sounds that will appear in the game will be from the original Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness. This is an educational project where no economical income will be involved and all the audio recognition and rights go to Glenn Stafford and their audio department in Blizzard Entertainment.
With this being said, all the music and sounds will have that medieval/fantasy theme that appear in the original game. This will give the sense of the original Warcraft II and a nostalgic effect to those who played it in the time where the game was at its peak. The soundtrack itself is a great piece of work that helps the feeling and immersion of the game next to good organized implementation.
- Ambience: The sounds during the gameplay are constantly reproducing, there is a theme background music playing at all times and then the sounds of the characters and animations are triggered by the player.
- Characters: All these voices and sounds are taken from the original game, these are different depending on the character as there are a lot of them, from humans to orcs to dragons and each one of them will have their corresponding sounds.
- Impact: The sounds in this game have more of an informative purpose, they serve as a guide as sounds are triggered really often, for example selecting a group of characters and sending them to attack will trigger the characters voice saying they understand the order the player has sent them to do.
- Genre: The type of music that will be used is of a medieval/fantasy theme that will be played during the entirety of the gameplay, there are different themes in terms of menu screen, in game, win/loss screen, etc.
- Style: The way this music will be used is to give an “epic” feeling to the player, as the background music is a very structured theme that increases its pitch to give this epic effect.
- Implementation: The music will always be playing as a principal layer, after that the sounds of the characters and animation sounds will be applied, joined with the UI sounds. Dialogue will be played in the intro without these sounds, just with a low background music.
- Recording: All the music is already recorded as it is all gotten from the original game.
- Flow: The music would changes depending on the action that is going on the screen, there will be the main theme song at the start, but this will change if the player is under attack, or the player reached to the boss for example.
- Style: The only dialogue that will be included is at the start screen indicating some informative advice and encouragement messages that will have to be recorded.
- Types: The type of voice should be in relevance with King Terenas voice as it represents that he is speaking. It should have an energetic tone as it gives messages of encouragment and mission objectives. Some unit voices have to be recorded too, these need to have a similar sound that the unit voice.
- Control: The dialogue will be introduced in the intro screen where there will only be a low background music to give importance to the dialogue. The gameplay sound will be introduces after that and some voices will still be heard, these will have a higher volume than the rest to be heard clearly.
- Weapons and Items: Units will have their abilities with their corresponding animation sounds taken from the original game. There is also come hammer sounds for the building.
- SFX: Apart from the abilities, we can get the UI, buildings and special effects sounds from the original Warcraft II, that already has a same style with the rest of the audio.
The main audio reference we have is obviously from the original game, as all the music and sounds will be gotten from there. The way it is organized and implemented is going to be the same way we are going to do it in our game.
As we have the majority of the music and audio clips made, the implementation is the only thing that is left and it will be in a very similar way that it is in the original game. It will be organized in this way:
- Layer 0: All the background music, soundtracks and themes. These will change volume depending on what is happening in the game, it will increase if there is a boss fight for example where the higher music will give an extra energetic effect to the player.
- Layer 1: UI sounds, these will be played in a low volume.
- Layer 2: Character animation sounds, all the movement sounds of the units should be introduced if they have.
- Layer 3: Character voices and sound effects in a higher volume than the rest as it is the main focus of the player.
- Layer 4: Dialogue, similar volume as layer 3 but may vary depending on the importance we want to give to the phrase played.
- All Music and Themes here
- To be recorded.
The file formats we are going to be using are .wav for SFX and general short sounds, and .mp3 for the music such as the soundtrack and themes. Audacity will be the main program to be used for editing or cutting any audio as fast as possible.