The Banner Saga Post-funding Update #29
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For The Banner Saga, we are doing a more procedural ambience. I approached this a little differently. There are many different spaces in this game, but one of the more important ones is the opening view of the City of Strand. It is a distant view of a small city. I wanted to create the feeling that the city is alive and populated, audibly so from this distance. As it is a seaside city, I used seagulls as my close perspective sounds, and added wind and sea for the mid-distance. I then used shouting and the sound of anvils being struck for the distant city sounds. This worked out well, but getting the distance on these sounds correct took some time.
To get them sounding right, once I had picked out the sounds, I arranged variations of them sequentially in ProTools. This is procedurally generated content, so I needed lots of individual sounds with which to randomise their playback using FMOD Designer, in order to create the ambience. Once arranged, I setup a convolution reverb on their channel, set to something that approximated the slap and diffusion of being in the narrow streets of a stone and wood city I then sent varying amounts of this to my usual reverb auxiliary channel, but this time I had two delays setup to provide the slaps.
These delays were to give a sense of bouncing off the surrounding mountains. There was a medium delay time of around 300ms, and a longer one around 600ms. Once setup the length of delay meant you could hear that these were facsimiles of the sound repeated exactly (despite some eq), so I needed to add another reverb after the delays (on each delays channel), to wash out the delays a little. This started to sound right, but was still a little heavy sounding for the distance, so I went a little harder on the eq's, with my final settings including some shelving of -16dB at 130Hz and below, and a low pass at 18kHz. I then also have some cutting at 990 Hz of around 10dB and also at 6.5 kHz of around 7dB.
The eq's on both delays are similar but have some differences - for example the eq on delay 2 has some boosting in the high frequencies as shown in the second eq image.
The delay aux channels levels are also both set fairly low, around -18 to -19, so they are only contributing their character subtly to the mix - it's not a huge effect, despite being necessary for the sound.
The main reverb is a convolution reverb, with an Impulse Response that mimics the sound of a block party, it has some diffusion, as well as some hard surfaces slapping.
The eq after this just tames some bass and cuts some highs, with some lower mids also scooped. This created the sound I was after. Its a fairly diffuse distant yelling and clanking, with a diffuse echo that sounds like it is carried off by the wind. Its a more high frequency echo, so simulates the effect of bass reduction over distance, and the whole effect, although subtle in its execution, is slightly exaggerated and stylised compared to how the sounds would be in real life.
