A Combined Model for the Structuring of Computer Game Audio - Game Sound Technology and Player Interaction: Concepts and Developments - page 123

Controls Utilizing the combined Model

in a Game Design Document

Both mouse and keyboard control the game. The
mouse must have left and right buttons and a
scroll wheel. In order to aim the gun, A and D on
the keyboard are pressed. The A button moves the
gun barrel towards the left and D moves the gun
barrel towards the right. The gun is fired with a
click of the left mouse button, and using the mouse
wheel causes a gun change from one to another.

The relationship between game design and sound
design obviously depends on the complexity of
the game. In this case we mainly focused on how
our model can be implemented in the sound de-
sign process. We first categorized each sound and
determined its position in our combined model
(Table 5). Categorizing the sounds in relation to
our combined model provides us with a sense of
how the sonic environment will be balanced. For
the sake of consistency, we chose to use a table
that is similar to the analysis examples mentioned
earlier (Tables 1, 2 and 3). Furthermore, in order to
keep it simple, we clustered all the similar sounds
into groups, for example, all the music sounds do
not have to be specified as single sound events.
They will not be played simultaneously under
any circumstances, if the game runs as intended.
Instead of 10 music sounds we only added one. If
we group similar sound events, we do not have to
think about sound variations at this stage. We also
used this kind of sound grouping in the analyses
mentioned earlier in this chapter. However, you
might then ask why the Warcraft III analysis
(Table 2 and Figure 6) has a lot of quotations in
its table whereas the F.E.A.R. table (Table 1 and
Figure 5) does not. This is simply because all
the quotations from Warcraft III originate from
essential sound events that are important for the
gameplay. In the F.E.A.R. analysis, we chose to
group the sounds of characters because they have
sufficient similarities to constitute 1single group
of sounds. By carefully planning the game audio
with two of Chion's suggested listening modes in
mind (causal listening and semantic listening), the
sound designer can group the different sounds in
relation to their cause and meaning. Furthermore,
if the sound designer emphasizes the basic level
of categorization, the game audio, as such, will
suggest what the player is supposed to do or
provide feedback about what the player has done.

Game Flow

The game starts with the instructions, background
music #1 plays and the game begins when the
player presses the on-screen start button. This
shows the room with the swimming ducks.
The game ends when the player presses the
<Esc> key.

Scores

At the start of the game the score is set at 0. The
number of hits a duck can take before dying de-
pends on the following factors:

• Distance from the gun

• Angle of the shot

• Area hit by the shot

• Whether the shot has passed a grass island

• The armor value of the duck.

Levels

The game has 8 levels. The difficulty of the game
increases because the initial speed of the ducks
increases after each level and they are given ar-
mor from levels 4 to 8. The pond also has small
islands of grass behind which the ducks can seek
shelter from levels 4 to 8. The game ends when
the player has killed all the ducks on all the levels
or when the player presses <Esc>.