Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 13.3
A clipped sound wave.
Audio engineers say that a recording like this had the
and they had
to re-record it with the input levels turned down a bit. If you ever saw those record-
ing meters on a mixing board, you
“
levels too hot,
”
'
d notice that the input levels jumped into the red
when the sound was too hot, creating the clipped waveforms. The same thing can
happen when you record sounds straight to your desktop with a microphone, so
keep an eye on those input levels.
Crusty Geezers Say the Wildest Things
On the Microsoft Casinoproject, the actors were encouraged to come up with
extemporaneous barks for their characters. Not surprisingly, some of them had
to be cut from the game. One was cut by Microsoft legal because they thought
it sounded too much like the signature line,
from Arnold
Schwarzenegger. Another was cut because it made disparaging remarks
toward the waitresses at the Mirage Resorts. My favorite one of all time,
though, was a bit of speech from a crusty old geezer,
“
I
'
ll be back,
”
“
You know what I
REALLY love about Vegas??? The hookers!!!
”
Sound files have many different formats, the most popular being WAV, MP3, OGG,
and MIDI. The WAV format stores raw sound data, the aural equivalent of a BMP
or TGA file, and is therefore the largest. MP3 and OGG files are compressed sound
file formats and can achieve about a 10:1 compression ratio over WAV, with only a
barely perceptible loss in sound quality. MIDI files are almost like little sound pro-
grams and are extremely tiny, but the sound quality is completely different
it sounds
like those video games from the 1980s. So why would you choose one over the other?
MIDI was popular for downloadable games and games on handheld platforms
because they were so small and efficient. These days MIDI is more a choice for
style than anything else, since even handheld devices are fully capable of playing
most sound formats. The WAV format takes a lot of memory, but it is incredibly
easy on your CPU budget. MP3s and OGGs will save your memory budget but will
hit your CPU for each stream you decompress into a hearable sound.
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