Dark, You hit the nail on the head as they say. A sighted person can just open any graphics editer and draw any and all images they need. They may not be the worlds greatest artest but they can work with the graphics editer to come up with something decent.
With audio that's not so easy. If I need a certain sound I can't necessarily create it with my equipment and limited resources. I don't have, for example, an H&K MP5 laying around to record sounds from. For starts its illegal for a private citizen to own an automatic submachinegun, and for second those things are expensive. Even a civilian hand gun like an H&K P7 will go a grand or more. Definitely not practical for recording by any means. Then, there is the environment to consider. I live in the mid west. In north-eastern Ohio. The closest I could come to recording the environmental effects would be to go to the caves in southern West Vergiania or in Kentucky and record someone walking and maybe trying to pick up some ambiant interior sounds. While in theory I could do this it would be a fairly expensive trip just for sound effects, and wouldn't necessarily be exactly like walking around in an Egyptian tomb or temple. To be truly authentic one would have to board a plane, go to Egypt, and then walk around in the Great Pyramid, walk around some of the open tombs in the Valley of the Kings, and things like that for realistic effects. Not exactly in my budget. :D As a side note my brother-in-law went to Egypt about five years back, and I asked him some questions for background informationlike, "what did this or that look like?" One of the questions I asked him is, "what does it sound like in the tombs?" he visited. Well, he basically didn't really remember. There were a lot of echoes, but couldn't tell me if they were small echoes, medium echoes, or long echoes. He wasn't paying attention to that, and was busy following the guide and looking at all the artwork on the walls etc. So even though I know someone who has personally been there I can't even come up with a verbal model to base my sound effects on since like most sighted people he focused completely on the visual aspect of the trip and not the audio aspect. In short, though, you are absolutely right. A indi developer with a low budget can typically draw anything he or she wants/needs. An indi audio developer has to cough up some cash to get authentic sounding sound effects frm Sound Ideas and places like that which will run him/her into the hundreds if not thousands just to produce a quality game like Tomb Hunter. Its a huge problem without much of a solution unless you have lots of cash laying around to afford it. Cheers! On 1/6/12, dark <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Tom. > > Your point about stair cases actually brings up another issue I've noticed > in audio. > > While animation and creating graphics are by no means easy, it is stil > possible for even an indi developer to actually draw whatever graphics > he/she wants, in fact a graphic designer to perform this duty is usually on > any indi developement team. > > No, the graphics may not be of super quality (and animating them so that > they move is another problem in itself), but there is no actual limit to > what objects can be had in the game itself. > > in audio however, there are simply not as many sounds around, nor can they > be quickly and easily created. > > it's like the difference betwene shopping at a huge super markit or a small > village shop. > > You could buy practically anything you liek from the supermarkit, ---- > admittedly not necessarily at the best quality, but stil it would be there, > where as the village shop has only a small selection and if they don't have > it, you don't get it. > > You could try altering some existing sounds I suppose to create more in game > objects, ----- such as just pitch shifting one stone step upwards a bit to > indicate that your now treading on a staircase which is off the floor but > how well these sorts of practices work can vary quite a lot. > There really isn't a good way around this sound problem, sinse sound > libraries are pretty expensive. > > Beware the grue! > > Dark. > --- Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected]. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to [email protected].
