Hi everyone,
thanks for the welcome.
First of all I'd like to explain what exactly it is what I'm doing in the Sacred 2 team. I did not compose any of the music (OK, only one little track) or create soundeffects... we're doing this as a team. The project is way too big for one person to do all this alone.
I'm a programmer with musical training/background and I also did a few game soundtracks in the past. For Sacred2 I wrote the audio concept, designed the sound engine, programmed it. The music was composed to my proposals and concepts by the award-winning team of Dynamedion, a group of 4 composers and sound designers. The soundeffects are created by two of my colleagues at the Ascaron sound department. And I'm the one who supervises all audio content, checks and approves it, convert it und put it into the game. So actually the sound team is at least a group of 7 people and a few more guys (XBox/PS3 team, external composers) working on this.
Now to Gogo's questions...
Actually, my taste in music has changed over the years. When I was starting to listen to game and movie soundtracks I was a huge fan of Orchestral soundtracks - Star Wars, John Williams and so on. Over the years my taste has changed to more subtle, minimalistic style of music. So its no wonder that I would call my favourite game soundtracks the Fallout/Fallout2 and Baldurs Gate/Baldurs Gate 2 game music. And of course I love the games and music of the old Origin games... Ultima, Wing Commander, Martian Dreams and so on. I'm listening to the music still today.
Has anything influenced the work on Sacred 2? Yes of course... if you listen to some of the desert/canyon tracks, there a hint of post-apocalyptic music in it...
There is one special sound in the old Bullfrog game "Syndicate", that haunts me over the years... I still have it in my ears. From time to time I did hear it again in other games (hmm... how does that happen? ), but it will always remind me of "Syndicate". I dont remember whre it was used in the game, it was a trademark sound.
Most of the time I have a sound already in my head when I see a graphical FX. Usually I discuss this with my colleagues and they create it. But sometimes they surprise me with something that works even better.
Most difficult sound in Sacred 2... hmmm... I guess the T-Energy trademark sound was hard to find. We worked weeks on it. Everything in Ancaria that works with T-Energy does have a bit of it in it, so it had to be a non-annoying, but still recognizable sound.
Like I already mentioned, I have a technical and a musical background. Sacred 2 is my ... <counting>... 8th big AAA-title I am doing programming stuff and the ... <counting again> fourth AAA-title I'm doing some sound/music for.
Yes, having big variations in any repeating sounds like hits, footsteps etc. is a must. We do have at least 4 to 8 different hit sounds per weapon and material. Often-used weapons even have more. For a standard sword we have 48 different sounds in Sacred2 - 12 for "hit-on-bare flesh", 12 for "hit-on-leather", 12 for "hit-on-chain" and finally 12 sounds for "hit-on-plate metal". And there are still a few tricks like pitch variation and realtime mixing with what we call "pre-hit" sounds that will make it sound interesting and realistic.
Actually I do hate it too when I play other games and I can hear that they are using exactly _two_ footstep sounds - one for left, one for right... always the same "tip-tap-tip-tap"
No, not a specific one. I'm happy if you would stop in the game from time and just listen and enjoying the sound of Ancaria around you while playing Sacred2. Especially at nights it is a pleasure to walk through Ancaria (if there are no monsters nearby of course )
In an earlier project I was working on, some people wrote me that they sometimes started the game and go with their char into the woods and let their player char just stand around to enjoy the sounds and music - thats the best compliment one can get...
The music in Sacred2 has a lot of taks to fullfill... there are the region music tracks - they have to be mellow and relaxing and still bringing you into the mood of the region where you are in. This is to relax you after a fight.
Then there are the fight themes. Every char has its own sets of fight music, its always just a short, dramatic, uptempo loop (most fights in Sacred are not that long). But the kind of fight music tells you about the strength and danger of your enemies - the "heavy" theme is way more guitar-driven, the "light" theme just warns you about the fight. And sometimes there is no music, just a dangerous warning noise that tells you that there is something coming up... some boss monsters do have their own fight theme.
And there are some special locations with their own music... you have to find out about this yourself... I think you'll be surprised...
Did I mentioned that all tracks are mixed in real 5.1?
After all Sacred 2 is the biggest project I ever worked on. The sound assets are huge... over 100 different music tracks, over 11.000 soundeffects samples and 27.000 speech samples per language. I hope you'll like it!
And now for that beer.... cheers!
Lars