Live Forum Q&A - Audio!

[WingardiumLevicoaster]

Thanks for all the king coaster questions! He cracked us up also when we recorded him and voiced the character. He's an amazing actor!

His name is Lewis MacLeod and best to let his Wikipedia do the talking : )

OMG he is Dumbledore! Order of the Phoenix is my favourite Harry Potter game!

 

[coencoensmeets]

Is it going to be possible to make a sort of special soundpack? Many a cheat-code to unlock it. It would be amazing if you did the voices yourself.

 

[Luppen]

Hi Crystal Blue!

Ambience's, great idea! We are thinking along similar lines like those really nice placeable VFX you saw on yesterdays Stream with Ed, Dean and Mark. We' are looking at creating placeable speakers for supplied ambience's. Think of a nice pirate bay ambience with ship creaks, waves, bells and seagulls. Or perhaps indeed a beautiful magical forest full of birds.

AWESOME!

 

[Empo]

One question to rule them all: User Music.
You want this, internally we want it too and we’ve done it before on RCT3 so it’s not a huge leap to imagine it low hanging fruit for Planet Coaster... right?

Well....

The technical reality of this feature is that it is complex, especially because we want it to behave in a user friendly way. Ironically, it is much more involved now than it was ten years ago!

Let me explain a few reasons why:
We changed our audio tech and the new audio middleware we use (Wwise) does amazing things (you can hear that) however it cannot play user music out of the box. We need a custom solution for this because we don’t want for people to have to download Wwise, install it and follow a tutorial : ) Many people here can figure out how to do this (this is PC land after all!) but we don’t feel that solution helps our entire community. We want to do it right, which means we need our teams on engine, interface and game-logic to support a feature like that.

Another hurdle is that we do so much audio work in the game currently (which is partially why it sounds so great!) that there is in fact *less* room now for streaming your own music than ten years ago! A single coaster for instance presents more audio work than we did at any moment during rtc3. We have more than 80 sounds on a coaster (wind, tracks, whooshes, people, flanges, clangs, wheels, car rattles) all manipulated in real time to make sure whatever you build always sounds unique to that track. Just like the top of that loop on your favourite coaster always creates its own unique rhythms of clangs, bangs and resonances so too does your creation in Planet Coaster!

As said, despite faster hardware we still need to find room for streaming audio, this might sound unbelievable but unlike graphics; audio is not hardware accelerated! Audio hardware is pretty much in the pre-graphics-card era and it’s quite amazing all the things we CAN do regardless!

I’d like to be honest with you, as a feature, there’s no one on the team that doesn’t want this in by yesterday. But I have to make choices where we apply our audio resources. On a feature like this, which involves the engine team, gui, gameplay and design we have to be even more careful what we can ask for in terms of support. The biggest hurdle here is that custom audio doesn’t come pre-packaged in our optimised sound banks and as such in a technically, simulation and content sense more complex Coaster game than we made, user music wouldn’t automatically scale.

This game is so incredibly rich in features and content I have to choose between supporting more coasters, guests, composed music etc. (all coming towards release!) and user selectable music. It’s a choice between something which benefits everyone and something that benefits a smaller, though not any less enthusiastic (!) community of builders. I believe more people will benefit from content variation and supporting the amount of current features.

So we definitely see the creative merit in it and we are still investigating the issue. I’s not something we can commit to until we know how to solve these challenges.

Oh. My. GLOB! My respect for you people has reached new heights! VERY informative! [up] Keep up the good work!

 

[EndDays]

Hi Crystal Blue!

Ambience's, great idea! We are thinking along similar lines like those really nice placeable VFX you saw on yesterdays Stream with Ed, Dean and Mark. We' are looking at creating placeable speakers for supplied ambience's. Think of a nice pirate bay ambience with ship creaks, waves, bells and seagulls. Or perhaps indeed a beautiful magical forest full of birds.

[yesnod][woah][squeeeeee]

 

[Jashby]

Thanks for awesome work guys! The audio is so great in this game and contributes a lot...

Just small question and a lot of nostalgy:
- Is it possible to have the sound "coca-cola" by the guest when he buys a drink like in first RCT? A long time ago, when we zoom on a guest that buy a drink, we clearly hear ;-) the guest telling "coca-cola"...

And as almost everyone asks: will we be able to use our custom music and have sound/music triggered by a ride at a specific point?

We've got the tech for vendor conversations already in, it just wasn't mixed particularly loud so easy to miss. At the moment there all generic but it would be really cool if they varied on what they were buying (or how well they were trained, to give you some feedback on the simulation).
I think Matt answered your other question in a norse epic further up the thread.

 

[coencoensmeets]

Hi Crystal Blue!

Ambience's, great idea! We are thinking along similar lines like those really nice placeable VFX you saw on yesterdays Stream with Ed, Dean and Mark. We' are looking at creating placeable speakers for supplied ambience's. Think of a nice pirate bay ambience with ship creaks, waves, bells and seagulls. Or perhaps indeed a beautiful magical forest full of birds.

HYPE! [squeeeeee]
You guys are so great! [up]

 

[Matthew Florianz]

Alot of the music in Planet Coaster is great so far, loving that the Rocktopus sounds like music from Splatoon!

Will we have radio stations and / or perhaps DJ mixes, for example, one of my favourite things on GTA4 (TBOGT) was the ElectroChoc mix by The Crookers.
Also, what genre's of music would you like to see in game, or artists / producers would you like to have in game?

Hi Aaron Roberts,

Thank you so much for those kind words. That track is actually made in-house by some of our talented sound designers. James Stant sings a most beautiful Octopus (in Planco of course!) and Michael Maidment knocked that tune together in a really inspired afternoon and a half : )

I love the GTA soundtracks but that's not quite the atmosphere we're going for with Planet Coaster. We want our world to be uniquely Planet Coaster so we create custom music and jingles for all our unique characters and shops.

You already heard the Chief Beef jingle and we hope to expand on doing more of this. That too was done in house by Jamie Lewis. He has some more tunes in him we think : )

 

[Jashby]

Music can make magical moments. What's your magical moment, what you got from music?

I play a lot of tabletop RPGs (outside of work, honest <.< >.> -.-). There was the ending of one session where we just got introduced to a new piratey hideout, and there was Dropkick Murphy's Shipping up to Boston playing just as we got introduced. To this day every time I hear that track I'm transported back to that time. I think that's one of the great things about music, it can trigger such good emotions. I hope that the theme track to Planet Coaster really brings out positivity in people (it certainly does for me, I love it)

 

[Empo]

You already heard the Chief Beef jingle and we hope to expand on doing more of this. That too was done in house by Jamie Lewis. He has some more tunes in him we think : )

Ah yes, that is one GROOOOOVEY (wanted to say gravy) Tune! [haha] I'd like to hear the FULL version of that, if there is ever going to be one. [yesnod]

 

[Krux1]

Hi BloodyKimbel!

Thanks for being here and interesting question.

Many of the sounds we create are not just about finding the right sample, or creating the right kind of sounds from combining layers. These days it is actually equally as much work to make them behave properly. For instance, getting the crowds right when there are so many of them was a huge challenge when we started: we couldn't just place a sound on every person in the park as there where just too many of them!

So it's a combination of interesting challenges: Getting the coasters right was difficult (took five weeks!). Getting the Planco (our unique language spoken in the parks) sounding right took a lot of direction and iteration (we really just started on that). Lots of little details, like making sure the trees and the wind are in sync have taken time. Gui sounds are difficult too, because you hear them all the time and we really wanted a sonic identity that is uniquely Planet Coaster.

So all of us sound designers struggled with one thing or another.

For me I have gone back and forth the most on the select sound. That may sound less impressive than coasters but there's so much going on when you hear it. For one, it's probably the sound you have heard the most while playing the game, so it can risk becoming repetitive. Second, the way audio works there's always a little bit of a delay between an input and hearing the associated sound and then the game being able to display the results. A select sound needs to not only bridge that gap, it also needs to sound snappy but not to snappy or it's out of sync : )

It's finding that balance where we can spend a lot of time on something seemingly very simple. But that also makes our jobs so much fun!

i think the reason a lot of people would like this is its an essential part of dark rides, but being you guys are working on speakers eith ambience for the park, adding some options of these with "epic music" and other music choices that would fit different types of dark rides might help the situation until all that stuff is figured out.!

amazing work so far, all of you, the sounds in the game are just as impressive as everything else the game!

 

[Nemmie]

Thanks for answering my questions. Awesome.
And also for addressing the custom music thing. At least we're all desperate to have it.

 

[Matthew Florianz]

There are so many things i love about the audio in the game, but i want to talk about one thing.
The sound going through the day.

What was the moment like when you heard and saw it in combination with animation for the first time?
What was your inspiration for choosing the sounds of sunrise, sundown, etc.

The process of creating audio is very collaborative. On a game like Planet Coaster we had to start pre-production at the same time as everyone else and as such get to work closely with all the other departments (which is an absolute joy!). We constantly see things coming together and most of the time it works too ; )

The sound of going through the day was done by me. I love ambient environments and soundscapes and even do that kind of stuff outside from work (recording and creating them). In fact, those crickets I recorded in the Netherlands at a really cool forest that is host to an abandoned rail road. It's completely overgrown and serves as a national park. It's one of my favourite places and recordings.

I also just really like creating an atmosphere and a lively, changing atmosphere in an environment it makes you really appreciate how your park slowly comes to life as you build. I am sure you noticed how there aren't any guest sounds until your first ride, and people are actually wandering into the park. From the beginning we wanted to make sure the audio represents what you have done and not just play pre-backed background sounds. Everything you hear exists for a reason.

For Alpha 2 you will notice much nicer wind high up and we have synced leaves of trees rustling with the wind increasing and decreasing much nicer. Even the crickets get a bit more quiet when the wind picks up. Non of that is essential for the game-play obviously, but we really want an empty park to feel like a place that is alive, well before you work your magic!

 

[Jashby]

To what extent will ambient sound be responsive to actual game context, for example a park without many guests will it be quieter than a packed one?

We really wanted to push the envelope with the crowd sounds as they're the whole reason you build a park. There was a lot of technical challenges with dealing with a crowd of thousands in both the extreme zoomed out and the super fine detail, up in your face, nose inspecting distances. There are a lot of systems which track the positions and emotions of nearby crowd, so we can change what sounds we play based on how well you've built the park. We've also got some systems that are coming in to deal with people responding to music and mascots. The crowd also sounds like it comes from where the crowd actually is, so in empty areas of the park the ambient crickets should come through to the top of the mix.

 

[Vampiro]

Thanks for adressing the custom music thing, its nice to see explained why it's so difficult.

Yet i still hope you find a way to solve the problem. As stated multiple times, you guys do an amazing job of creating music and sounds. But the creativity of the game allows us to have 1001 rides and atmospheres. As good as you people are, you can never supply a theme for evrything we can think of, so we really need the custom music i think.

Hopefully you will find a way to make it happen. Or at least give us the option to do it ourselfs even tough you stated it was "the hard way".

 

[Krux1]

my question, what vsts do you guys use and daws (ableton and so on) for the sound design and editing?

 

[Matthew Florianz]

Will we have Lady Antebellum as animatronics or as real band in Planet Coaster? [big grin]

Hey Croongetuige, alles goed?

We really loved working with them on the trailer and it was a blast seeing the images and music come together. No further plans though, we wanted a fun band to help transition and introduce you to our world. I think that worked wonderfully well but that is also the extend of that particular story : )

 

[SymphonyX]

No [plays quiz music] would you like another hint or go straight for the answer?

I'll take one hint first! If not, then I'll take the answer after! [squeeeeee]

Also, can you describe how you place the mics on the coasters to record the sounds? Do you place mics all over the car, in the chasis, at the wheel base, etc?

 

[Buffpuff]

Thanks for adressing the custom music thing, its nice to see explained why it's so difficult.

Yet i still hope you find a way to solve the problem. As stated multiple times, you guys do an amazing job of creating music and sounds. But the creativity of the game allows us to have 1001 rides and atmospheres. As good as you people are, you can never supply a theme for evrything we can think of, so we really need the custom music i think.

Hopefully you will find a way to make it happen. Or at least give us the option to do it ourselfs even tough you stated it was "the hard way".

Yeah I would agree here. I had so much fun in RCT3 picking a custom song to play for certain rides (personal favorite was a coaster I built that was pretty high on the intensity rating. I cued AC/DC "Highway to ❤︎❤︎❤︎❤︎" for that one and it just fit so perfectly). Even if it's done the "hard way" I'm sure there would be enough tutorials out there to help anyone figure it out fairly quickly.

 

[Vampiro]

It seems the loudspeaker question wasn't answered yet? (Or was it just me)

Ofcourse those go hand in hand with custom music but even if you don't support it, can we have loudspeakers to give all area's of our park a fitting sound?

And im not even talking about darkrides yet, or things like the Cheshire cat that move trough various scenes. I guess all the scenes need to have a certain theme to it. Will we have loudspeakers to make this happen?