Recently we went into the recording studio to get some new sounds recorded.  There was enough ideas to keep rolling for hours.  We setup to record laser blasts and solid bow and sword foley. In our homage to Ben Burtt we set up a spring to get interesting sources for lasers blasts.  The spring was suspended from a ladder so that it didn’t touch any other surface.  Then it was struck with with a variety of different object and from all angles.

Engine Audio is also preparing sounds for new medieval battle Unreal 3 Mod called Archasis.  The main character wields an assortment of sword and bow weapons.  We started recording a metal impacts and foley for the first soundbank.

We captured the whole session at 24bit/96k in ProTools using a single mono shotgun mic. We also used a Sound Devices 722t running a stereo mic at the same bit depth and sample rate.  The hi quality recording work well since each sound fx  will be going through a lot of processing before it ends up as the final product.

We have a new mix of our Desert Conflict promo coming soon.  It features all new music and enhanced sound fx.  The music moves through many different genre’s from orchestral string and brass, through intense double kick drum metal, and finally some high energy drum and bass.  Here is a preview of the new music. Enjoy.

Orchestral Demo Orchestral Brass and Strings

Futuristic Drum n’ Bass Futuristic Drum n’ Bass

Metal Demo Ass Kickin’ Metal

The most recent developer video diary from Lionhead Studios deals with a behind the scenes look at the audio and soundtrack of Fable 2.  This free-roaming RPG requires a detailed soundtrack but they managed to fit 9,000 unique sound fx into 90mb on the disk.  Even modern console systems have a limited amount of memory dedicated to run audio, but 90mb leaves alot of room for dialog and music.