Battlefield Sound Effect

[Trisha Quercioli]

Anotherbig leap for us was when our technology allowed us to crossfade between different content depending on distance. Before, we had modeled the distance to a sound with filters. Now we can record the same event from several distances and just crossfade between them.

We started recording these events not only from varying distances but also in different environments. A gun shot or an automatic rifle sounds very different when fired in a forest, in a concrete room, or out in an open field. This in turn together with memory constraints led us to the next level of making guns and explosions.

They used real recordings, chopped up in common and unique samples that we put together in the Frostbite engine. We could build a lot of guns using a few sounds. And since they were put together from a lot of pieces always moving depending on distance, environment, angle and rate of fire, they never sounded like a looped sample of a gun.

Unique content for each area caters for constant change in the soundscape, keeping the level audio interesting. For Battlefield 1 all previous knowledge has now been put together and adapted to cater to the world of this game.

Beautiful Bells BUNDLE contains the solo ringing of 76 swinging bells and 135 stationary bells, captured in 62 bell towers, carillons, chapels, churches, cathedrals, basilicas and clock towers across France, with unprecedented quality. Most of the sounds were recorded inside bell towers.

Swinging bells are struck by a hanging clapper. They have a natural pitch modulation due to the Doppler effect, and a timbre modulation due to varying orientation. They produce a deep and lively sound and are mostly used to announce masses, religious holidays, weddings and funerals.

Stationary bells are struck by external hammers. They have a steady and rich tone, with a long sustain. They are mostly used as musical instruments in carillons, to indicate the hour in clock chimes or to alert the population in tocsins.

A collection of 67 stereo water waves recorded in France, Spain and United Kingdom. Contains big, medium and small waves sounds recorded from various distances, such as seashore or at the top of a cliff.

This SFX library contains a wide range of reactions and emotional responses varying from quiet crowds to roared battle cries to a large selection of exclamations generated by a group of passionate theatrical actors in indoor venues.

Big Waves Concrete Pier Impacts is a small collection, (with a big potential) of unusual sounding waves crashing on a concrete pier and rocky coastline.

If you need close up splashes, bubbly sounds, slamming powerful waves, subtle waves from below a boardwalk, or maybe some weird sounding huge waves recorded through a cardboard pipe, this library could be just for you!

Similar to Battlefield 4, we divided the team between our single player War Stories then also to multiplayer and core. Andreas and I, for example, have been working together since Battlefield 3 and know our strengths and weaknesses and we complement each other in these areas.

Everyone is a doer and we are not afraid to question one another. We are all dedicated to the game we are building and at the same time we are good friends. I think this team spirit is what makes us create the things we do.

Whether you want to play Fall from Grace stealthily or not we needed the sound to be quiet but at the same time loud, to cover your presence and footsteps from the enemies. We worked a lot with the sound of The Great War being ever so present, weighing heavily on your chest as you progress through the level. Ominous birds, such as flocks of crows, are circling around, and rats run away from corpses.

We did set ourselves deadlines and deliverables. We created a design which defined each weather and what that would contain. For example, clear weather meant small birds and insects, soft breeze, and warmth, whereas overcast meant large birds like magpies, crows or a buzzard, to more wind and foliage, and a lot more wind gusts in the big world systems. Once we had defined what each weather event contained sound-wise we could apply this to the different settings.

For transport vehicles we worked very closely with our collegues over at Criterion Games in the UK. They have a lineage of building great sounding racing games so we challenged them to build off-terrain transport vehicles that rattle in contrast to the carbon fiber, no clearance, v10 perfection that they excel at. The results are there in-game where the transports now have a racing-level fidelity to gear shifts, surfaces, and the roars from under the hood.

A feature we managed to get in on the armored train is that you can alter the intensity and the pitch of the train whistle when playing with a controller. Together with the sounds of coal being shoveled into the furnace, the slow and heavy chugging it makes when starting, the sounds of the loose couplings between the carts, and the screeching breaks when it slowly comes to a stop; it all adds to the full experience of riding a 130-ton armored train.

We also conduct Foley sessions where we focus on on getting the right guns, but substitutes with similar action and materials usually suffice. For miking, a good stereo pair straight above the gun together with a lavalier on the weapon is usually good enough, but as always, more is more! We perform the weapon Foley ourselves since we have a fairly good idea on how it needs to sound in the end.

For shrapnel we used bullet impact and flybys that we recorded and then sequenced to tell the story of shrapnel flying past the player. Recording debris is as easy as just throwing dirt up in the air and have it land on various surfaces, pieces of uniform, a helmet etc.

Dark Seals is a unique collection of close up, expressive seal vocalisations. It includes everything from aggressive growls, funny gargles, snapping snarls, howling wails & disgusting snorts and slobbers.

Recorded on location in Namibia and the United Kingdom, the library consists of many incredibly up-n-close recordings of individual seals, both adults and pups. The close proximity and large variety in vocal ranges between adults and pups makes this material highly malleable and perfect source for creature sound design. Check the demo to hear examples of these sounds playing at half speed.

The files are organised per individual seal and often carry on for minutes with continuous vocalisations, resulting in many variations of a similar type of call. The content is therefore very suitable for game audio design.

I really could not stand it. I wanted to play, but instead I started designing and replacing sounds in existing games. I was working with music production at the time and expanded into working as a freelance sound designer for commercials, web and games. 7 years ago I started at DICE working with Rallisport Challenge 2 and from there on it has been more or less Battlefield audio production to this date.

Basically the majority of the production time is spent on getting stuff to work. It was a constantly broken engine and the whole team really struggled to get that game done.

When we started making the sequel things were solid and we could focus on ideas and polish rather than technological struggles.

Even though the sound team working with Battlefield is isolated in sound studios we are very visible to the team and this time around the audio production was very much a part of the game team. We are actually THE department at DICE that pushes hard for cross disciplinary actions. Sound is extremely important to the studio and we have set high goals for ourselves.

DS: You already have a lot of sound material recorded and created for the previous Battlefield games. Did you use some of those sounds on Bad Company 2? How much new material was recorded?

SS: Every project needs new content. Even though we worked hard on keeping the identity from the previous game, the majority of the sounds for this game were re-designed from scratch. We did another huge gun recording outside LA together with several EA studios. We recorded a lot of new vehicles, foley and ambients for our winter themed levels as well.

SS: Yes this was a team effort. I was actually surprised by the amount of destructibility and how it well it played. There were a lot more sounds that needed to be done for destruction 2.0.

Let me explain. One of the first things we noticed in the internal multiplayer tests during production is that repetition and the patterns of iconic sounds are completely devastating to a believable soundscape. A gun shot might sound good when you design it and play it back in its own, but together with 50 other weapons and fired thousands and thousands of times you have to start thinking about all guns at the same time, and be very careful to treat them as individuals. All the weapons have to become one but still have identity, and they need to sit in the world.

We worked a lot with reflections layers and identity of place. We expanded on the way the weapons sounds in different environments going though urban, forests, canyons, open fields and indoor areas. It was key to build diversity on top of the identity of each weapon.

They share their footprint in the place they are fired, so in this way we could keep key signatures that built identity for specific weapons. The shared firing layers and reflections builds a believable homogenous lingering sound while the core weapon sound is there as a vital identity for players to identify.

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