Pure Loading Time Patch

Audio Prototyping with Pure Data. Creating great audio for games requires successfully combining content and code.

Unfortunately, the sound designer/composer (hereafter referred to as . This, in turn, reduces the potential of game audio. To remedy this situation, we need a better flow of ideas between the disciplines of the audio programmer and the composer.

Even with great communication, however, the coder's time is often at a premium, which causes the audio to suffer as a result. This is especially true for smaller game companies which do not have a dedicated audio coder or a refined audio toolset. By putting more control in the composer's hands, the composer can test out ideas independent from the coder. Likewise, the more the composer learns about the control structures and methods to control content, the better informed and effective he will be at creating content. Advanced users of Pure Data could even construct a platform independent prototype sound driver linked to the game via MIDI or TCP/IP. The input intensities and volumes can be seen on Chart 1.

First, there is a steep learning curve for the composer to learn what is, in essence, a new discipline. Many composers won't find this learning process rewarding enough to continue past the difficult initial learning phase. Second, there is a problem that's widespread in the game development business: audio often plays second fiddle in games to areas including graphics, artificial intelligence and physics.

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As such, the more complicated the control structures for audio become, the more team members from other areas of the game become concerned about losing precious CPU cycles to audio. Often the most interesting audio possibilities require too much CPU horsepower, so a balance must be struck. If the audio team can demonstrate the prototype to the rest of the team early in the development cycle, they can lobby for more resources before decisions are set. In the end, if the composer is unable to learn the techniques for prototyping interactive audio, this task is likely better left to the coder. But even in that case, the goal is to have the composer drive the process. It is possible to use applications such as Reaktor by Native Instruments or Audio. Mulch by Ross Bencina, but these tools simply aren't flexible enough to implement more complex game audio behaviors.

I will concentrate on Pure Data rather than Max/MSP in this article, although they are functionally very similar. However, with some extra effort by the user, I believe Pure Data is a better choice for game audio development. Did I happen to mention it was free? Pure Data Tips and Tricks For Newbies. Make sure to turn on the DSP, otherwise you won't hear anything.

Use the SHIFT key when dragging on a number box to change it in fractional increments When working on a patch, it's often best to stay in edit mode and use the CTRL key to modify any parameters I still find symbols and lists confusing, so it's best to try to get these straight early on Use the right- mouse button on the canvas and select help to see a list of core Pure Data commands Use color- coding and clear arrangements to guide the user to elements which should be modified and hide parameters which shouldn't be modified in sub- patches Scan the web for new developments since extensions are being continuously added and modified Use comments and labels to keep things clear for yourself and others Save frequently and keep your archives organized for easy recovery Sequence events by using compound messages For easy reuse, make sure you label the inlets and outlets of abstractions and subpatches I commonly use an underscore at the start of my abstractions to flag them as being separate regular Pure Data objects. Pure Data (and its ilk) are interpreted languages which avoid the time spent recompiling when changes are made. They also allow the user to modify parameters and behaviors while the patch is running. This real- time feedback loop between modification and audition makes prototyping very rapid. However, nothing is perfect and there are a number of significant drawbacks which can cause problems during prototyping. One of the main problems with a modular programming environment such as Pure Data is that the order of operations, which one often takes for granted in a more procedural language such as C++, can become quite difficult with larger patches.

I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to get the parameters to initialize properly with the . Larger program patches also have a tendency to grow incomprehensible quite quickly (which I have tried to avoid in my example prototypes). However, through the diligent use of hiding complexity, splitting patches into logical subpatches and by making a clear user interface, this problem can be overcome. When you begin learning Pure Data, you should have a look at the tool's official web site, http: //pure- data. The program provides documentation and tutorials in the . Going through the tutorials is useful, but they can sometimes be confusing since they are often geared towards learning electroacoustic principles and the advanced uses of Pure Data instead of being geared towards the novice user.

The official website provides links to current developments in Pure Data and to related externals (extensions which others have coded). Another good source for current information is the Pure Data newsgroup at http: //www.

To become knowledgeable about Pure Data, it's best to read the official documentation, go through some of the tutorials, peruse the newsgroup and then dive in and start modifying the tutorial patches to find out how things really work. Once one is comfortable with the general workings of Pure Data, the example patches here can be explored and modified.

But games also require interactivity and real- time effects applied to the audio. When this occurs, game audio moves further away from its roots in linear media. Adaptive music requires the composer to create content which seamlessly transitions between a multitude of game states. Similarly, complex multi- sample speech stitching can spiral into an almost endless number of possible sentences, and getting such a system to sound good can be overwhelming. This category of audio attempts to simulate highly complex sounds, such as the roar of an entire crowd or the sound of a racing car engine. These sounds are made up of many dynamic parameters which modulate the audio content in real- time. With physical modeling and other synthesis methods it may even be possible to synthesize the sound entirely.

For the purposes of this article, I will use the term . The difficulty for the composer, is that the content must react well to many different kinds and combinations of modulation to maintain the illusion of the object it is attempting to simulate. In the following Pure Data section of the article, we'll examine four different prototype patches which address the issues of each of these four categories within game audio. These patches that correspond to the four game audio categories outlined above. The patches are meant to be working prototypes which can be further modified to suit the individual needs of the composer, or just to start learning about Pure Data. The idea is to begin by playing around with the patches and make some sound, understand how they work and eventually start modifying them to suit your own individual needs.

Alternatively, you can create new patches using these as a starting point. Usually one wants certain sounds to always stay loaded (e. The following Sample Bank patch ,which I have prototyped, reads all the sound effects contained in a spreadsheet and assigns them default values which can be applied to default volume, envelopes and any other desired parameters. Rather than construct a large number of array . This method is very similar to the way the sounds might actually be loaded and created in a compiled object- oriented language such as C++ for the game. For instance, they can be told to play as a one- shot sound or as a continuous loop as well as can change their pitch, and so on.

Through the use of messaging, multiple effects can be triggered and the resulting mix can be auditioned. This use of triggering multiple sounds with a single message can be thought of as sound macros or soundtags which would often otherwise be difficult to create using a sample editor or sampler. This patch allows the composer to generate and control composite sounds, such as player collisions, breaking glass and other more complex sound events by triggering multiple samples to produce a varied result each time. The size of the file is output from the . When an event is received the abstraction parses the event type and event parameter apart.

The drawback is that creating multiple versions of the sample generates extra overhead in the spreadsheet. The upside is that the system avoids issues of voices, or confusion over which instance of the sound to modify once the sound is playing. For example, if we trigger multiple tire squeal sounds using the same sample and want to control each sample's playback pitch, we know which sample we are controlling since each sample object has a different name. An improvement could be to define the maximum number of instances of a given object (instance capping) and have Pure Data create the appropriate objects and index them automatically. When implemented, it also wouldn't make much sense to have multiple versions of the same data, so this would need to be optimized as well. This is created by randomly triggering footstep samples with a small variation in delay time before the next sample is triggered.

This can be heard in the footsteps. Currently, the patch does not use a lot of the supplied parameters, including the . Likely there would be latentcy issues and other technical concerns but it would allow for multi- platform games to all trigger the same audio to make sure that the sound has been correctly coded on each platform.