Attention All You Bearded and Mustached Men of Marvel

Why? Just cuz!

GDC 2011: Game Audio Middleware

Coming to you Hot off the expo floor last week from this years GDC is a round up of distributed materials and public knowledge gleaned while Hot on the trail of the new Hotness in Game Audio Middleware. (HOT HOT HOT!) These sell sheets efficiantly summarize this years offerings from Firelight's FMOD and RAD Game Tools Miles. Always a step ahead of the curve, this info doesn't seem to have made it up on their respective websites yet, but that won't stop me from sharing them with YOU right NOW!

FMOD Studio Specifications and News Update

Miles Sound System 9

But that's not all true-believers, behind closed doors the interactive audio community was a-buzz. With new offerings from Gigantic Software (be sure to see the Ken Burns UI teaser on their site) and PSAI (Periscope Studio Audio Intelligence), good conversations with the teams at Audiokinetic and Firelight, and the technology on display throughout the sessions; you couldn't ask for a better barometer on the state of Game Audio.

For those of you just tuning in at home, the technical side of Game Audio is ALIVE and KICKING!
So many people working together to enable those of us in the industry who are constantly reaching for the magic button or hidden feature that will help to sell the interactive experience with sound.

Thanks to everyone working out there to make life easier and better sounding in games!

#GameAudioGDC Party Calendar #GDC #GDC2011

Time to get on the Merry-Go-Round.

These are the Game Audio related and otherwise GDC worthy events I know about. Got more? Post em up here or tweet em over to the #GameAudioGDC hash tag.

Can't wait to hear about the cool things people are doing with sound and interactive.
Looking  forward to seeing you all there!

Make sure you find me,
-lcl

Game Audio Relevance 007

February is upon us. I love looking back at a months worth of Game Audio links and seeing patterns in the static that filters through the #gameaudio twitter hashtag. This month finds some amazing resources: from Ben Houge who accidentally unearthed  a deluge of EndWar related media, fantastic synapses of the recent AES Conference from a fellow with his head firmly wrapped around the spirit of interactive, a deep dive into sound propagation inspired by a question posed by Dr. Karen Collins on the Project BBQ reflector, and some oldies but goodies dug up to help mark time in the weightless existence of winter.

Hard to believe that #GameAudioGDC is just around the corner, see you all there!

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Joe Cavers write-up of the AES Games Conference in London 
Day 1 - Day 2

Excellent simple animations to illustrate the complexity of how sound waves travels through space:
Wavefield Synthesis and Holophony: www.holophony.net

Intel - Interactive Geometric Sound Propagation and Rendering
1994: 3-D Sound for Virtual Reality and Multimedia
NASA Publications on audio, acoustics, etc by Durand Begault

Sound Propigation
Acoustics Primer
The Soundry

Top 20 Gaming Sound FX Video
Sander Huiberts: PhD thesis about audio - immersion - games

Isn’t being a Game Audio professional enough? –asks Christopher Hegstrom
Bleeps and Pops: Interactive Car Audio System
Interview with Firelight Technologies (FMOD) by Nathan Madsen
Creating Audio for the iPhone - by Nathan Madsen
[Interview] Guerrilla Games Senior Sound Designer Lucas van Tol
Audio and Gameplay: An Analysis of PvP Battlegrounds in World of Warcraft
How to Break into Game Audio from back in 2006
Oldie but goodie: Game Producer's Guide to Getting Along with Game Audio
Exclusive Interview with the Sound Design Team of "Mass Effect 2"

Unity Music Manager
Unity 3.0 Game Audio Features Previewed

New Post: Baiyon - LittleBigPlanet2
Interview with Little Big Planet 2 Audio Lead Kenny Young

iOS game sound best practices
Old School Mobile Audio Technology Explained - Mobile Audio Formats Roundup from 2004

Dead Space 2 's Creative Director Speaks Love the quote in this article about the Game Audio team!
A master of horror: Jason Graves talks Dead Space 2 music

"Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II" – Exclusive Interview with Brian Tibbetts and Damian Kastbauer
An interview with David Collins about his work on Star Wars video games

Slides from Ben Houge's EndWar Audio Post-Mortem
Ben Houge's EndWar audio page http://www.benhouge.com/endwar.html
The Sounds of War: Q&A with Ben Houge, Audio Director on EndWar
EndWar Podcast #1 - The Sound of EndWar w/ Ben Houge, the man behind the sounds

Director Chris Sweetman tells all about Brink's sound design and weapon audio
GDC 2011 announces Game Audio talks from Final Fantasy, Pixar, Gears of War3
Interview with Irrational Games' featured employee of the month, sound designer Pat Balthrop
Interview with Jordan Fehr: The sound of Super Meat Boy
The Sounds of Skyrim
Interesting article on async sound loading from Insomniac Games David Thall
New Blog Post: RESULTS: HOW DO YOU LISTEN TO YOUR MEDIA?
An interesting read: The year I gained the courage to ignore video game music
Article in Develop on Fable III and Dialogue production now also online
AudioMedia: Fable 3 – Dialogue of a Legend
Gryzor87’s How to use PXTone program to make your own game music
The Sound of “Medal of Honor”
The Next Leap Forward in Audio
GameAudio interview w/ IASIG Chair Steve Horowitz
More About the Sound of "James Bond 007: Blood Stone"
Edge 2010 Audio Design award

Dead Space 2 Hardcore unlocks Hand Cannon: uses voice, goes "Peew" like HL2 Mod

Wanna see an outtake from the 2006 Game Audio Jam @ GDC?

Ye, that's @TheMightyFatMan playing guitar case at the end!