[Regina Buenaobra]

Hey everyone,

James Ackley, our Audio Director, was super interested in the conversation here, so we wanted to post a few responses and insights into what our Audio Team has in store for audio in Guild Wars 2. I think many people might be excited about this behind-the-scenes look into what the team does, so without further ado:

“I, for one, love footsteps in games and listening to my character run and such. I'd like this to stay in GW2.”

We’ll not only be keeping footsteps in Guild Wars 2, we’re putting an amazing amount of time and energy into them! The footsteps were one of the first things we tackled. Here’s how we did it.

From very early on, sound designer Drew Cady and I knew that an MMO the size of Guild Wars 2 was going to need a ton of sounds. We didn’t want to take the brute force approach and just make a new sound for everything - that requires an extraordinary amount of assets and it just kills memory both on disk and to be loaded in RAM. So we started talking about how to create sounds procedurally. Drew came up with an amazing system that is fully working now. It sounds amazing and has taken a lot less time and assets to create.

Every footstep in Guild Wars 2 is made up of three sounds: heel, toe and spray (spray is the kick of your toe, mostly only made with loose surfaces and running). With this set-up, each of those three sounds gets its own random parameters, so you never feel like you are hearing the same footsteps over and over. Using Drew’s system, we get these incredible results but keep the total memory footprint in check.

“I also would like something like DA:O in that when you are running, you can hear your armor clanging and making it not sound as if the character can't tell if he's wearing a robe or 90 lb armor. (My opinion btw) “

Just as with footsteps, we’re doing a lot of procedural creation with the foley/movement sounds in Guild Wars 2. Not only will you hear the sound of your armor, but as you add or subtract armor you’ll hear that, and depending on the type and size of your armor, you’ll also hear differences. Our audio implementer Ron Perry has done a wonderful job working his creative magic, connecting all the sound scripting systems and animations to make Drew’s crazy ideas actually work.

“More ambient sounds and environmental sounds as well, as when you're at the beach, there are seagulls and waves going through the tides. “

Don’t worry about this! If we’re going to as much trouble with the footsteps as we are, I’m sure you can assume the level of detail we’ll have in the ambiences.

“Basically more sounds and effects in GW2 and character sounds. Thanks”

Drew and I agreed that we wanted Guild Wars 2 to be as full of sounds as possible, never leaving you wondering where the “world” went. Just because you aren’t in the middle of a huge battle doesn’t mean the world around you has gone away, from a sound perspective. On the other hand, we definitely didn’t want to create a world so full of sounds that once you do end up in a town or battle, the cacophony just makes you want to turn the sounds off. So we’re working on a very complex mixing system that we hope will not only solve this problem, but will help you focus on the important sounds and make you a better player.

I’ve included some pictures of our team out collecting sounds so you can see how important the sound in Guild Wars 2 is to us.

Getting ocean and wind sounds: http://www.flickr.com/photos/arenanet/4290640301/

Recording animal sounds: http://www.flickr.com/photos/arenanet/4290640321/

Winter sounds: http://www.flickr.com/photos/arenanet/4290640335/

Handmade shoes for footstep sounds: http://www.flickr.com/photos/arenanet/4290640349/

Electrical sounds: http://www.flickr.com/photos/arenanet/4291380008/

"Braveheart" sword: http://www.flickr.com/photos/arenanet/4290640383/

Control room at foley stage: http://www.flickr.com/photos/arenanet/4291380060/

Hope you enjoyed that peek into sounds in Guild Wars 2.