Everyone's impressed by Battlefield 1's photo-realistic rendering, and awesome gameplay about WWI but did you know people worked their butts off just to get the sound effects right? In-game sounds are an underdog when it comes to gaming and many people take it for granted. Yet, when the sounds are a bit off, people would notice right away.
Battlefield 1, though set in the First World War, still has a ton of guns to accurately cover for in terms on sound effects and the guys recording it had to go beyond the traditional material substitution and conventional microphones. For them, "more is more", as explained by Bence Pajor - Battlefield 1 audio director.
"We focus 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!"
Battlefield games have been well taken cared of, in terms of sound quality, by EA DICE and recently a dialogue with the team behind the astonishing sound effects for the recent Battlefield 1. You can read all about it here.
Recording Gun Shots
One of the key parts that stole my interest is how they recorded the guns for Battlefield 1 that are already vintage and some may not be able to operate due to age. In the interview, they get to try as many of them as possible, except for the ones that do not function anymore. They do not just use the studio for recording the guns being shot but also utilize environments such as urban areas, mountains, forests, and other places guns were being fired during World War I. Then they shoot the guns at different distances from the microphone, recording as much range as possible then dynamically apply them to the video game, which is pretty awesome.
Although the EA DICE sound team is very peculiar about the distances and actual guns to be recorded, they have devised a clever way to lighten up the work load on recording by categorizing guns by action and barrel length, which they probably have formulated throughout years of experience. When recording, they usually utilize stereo setups, and then record the gunshots in many coordinates as possible.
Not Just Guns
The team also records Dynamic Weather which is a huge challenge. The purpose of the recordings was to make the players feel that they are actually in the battle zone when they close their eyes and listen to environment noise.
At this point, I thought that it would be so much fun to record stuff for games. I've experienced it myself, it's not easy, you have to setup everything, then make sure there's no static stuff going on. Then comes repetitive recording on what's needed. After that, you seep through the recordings and pick what's best to use. Then, the game is being play-tested to a bunch of critics. Rinse, and repeat. Pretty fun, right? But seriously creating sound effects for games is hard work.
