Racing games: HOW?

Question

Hello dear sound friends,

I'm currently working on the sound of a IPhone game that has both Bike and Car races. It's a very simple game and my structure here wouldn't allow a recording session as guys in, let's say, Need for Speed usually do LOL The guy working here before me did something that doesn't sound that great but works. He created 6 files with synthetic noises that have different pitches according to the velocity of the bike. And also he created the transition files that we hear when we speed up or down the bike (same synthethic sounds, just gradually pitching).

Now I need to improve it. And my resources are poor. What would be the easiest way to do something a lil bit decent? I'd like to work with this multiple files thing too, but I'm having tons of trouble doind the perfect loops when I use real sounds. And how could I use the speed changed within it?

Help?

Thank you!

Answer 1

Sounds like a crap way to do it compared to what can be done with proper audio middleware or a programmer who's willing and capable of coding the audio API they're using so that it can do cross-fades and pitch shifting for the car audio.

For example FMOD has a car engine example done with looping samples, crossfades and volume curves and pitch shifting. And it's like the bare minimum way I'd like to work on car audio myself, because the tools for doing it that way exist and it can sound great.

If you need to go that same route as the original guy, then I'd get good samples to start with. If you can't get them to loop even with pitch correction and balancing the volume and changes in frequency balance, then the samples are unusable. You might even find some packs that have ready loops (even at different RPMs). Then it should be rather straightforward to do the transition files using pitch shifting and/or granular synthesis.

And well, if the car sound doesn't need to be realistic then different types of car/engine-like sounds can be created with samplers using loop points and pitch shifting, synthesizers and granular synthesis.

Answer 2

Do you know this? Crankcase Audio's REV‎.

Look at this : Introduction to REV Video