Multimedia
Blogs
Forum
Affordable HD
Whitepapers
Newsletters
Events
Advertisers
DCP Directory
MillimeterWorkflow Evolution
Dec 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Dan Daley
As the tools for video-game audio get more sophisticated, the sound gets more complex and the workflow has to adapt.
Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment uses a combination of Perforce Software’s revision-control system and Firelight Technologies FMOD for audio control.
Server world
Large server systems — 4TB and up — are the norm for game developers. While audio will occupy only a portion of that cavernous digital space, it will still represent vast sound libraries as well as being the pool in which departments store and draw assets during development and where those assets are archived. Charles Deenen, senior audio director at the Electronic Arts Black Box development facility in Vancouver, British Columbia, says a single project will take up anywhere from 1TB upwards. “In the last year, with all new content for the next-gen titles, the storage needs were much larger,” he says.
The main workflow issues within the data tanks are management and control. All of Midway's locations use NetMix Pro, a cross-platform sound-library management software that enables users to search, audition, transfer, and manage sound effects and music files across the facilities' shared servers and out into the Internet. “The entire infrastructure between each city is linked by T3 lines, which give us about the same speed as ISDN lines,” says Schaefgen, who says that weapons sounds for both Blacksite: Area 51 and Stranglehold were both shuttled between facilities that way. The searches are keyword-enabled, so Schaefgen says it's critical that a uniform naming protocol for sounds be developed and implemented company-wide.
Both Midway and Cheyenne use Perforce Software's revision-control system, which has emerged as a key element in game-audio workflow. “The ability to mange multiple revisions of the same unit of information is crucial to getting a game done correctly and on time,” LaMartina says. Known generically as version control or source-code management, software such as Perforce registers and manages changes to files that are being used by a team of people by incrementing an associated number or letter code, termed the “revision number,” and associating it historically with the person making the change. Other features of the system include support for notifying users when a file has changed, branching and merging, database checkpoints, and integration with defect-tracking systems. The Perforce system is based on a client/server model with the server managing the collection of source versions in one or more data silos.
“Files can also be checked out like a library book, so only one person has the file at a time, make their edits, then return it to the system, which updates those changes — but, at the same time, never destroys the original,” LaMartina says. “You can always go back to the file you started with.”
