Village Gamer

Montreal – Ubisoft has announced that Assassin’s Creed II: Discovery App is now available for purchase ($9.99USD) in the iTunes App store. Assassin’s Creed II: Discovery is the first in a series of gaming franchises, from hard core to casual games, that Ubisoft plans to develop and publish for the App Store.  iPhone and iPod touch users are invited to discover an exciting chapter of the Assassin’s Creed II storyline. Players follow Ezio as he travels to 15th-century Spain to rescue fellow assassins being held under the guise of the Inquisition, only to uncover a Templar plot to sail west and discover the New World.

Vancouver – IUGO has just announced that Cliffed: Norm’s World is now available on the iTunes App Store, and it’s free. Cliffed: Norm’s World is the Lite version of the highly addictive title Cliffed ($1.99USD), and allows players to experience  unlimited game play as the Cliffed character Norm. This lite version also allows for full-featured multiplayer experiences.

Edmonton – Another special on iTunes involves Bioware’s Mass Effect 2. Dark Horse Comics will be releasing Mass Effect Redemption #1 for free for one day only, on February 3. After the initial 24 hour period, Redemption #1 will then sell for $0.99USD. Redemption #2 is also scheduled for release in comic book stores on February 3. In Redemption #2, Liara T’Soni searches Omega — the most dangerous space station in the galaxy — for clues that could save humanity’s greatest hero, Commander Shepard. Redemption #1 is also included in the Collector’s Edition of Mass Effect 2.

Vancouver – Relic has released some early looks at the Chaos multiplayer units for the upcoming Dawn of War II: Chaos Rising. Head over to the Relic Blog to get a closer look at the Space Marines, Havocs and Heretics who have fallen to the Dark gods of Chaos. Relic also recently released the full soundtrack for Company of Heroes, which is available for free on the game’s Steam page, where you can also purchase all three Company of Heroes titles for a special packaged price of $49.99USD.

Vancouver – Absolute® Software Corporation has launched Absolute Manage, the rebranded version of the Company’s recently-acquired cross-platform IT asset management solution. The new solution from Absolute complements its Computrace® family of data security, tracking and theft recovery solutions with full-featured computer life-cycle management capabilities.

Absolute Manage, formerly LANrev, provides organizations with an easy and automated way to manage PC and Mac® computers, as well as iPhone® devices, from a single interface. IT administrators using Absolute Manage can efficiently manage all their assets by automating time-consuming IT processes such as software distribution, patch management, asset inventory and imaging. Additionally, it helps organizations save money by allowing them to track installed applications and licenses, redeploy under-used licenses and hardware to maximize inventory, and avoid non-compliance fines. The MSRP for a standalone one-year license is $24.95 USD.

Some of the capabilities of Absolute Manage include the following:

- Application & License Management – Deploy software and manage licenses across the network.

- Security, Change & Configuration Management – Remotely monitor and adjust configurations, and execute files.

- Automated Patch Management – Centrally manage and install patches, and report on patch status for all managed systems.

- Computer Imaging – Install a complete OS plus all standard applications onto Mac computers while in use or just out of the box.

- Power Management – Comply with green initiatives and lower total cost of ownership by remotely enforcing power saving policy profiles.

- Asset Inventory – Collect hardware and software data points from devices over the network and analyze the information for timely and fact-based asset management decisions.

Calgary – ICEsoft™ Technologies, Inc. has announced the release of ICEpdf 4.0, an open source PDF rendering technology for Java.

ICEpdf is a lightweight Java rendering library that can be easily integrated within any Java-based client application or deployed on a server in headless mode as a PDF Servlet (JSP or JSF). ICEpdf is ideal for providing PDF viewing and navigation as well as PDF content conversion and extraction without the hassles of Java-to-native integration issues.

This latest version of ICEpdf contains numerous product improvements, bug fixes, and is now capable of:

* PDF document editing and saving for Link Annotation edits.
* Text selection and clipboard actions.
* The search API has been completely revamped allowing for search result highlighting, and more.

“Since ICEpdf was open sourced 8 months ago, the product has experienced unprecedented adoption”, says Robert Lepack”, VP of Marketing and Business Development at ICEsoft. “This latest release of ICEpdf adds important new features and capabilities that our customers, as well as community members, have been asking for.”

Ottawa – Fuel Industries has produced a very nice way to say Merry Christmas to all of their friends, and they’ve done such a great job I wanted to share their efforts with all of our readers. Designer Alyssa Munaretto, Producer Braden Brailey, Rob Plowman (Director, Fuel Sounds) and Nick Ianniti (Director of Communications) got together and recorded three Christmas songs for our listening pleasure. The tracks are downloadable, so you can add them to your Christmas playlist. Thank you and Happy Holidays to everyone over at Fuel!

Edmonton – Bioware has added some very cool Dragon Age: Origins clothing to the XBL Avatar Store – players can now dress their Avatars in DAO t-shirts and hats, available in three styles. Now if they would just release the Return to Ostagar DLC expansion on XBL…

Vancouver - The Innovation Camp organizers have announced the dates and location for their next workshop series – Innovation Camp 3. Taking place at Discovery Parks (887 Great Northern Way) in Vancouver, the first Innovation Camp of 2010 will occur on the following dates:

• Tuesday, January 26, 6:30pm to 9:30pm
• Thursday, January 28, 6:30pm to 9:30pm
• Saturday, January 30, 10:00am to 6:00pm

Participants will spend their Camp time practicing techniques to generate new ideas and expanding upon those ideas in order to accomplish a shared goal such as creating a product or completing a project/challenge. There are no lectures, just engaging activities that facilitate learning, interaction and growth. Registration is now open, and at only $150.00 (including sandwiches, fruit and tea, coffee & juice), Innovation Camp offers great value to its participants. I’ve heard plenty of good things about the Camp, so if you have the opportunity to participate, I’d say give yourself a great Christmas present by registering today.

Vancouver – IUGO Mobile Entertainment has put many of their great titles on sale – visit the iTunes App Store and pick up a few – or all – of them and get many hours of fun and challenge for very little money. Sounds like a good return on investment to me!

Guelph – Stir Fry Games has announced that an update for SFG Soccer is now available on XBL. The following changes will be automatically applied next time you sign in and start up the game:

• Hard Difficulty Setting
• Team & Player Stat tracking
• Ability to Edit Any Team
• Use your Custom Teams in Exhibition Matches
• Golden Boot Award
• League leaders section
• and some bug fixes

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Montreal – Audiokinetic Inc., the leading audio solution provider for the video game industry, announced today a long-term agreement with award-winning game development studio, High Voltage Software. As part of this agreement, High Voltage is granted an unlimited license of Wwise, Audiokinetic’s renowned audio pipeline solution.

Founded in 1993, High-Voltage’s reputation is well established with over 75 shipped titles including The Conduit, Ben 10: Protector of the Universe, Dora the Explorer: Dora Saves the Snow Princess, and Hunter: The Reckoning. The studio is recognized by its peers for developing high-quality titles on all current platforms.

High Voltage first licensed Wwise in 2007, for an undisclosed project. Since then, the studio’s positive experience with Wwise led it to seek a closer, more durable relationship with Audiokinetic; hence the unlimited license. “World class audio is a critical component to creating compelling and competitive games. After working with Wwise, it became apparent that working with such a sophisticated and comprehensive cross-platform solution was something that we wanted to continue doing in a more permanent capacity,” said Eric Nofsinger, Chief Creative Officer for High Voltage Software.

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Edmonton – Award-winning composer Inon Zur has composed the original score for BioWare’s upcoming title Dragon Age™: Origins. Zur has been lauded for the emotional musical compositions he crafted for some of the most critically acclaimed video games including Baldur’s Gate II: Throne of Bhaal, Crysis, Fallout 3 and Prince of Persia. The dramatic score for Dragon Age: Origins will be performed live at A Night in Fantasia 2009 on September 26 at the Sydney Entertainment Centre in Australia.

The ‘Night in Fantasia 2009′ concert will feature the Eminence Symphony Orchestra, a mind-blowing choir, special guest performers and a score of popular tracks from video games including Dragon Age: Origins. Vocalist Aubrey Ashburn, singer and co-writer of the Dragon Age: Origins Elvish ballad “I Am the One,” will be performing selections from the game soundtrack by Inon Zur.

With a powerful original score recorded by the acclaimed Northwest Sinfonia Orchestra, Inon Zur’s dramatic soundtrack to Dragon Age: Origins is the perfect complement to the game’s epic, cinematic qualities, full of soaring melodies and lush, emotional orchestrations. The official soundtrack for Dragon Age: Origins will be available to purchase and download online from popular music sites when the game ships on November 3, 2009, while selected tracks from the soundtrack will be included in the Dragon Age: Origins Collector’s Edition.

The soundtrack is a collaboration between composer Inon Zur, vocalist Aubrey Ashburn and BioWare Audio Director Simon Pressey. The creative team will be presenting their work during a panel at the Hollywood Music in Media Interactive Conference on November 20-22, 2009, at the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel.

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I speak to this from my own experience, and hope that it may be helpful to other audio designers and game aficionados all around.

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Audio is an integral part of a video game. In fact, even a simple score can create a very large impact. Take the classic: Space Invaders. The music is 4 tones, but is considered by many to have one of the most successful scores.

1978
Space Invaders
Midway imports Space Invaders from Taito. A great example of simple, effective sound design, Space Invaders owes a large part of its appeal to its menacing, paranoia-inducing soundtrack. Not music per se, the thumping audio track actually accelerates in tempo as the enemy invaders draw nearer (and move faster). The effect: sweat, panic, and increased blood pressure in a generation of gamers.
From “A History of Video Game Music” on http://www.gamespot.com/features/6092391/p-2.html
As the music speeds up, so too does the heart rate of the player; this is so much so, that if one plays Space Invaders with the TV on mute,  s/he will find the game to be much easier. (give it a try! PLAY HERE).
Clearly audio has a great role to play, even on the most basic levels. Audio plays a very visceral role in game immersion and great audio will enhance your game, bringing it to the next level.

So now that the WHY is covered, we will move on to the HOW.

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Using an in-house audio provider will surely create a tighter product as the audio designer is involved in and surrounded by all aspects of the game. Of course, budgets do not always allow for in-house audio, and so many game companies choose to farm out the audio to a wide slew of providers of which I am one.

From environmental sound design and SFX to custom compositions and interactive scores, there are many types of audio assets that will add to a game. What all these types of audio have in common is they are all best approached through the five guidelines below.

1) Bring the audio designer into the game development cycle early.

Audio is often thought of as something that can be dropped in last minute, and as an audio person myself, I can often tell this to be the case when playing the finalized game. If the audio provider was brought in early, s/he can give many creative ideas of how to use the audio in a game to not only react to the game, but even advance the story (such as interactive music that gives feedback to the player letting them know they are moving in the right direction). If the audio designer is made aware of the story and game mechanics nearer to the beginning of the production cycle, a more interactive, interesting, and polished sound track can be created.

2) Relate some examples of what you like via links/samples.

Producers, programmers, artists and audio designers are not always speaking the same “language.” If a producer is looking for a sound to be more “sad“, I can easily modify the sound to be so; yet, descriptions are not often that simple. The complications arise when words of more depth are thrown around, or

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After 4 days of seminars and networking events, I was beat. But, boy was it worth it.

Day 1

The first day was devoted almost entirely to the Casual Connect Leadership Conference organized and supported by Women In Games International (WIGI) and Women In Games Vancouver (WIGeh). Numerous speakers presented a variety of topics, each with a particular interest in the role that women play in games, games play in the lives of women, and the portrayal of women in games.

As a person interested in the breakdown of stereotypes, thus allowing everyone’s true potential to shine, I was very engaged in the presentations of the day, which in the end left me feeling very hopeful and empowered about the potential of gaming.

Not long after, a set of roundtable discussions were set up with a variety of topics ranging from working as a contract vs employed worker, owning a small business, and moving up in the games industry.

A networking event followed with the inclusion of other folks from a more general Casual Connect audience, and it was a great night!

Highlight of my day: Megan Gaiser of Her Interactive’s presentation on “The Importance of Leadership”

Day 2 (Day 1 of Casual Connect officially)

Audio day! The entire day had an option to hear speakers who are professionals in the audio for casual games environment. Great ideas were shared including a glimpse into how other professionals create their sound design assets. It was entertaining, welcoming, and I learned a great deal. Speakers covered a wide range of aspects including the creation of stings, sfx, composition, recording, and producing. I would recommend this to any person interested in the audio for casual games arena. A very cohesive day in the audio stream.

Highlight of my day: Barry Dowsett of Sound Rangers on “The Birth and Life of a Sound Effect”
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Toronto – eMixEngine officially announces the successful launch of their new music mixing service. eMixEngine.com launched on June 12, 2009 to great fanfare and success as it introduces a revolutionary way for budding musicians, bands, and singers to have their music mixed and mastered by industry leading professionals in a highly affordable manner. Before eMixEngine people either had to try to do it at home themselves, and could never get the quality results, and great sound that professionals could deliver, or they had to pay expensive recording studio fees. Now music artists all around the world have a 3rd option. They can record their tracks themselves, and have industry leading professionals make it sound world class.

eMixEngine CEO, Lawrence Tepperman, believes that the market is ripe for this industry changing business model. There are over 11 million bands and musicians on MySpace alone and now that iTunes enables budding musicians to upload their music for sale right on its site, it is clear than music has become democratized…everyone can chase the dream, and they don’t need an agent, middlemen, or have to pay expensive recording studios. With eMixEngine these artists can sound like chart topping bands while typically spending less than $25 per band member on average to do so.
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Richmond Hill – Sound Ideas, a Brian Nimens company, has launched a new dedicated download service which offers royalty free music tracks along with production elements and sound effects. While Sound Ideas offers over 200 distinct collections to broadcast, post-production and multimedia facilities worldwide, the new StockMusic.com site will focus on the online purchase and download delivery of Sound Ideas products as well as products from other sources.

Speaking about the new service, Sound Ideas President Brian Nimens stated that “”Our clients are making more use than ever of the instant access that the Internet provides for studio production work. With that in mind, I decided to take the plunge and make the vast collection of Sound Ideas music, production elements and sound effects available for download.”

“StockMusic.com will keep pace with Sound Ideas new releases, but will also carry music that is not available from Sound Ideas,” Nimens added. “By mid 2009, there will be more than 90,000 audio clips available for download through StockMusic.com.”

Montreal – Audiokinetic® and Emergent™ have teamed up to provide the video game industry’s only cross-platform, multi-genre development system that fully addresses the audio needs of programmers, game designers, artists and sound designers by including Wwise right out of the box with every Gamebryo® LightSpeed™ license. The flexibility of LightSpeed’s core technology allows the art of game development to easily evolve across every function of development.

Audiokinetic’s Wwise offers audio programmers and sound designers a complete audio authoring tool with a powerful sound engine, greatly improving workflow while pushing the limits of sound design. Coupled with LightSpeed, Wwise allows developers to audit, profile, and modify sounds in real-time within the current build of the game. This new bundle further simplifies workflow by allowing designers and artists to generate and iterate on any type of asset during all phases of development without recompiling. Content creation is sped up and programmers are free to devote their efforts to game?specific tech for new kinds of gameplay instead of adding and tweaking game content.
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New effect plug-ins to be available for Wwise

Montreal/San Francisco – Audiokinetic Inc. and McDSP announced today that they have entered a technical partnership. As part of this agreement, McDSP will develop plug-ins for Wwise, Audiokinetic’s audio pipeline solution.

Audiokinetic is the leading audio solution provider for the video game industry. Its flagship product, Wwise, revolutionizes the traditional game audio development process and allows users to audit, profile, and modify sounds in real-time within the game itself.

McDSP, a California-based software company, has been providing high-quality effect plug-ins for the last 10 years. Products like ML4000 (Multi-band Dynamics and Mastering Limiter) and Revolver (Flexible Convolution Reverb) reflect the company’s reputation of excellence, and have won several industry awards. Until now, McDSP plug-ins were available for Pro Tools only, and targeted the film and music industry.

As part of the partnership with Audiokinetic, McDSP will provide Wwise users with a selection of effect plug-ins, which will be accessible directly in Wwise’s user interface. Details about the plug-ins that will be available, as well as licensing particulars will be made public shortly; the plug-ins will be available in Wwise later in 2009.
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Vancouver/San Francisco – The next generation of video games are wowing gamers with unprecedented high def graphics and gameplay that pushes the boundaries of what the new systems have to offer. An exciting new technology now promises to bring game audio to the next level as well. At this year’s Game Developers Conference, DTS Inc will educate developers on their cutting edge DTS Neural Surround Sound technology that enables games to present real-time, discrete 7.1 soundtracks on the Wii, Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and via PC.

“Our goal is to give developers the audio tools to help them create gaming experiences more immersive than ever before,” says Mark Tuffy, Director of Business Development, Interactive Media at DTS. “With our DTS Neural Surround technology, games will deliver true 360 degree gaming for the first time ever. The potential here for what sound does in a game is almost limitless.”

By using existing technology built into the systems, DTS Neural Surround is able to convert the 5.1 signal into a true 7.1 surround experience. Whether the signal is digital or analog, DTS Neural Surround is able to convert the sound into rich, fully immersive 7.1 channel surround sound. Now, when gamers hear something creeping up behind them, the sound will really be there.

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New SoundSeed module will generate wind and “swoosh” sounds

Montreal/San Francisco GDC – Today at the Game Developers Conference, Audiokinetic Inc., the leading audio solution provider for the video game industry, unveiled SoundSeed Air, the new module of the SoundSeed product family.

SoundSeed is a family of interactive sound generators for game audio. It uses innovative digital sound processing (DSP) technology to create varied, hence highly immersive, audio environments, while keeping runtime memory usage and recording costs at a minimum.

SoundSeed Air is the latest addition to the SoundSeed family. This new module involves two source plug-ins. The first one is called “Wind” and generates dynamic and never-repeating ambiances while the second one, “Swoosh” produces short air displacement effects such as sword slashing or dragon wings flaps.

As SoundSeed Air is a pure parametric synthesis technology it does not require wave files and it has the potential to produce hours of none-repeating ambiances using virtually no runtime memory.

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Montreal – Audiokinetic Inc., the leading audio solution provider for the video game industry, announced today that its audio pipeline solution, Wwise®, will be used in the development of EVE Online, the critically-acclaimed massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) developed by the award-winning virtual world developer CCP.

EVE Online is a science fiction-based MMOG in which over a quarter of a million players inhabit a vast, persistent world as starship pilots in pursuit of fame, wealth and glory. First launched in 2003, the latest free expansion, EVE Online: Apocrypha, was released on March 10, 2009. Noted for its fervent use of cutting edge technology, CCP’s server architecture makes large-scale fleet battles a reality, with upwards of one thousand participants engaged in epic conflicts for control of resources and strategic regions of space.

Sound plays an important role in the immersion factor for these intergalactic gladiators. There were numerous advantages to having Wwise tools available to the CCP Audio team during the development phase for Apocrypha as described by Audio Director Baldur Baldursson.

“Ease of use was one of the key factors in our decision to choose Audiokinetic over other middleware solutions we tested,” said Baldursson. “Audiokinetic seems very serious in creating powerful tools that actually work for sound designers and musicians. We were able to focus on designing the sounds themselves instead of having to worry about technology issues – and integrating the actual sounds was fun.”
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Markham ON – MAGIX, a leader in multimedia software, leverages Dolby technology within their premium products to the market. MAGIX has incorporated Dolby’s award winning technology, Dolby® Digital 5.1 Creator, into its own award winning software, Video Editing Software Movie Edit Pro and its professional video editing software Professional Video Editing Software - Video Pro X.

Dolby Digital 5.1 Creator maintains audio fidelity while preserving valuable disc space to allow for sharper picture quality or longer recording time. Dolby Digital 5.1 is crucial for the truly amazing audio creation in MAGIX video editing software tools. Users are able to create professional surround effects with Dolby Digital 5.1 Creator surround creator, so MAGIX included it in a number of their key products for people to create real surround sound with channel control and live mixing.

“Dolby Digital 5.1 Creator brings brilliant surround cinema sound to your DVDs or Blu-ray Discs. We are happy to work together with Dolby, the leader in multi-channel sound processing. This truly makes Video Pro X and Movie Edit Pro powerful video and audio editing tools.” says Senior Product Manager Video at MAGIX, Sven Kardelke.

MAGIX continues to work closely with Dolby technology to deliver professional tools to its customers and ensure the highest fidelity experience.

Wwise to be integrated into Epic’s Unreal Engine 3

Montreal - Audiokinetic Inc. and Epic Games, Inc. have announced that Wwise, the industry’s leading audio pipeline solution, is now integrated with Epic’s Unreal Engine 3 (UE3), the number one game engine for cross-platform game development. As a member of Epic’s exclusive Integrated Partners Programme (IPP), Audiokinetic provides a complete integration that will allow developers and publishers licensing UE3 to easily integrate Wwise into their development pipeline.

Wwise is a complete audio pipeline solution that features the tight integration of an advanced audio authoring tool and a robust sound engine. Designed for next-generation platforms, Wwise aims to revolutionize the traditional game audio development process and allows users to audit, profile, and modify sounds in real-time within the game itself. Wwise is presently being used in the development of 85 titles, a significant percent of which are powered by UE3.
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