A Gentlemen’s Game
About:
Blackjack
game in an old wild western theme, Main menu shows the outside of a saloon in a
desert town in the wild west, maybe have some tumbleweed rolling across the
menu in an animation, main menu soundtrack would be much louder than the in
game music.
Menu-
The main menu would feature two options “Play” and “Quit” in the centre
of the screen behind there would be an old western style saloon with
savannah/desert emptiness in the background some dead trees or plants would be
animated in the background. In the foreground there would be tumbleweed rolling
across the scene every now and then with a mini sand storm cover mask would
cover the screen briefly. The soundtrack would have an old western theme, with
distinguishable acoustic guitar and other western harmonic sounds.
In-game
While in-game the soundtrack would be
more quite than the main menu track, there are two types of music that could be
played in-game. The first is a grand piano sort of jingle, it would be edited
to make it feel as though it were in the room in-game this could be achieved by
using surround sound and having the main volume of the piano coming from a
certain direction. There would also be an old guitar and might be slightly
un-tuned to give it an old broken western feel. One way in which I can record
sound for the music is at home, I personally do not play guitar, however my I
could get my brother to make up a western piece. A piano would also be in the
track however it would be much quieter than the guitar sound. I could achieve
the piano sound with an electronic keyboard wired to a computer and could then
be edited in Adobe Audition.
Foley and other in-game sounds.
Other in-game sounds that would be
overlaid with the music would mostly be ambient sound such as people talking,
glasses ringing. On the main menu were the background is a saloon, there would
be the sound of tumbleweed rolling across the ground, this sound in particular
would be difficult to achieve, however a similar sound may be accomplishable
with shaking of bushes. Other sounds include desert wind howling this would be
very hard to obtain myself, as desert wind has a higher pitch sound that normal
wind you hear every day so this Foley would need to be found in online sound
libraries. Other menu Foley would be sounds being made for the clicking of
options such as ‘play’ and ‘quit’ these would be a simple clicking sound (which
could be achieved by a purposefully loud mouse click) which would be tweaked in
audition to achieve a deeper tone and lower frequency.
In-game Foley would be for the most
part the sound of cards being dealt which could be achieved with a normal set
of playing cards. My blackjack game would include wooden gambling chips but
would not look like the common coloured gambling chips of today, there would be
a sound for movement of the chips as well. Lastly I might consider adding a
edited voice of your actions, for example; when the player chooses to hit or
stand, the player or dealer (which in game the player would just be able to see
the bottom of his waist coat) would announce your actions. This is done in the
game Red Dead Redemption which is an action/adventure open world game set in
the closing days of the wild west, in the game, games such as blackjack and
poker can be played a lot of my ideas stem from the mood and atmosphere of the
in-game blackjack seen in Red Dead Redemption. It is also in this game where
the player himself calls out what is happening as they would do in real life.
This can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=D-aaeY_5Jok#t=41
Legal Considerations
For the main music I may have to get
short clips of guitar sound as I do not play guitar myself, However I do have
people available to me such as family members who would play a guitar piece for
the game, other than the music there is not many other legal considerations to
take for the sound of the game.
The sound was all recorded in garage band on a Mac, the sounds I recorded included random speeches that can be heard at random moments in the game such as “pour me a drink” This was done using just a Microphone and recording friends speech.
(To the left are voice recordings, and bellow shows the background music.)
The main background music was taken off from a sound library, and was edited in Adobe Audition by adding reverb, echo and other enhancements. I did think about using saloon piano music however I could not find any suitable for my game and none fit in with the style and felt a bit too fast paced. As well as adding effects to the music, I also added instruments to it including a slow pitch organ which was edited to fit the tone of the original music, I then fit the music in and lowered the frequency so it acted as a base instrument sound and is mostly constant through the entire track.
In game graphics.
