Sound Design for Derelict

Derelict Alpha was just released yesterday, I downloaded it shortly after midnight and began playing my way through (slowly, because I’m terrible at games).  Even though I’ve worked on the game it was just as exciting for me because I hadn’t played it since the beta which didn’t have my sounds or music in, and theres been a lot of other changes too.

A huge congratulations to ERIC HOGAN on finishing this big project.  Erik is a talented indie game designer from Auckland NZ and he has developed Derelict in his spare time over the last 9 months.  You can download Derelict for free from his website.

Notes on sound design for Derelict.

I came into this project as it was nearing completion, there were already a lot of sounds in the game from various soundbanks, and already three tracks of music from the other musicians Samuel Gavin, Edward Clombe, and Bill Norris.  I wrote two additional tracks and began working on the sound effects.

One of my favorite effects is the sound the teleport module makes in the game.  The teleport looks like a cylindrical blue forcefield, and monsters are transported onto the ship through them. I created the sound for these by plugging an instrument lead into my recording interface, and moved my thumb about on the hot end creating sounds like electrical hum.  Then I just chucked in a little phaser, a touch of reverb and that was it.

The sounds the monsters make in the game were a lot of fun to do.  I used my Digitech Vocal300 vocal effects processor to pitch shift the signal down and my old reliable Audix OM2 dynamic mic.  Just recorded snarling and lurking and scary breathing all pitched down, again a touch of reverb to replicate the sound of a big deserted spaceship.

The footsteps were the most challenging sound for me.  Because these sounds were recorded at home not in a studio to keep the budget down as this is not a commercial project, keeping out the background noise was a bit of an issue.  Especially when weather is involved.  But if it’s not weather it’s dogs barking, neighbors mowing the lawn, or people driving past.  In the end, I found the best way for me was to use a dynamic mic instead of my condenser, and to manually silence all the sound between the footsteps.  The dynamic mic was a tough choice because I had to get it much closer to my feet for the recording than I had my condenser, so it was tricky to walk realistically in one spot while being careful not to kick the microphone or tread too hard so that vibration traveled up the mic stand into the mic.  All in all, I’m reasonably happy with how the footsteps came out.

Here are the music tracks I wrote for Derelict.