sonofableep

i seem to have a lot of posts that follow the format “ah, i remember when… / so, nowadays…”  or sometimes the other way ’round.  so in that fine tradition…

ah, i remember when.  working at Kesmai with a relatively small team of a few dozen folks, there were two ways of getting your pet feature (or desperately needed functionality) into the game.  The Right Way – having an approved design, getting your tech docs in order, getting implementation on the schedule, and let engineering take its course.  and The Ninja Way – ascertaining the programmer’s favorite scotch, procuring a bottle, and presenting said bottle in exchange for getting the work done after hours (and not while consuming the scotch…that part is key).

so, nowadays.  we’ve got a pet feature that we want to get in, and we’re really psyched on it.  thing is, Zenimax is a much bigger studio, working on much bigger projects, with much bigger development processes.  almost everything has to be done The Right Way.  it’s much harder (and more frowned upon) to do stuff The Ninja Way.  loose cannons are bad for well-oiled machines, to mix my metaphors.  but our pet feature is of such a nature that one almost has to see the finished version in the game to be convinced it even belongs on the feature list.  that is, we have to get it done before we can get it started – the best way to build momentum for design approval is to actually show the damn thing to people.  holy catch-22, batman.

hm.  what’s even more stealthy than a Ninja?

being a bit reflective in the wake of my recent birthday, i’ve been looking back and taking stock.  not about the choices i’ve made in this life or anything heady like that.  but at stuff like this.

what the hell is that, you ask?  that, my friends, is audio implementation in the era before FMOD or Wwise.  that…is Windows “notepad” as middleware.  this is the file that controlled all the audio in Kesmai’s BattleTech 3025, our only “tool” for talking to the Miles Sound System underneath it.

go ahead, read through it and try and make some sense of it.  it took me a minute too, and i came up with the damn thing (though it *was* a decade ago).  let’s see what high-powered functionality we managed to drive with our text editor…

• various sound object definitions: single sounds, random sound groups, and start-loop-stops.
• sound object parameters that could have discrete values or value ranges set, including: sample rate, volume, pan, and offset time.
• attenuation distances.
• priority groups, and their sound cutoff behaviors (new overrides old vs. old trumps new).
• meta-sounds that could reference one or more of the above and override their parameters (ie crude scripting).
• a change log!  haha.

of course all this stuff is in any decent audio middleware package these days.  but i thought it was pretty spiffy at the time.  DIY, BITCHES!

so it’s 1997 and i’m working on MMOs at Kesmai and thinking i’ve pretty much got the whole “this is what MMO audio is all about” thing figured out.  after five years of that i start working on DAoC, and i look back at my Kesmai time and see just how much i still had to learn.  how quaint, all those simple little games with their simple little audio designs!  but *now*, i’ve got it all sussed out, yeah?

another five years and as many DAoC expansions go by, and i start working on Warhammer Online.  i now realize that my DAoC experience was just the tip of the iceberg – there’s so much to this game audio-wise that Camelot never had (much less the Kesmai games)!  but this…*this* time i am surely master of all things MMO audio, right?

a few more years pass and i’m working on my next project, and it i see once again that i *still* have not been to the highest mountain.  there are new aspects of audio in the MMO gamespace with which i’ve not dealt.  and there is still room for aspects with which i am familiar to expand in scope dramatically or be improved upon.  so…uh…when this one is done, will i at last be all knowing, all powerful?  or at some point in the midst of the *next* next project will i look back at 2010, shake my head and smile and think, “if i had only known”?

i think i may never get there.  that “highest mountain” just keeps getting higher and higher every year.  and if it didn’t – if i did manage to summit someday – i wonder if this job might become just the tiniest bit…ulp…boring?

(yeah right)

i’m sitting here looking at the “career day” form i’m supposed to fill out if i’m to speak at my kids’ elementary school.  given the chance to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with doctors and lawyers and such, and come off as the Cool Dad Who Makes Video Games, i have to say it sounds like fun.  but as to what i’d actually say in such a situation…hm.  let me review the steps of my particular career path and see how they fare as an example to others…

++++++++

i go to college and start majoring in whatever all the other sheep are majoring in: “business”, in this case.

i fuck that up righteously as DRINKING and ROCKING OUT in local bands takes priority.  i get a 0.9 GPA one semester.  i drop out for the next semester in order to “regroup” (read: “drink and play NES all day”).

now fully regrouped, i start working towards a music major.  that makes sense, at least.

still playing video games and ROCKING OUT, i discover the computer-as-musical-instrument.  unbeknownst to me, a seed is planted.

i stumble across the finish line, graduating with a music major and no life plan other than to continue being a musician living at the poverty line.

i discover that if i enter the graduate music program, a) it will be on a full scholarship, and b) i’ll get *paid* to be a TA.  i begin my Masters In Electronic Composition ™ program solely to support my lifestyle as a slacker-drummer.

once again, my inability to adhere to the norms of the academic life jeopardize my future, as i miss & fail classes with alarming regularity…so much so that at one point one of my professors puts out an APB on me, asking other students, “if anybody has seen brad, or knows if he’s still taking this class…”.

i stumble across the finish line, graduating with my Masters In Electronic Composition ™ and no life plan other than the one i had *last* time i graduated.  dammit, jim.  why am i not a rockstar yet?

in the waning days of my academic career, i bump in to a fella who had graduated from the same program the year before.  “did you get my email?”, he says.  “what email?”, i says.  “the email where i offer you a part-time job doing some sound-editing stuff at this little company that makes video games”, he says.  “no, i never got that”, i says.  “oh, well it’s a good thing we bumped into each other…you want the job?”, he says.  so i take it, but only because the cash and the flexible hours will allow me to pursue my *true* calling – ROCKING OUT.

shortly thereafter, i have a little sitdown with myself and decide i should have a new true calling.  that was 15 years ago.

++++++++

hm.  maybe i’ll just answer “so you wanna make video games?” with the standard “start in CS or QA and work your way up” speech.  i’m sure Miss Miller will appreciate that one more than the “be a fuckup until something lands in your lap…it worked for me!” one.

between the end of productivity and the beginning of sleep comes the Hour Of YouTube – that special hour when the mind is too frazzled to do anything worth a damn, but is too lit up to call it a day.  it is a lovely time, pissed away with things beautiful, things surreal, and things nostalgic.

nostalgia.  mm hm.  here’s some Legends Of Kesmai footage that captures the game as it looked & sounded around 1996 or so.  the sound doesn’t kick in until 0:32, and be warned – when it does, it’s loud.  AND AWFUL.

i think i’d been making sound effects for less than a year at that point, and it’s obvious to me which ones came out of my mouth, which came out of the other soundguy’s, and which are straight off the overused library CDs.  hey, there’s nothing wrong with humble beginnings.  it’s just that those humble beginnings are on display for all to see.  :)

wow.  just…wow.

that was me in 1997, thinking i knew what the hell i was doing.  i remember being kinda proud of that, having written and played all the parts, thinking it was all metal and stuff…expecting that it would really pump players up before they entered the game.  sure, it was a bit of a departure from the reverential character of Air Warrior II’s orchestral theme, but hey it’s almost 2000, right?  let’s kick this franchise in the ass!

it wasn’t until a year or two later that the Air Warrior III producer (who, bless his heart, had greenlit this bold new musical direction with a “why the hell not?” attitude) let me in on a little secret: the players *hated* it.  they felt we weren’t treating the franchise with the proper respect, or something.  he related this with a gleeful smile, letting my withering ego know that he didn’t give a piss one way or the other.  seems he found the whole dust-up rather amusing.  i, on the other hand, failed to see the humor in the situation.

well it may have taken 12 years, but…EL OH EFFING EL!  good lord, did you watch that thing?  what in hells bells was that all about?  how did that possibily go out the front door as The Title Theme for Air Warrior III?  nice synth part, jackass.  and was that…was that a *gong* i heard at the end??

man oh man…here’s hoping 2021 doesn’t find me laughing up blood at my 2009 output.

1980′s : Kesmai sets about inventing online gaming as we know it.  (fun trivia: kesmai.com was one of the first 100 domain names ever registered.)

1995 : i start making sounds for Kesmai.  w00t!

1990′s : Mythic also commences doing a bang-up job with this whole internet gaming thing.

1997 : i start making sound for Mythic too, as Kesmai & Mythic form a collaborative relationship.  w00t!

1999 : Electronic Arts purchases Kesmai as part of their “hey, the information superhighway sure is neat…let’s make a gaming portal” business plan.  (fun trivia: this venture actually included the slogan “ready, fire, aim!” which was printed up on tons of t-shirts without apparent irony.)

2001 : Kesmai turns up murdered.  from the condition of the body it’s evident that the victim was dismembered over a prolonged period before ultimately being killed in cold blood.  (fun trivia: the killers were sentenced to large bonuses and some time away from the office, after which they returned and it was back to business as usual.)

2001 : i start working with Mythic full-time.  w00t!

2006 : EA purchases Mythic as part of their “hey, MMOs are The Future…but we don’t know how to make them ourselves” business plan.  (fun trivia: i was on suicide watch for a month after i got the news about the impending acquisition.)

2009 : with an air of “this is going to hurt us more than it hurts you”, the killers of a decade before begin dismembering Mythic, limb by limb.  (fun trivia: Mythic was certainly not alone.  EA’s longevity has been built on the corpses of scores of smaller studios, lured to their nondescript windowless van by the promise of sweet sweet candy…)

2009 : after the first limb is lopped off, i get the hell out of dodge.  w00t?

2009 : i watch from afar, powerless, as Mythic’s prolonged dismemberment continues.  (fun trivia: none.)

and so, for the third time in my career, i find myself at an awesome studio that is a) full of promise, b) full of talent, c) not owned by Electronic Arts.  so hear this EA, you black-hearted bastard: keep the hell away from me!