Diary of Morn #07 | Sound Design

The sound design in Children of Morn has two goals. The first goal is to convey motion and put emphasis on the things that need to be emphasized. The second goal is to create immersion and draw you into the game. Today I'm talking about why these two are so important and how I try to achieve them. And just to make this clear. I'm not talking about music in this post, only the sound effects.

But first some news about the progress on Version 0.1. To make it short, it's very good. It's difficult to give you a clear release date yet, as I want to allow myself to make last minute changes with this very first update of CoM, but at this point I can tell that it will come out sometime this April. So in the worst case you'll have to wait 30 days to get your hands on Children of Morn, we are getting very close to it.

Motion and Emphasis:
Sound is very good at conveying information that we can't see. In animation that fact is often used to cut corners. A good exampe is dishwashing. I've watched plenty of Anime in my life and have seen a surprising amount of dishwashing in those, yet they barely ever show the actual dishes being scrubbed and rinsed. They simply show a running faucet, the back of a person, their face from the bottom and substitute the entire dishwashing with the sound of dishwashing.

This same principle works very well in Visual Novels too. When most images are static and not animated, but they are supposed to convey certain movements or convey important emotions, sounds can be used very effectively as a substitute and to enhance the scene. A punch with the fitting sound seems much more powerful than one without it. Playing the sound of footsteps before showing a character makes it seem like that character just moved. A spooky, droning note can emphasize the horror of a situation. That way, sound creates motion and emphasis, which in turn helps with the second goal.

Immersion:
Immersion is everything. In a game that is based solely on emotions, on falling in love with fictional characters, building relationships with them and making sexual experiences, immersion is everything. Because, we all know it, none of it is real. but by taking the game seriously and getting emotionally invested we allow the experiences of the game to become real. Born from a fictional world, but still, undoubtedly real. No one can tell me I wasn't actually sad when a character from a story I liked died or wasn't actually happy when they turned out to still be alive. Dumb examples, but I think It's clear what I want to say with it. If a game starts feeling real, the emotions we expereince also become real and in turn, stronger, more important.

That's why immersion is so important. And immersion is something in which sound can play a major role. The rustling of clothes when a character undresses, birds chirping on a sunny morning, the lapping sound of waves on the shore, moaning and panting during sex. All those sounds help to draw us in. To ground the actions and moments of the game and to, which is the most important, cut us off from our surroundings. To take you out from where you are right now, and to transport you into the fictional world to experience it all.

Learning about sound:
From all the creative disciplines combined in game development, sounddesign was always the one I was least familiar with. I had my hands full with learning Blender, so I always pushed it back. That changed when I set out to achieve a very simple goal. I wanted some proper NSFW soundeffects. The squishing and sloshing, the kissing and moaning type of sounds. Sounds, that are surprisingly difficult to come by. After 3 years of developing MIST, I hadn't found a single sound in the internet that I was completely satisfied with. So I knew what to do. Record them myself.

This post is already very long and will get longer, so I'm gonna make this section short. I saved up and bought very good audio equipment. A proper field recorder, three mics (a stereo pair and a shotgun mic) and started recording. I went from my balcony to forests in the countryside, from a plate of noodles with tomato sauce to actually having a few acquaintances over to record their moans and breathing and so I quickly started building my own library and getting those sounds I always wanted. And in the process, I started to learn. To understand more of what I was doing and I started really thinking about what my goal was with the sound and what steps I would have to take to make those goals reality.

Sound in Children of Morn:
Motion, emphasis, immersion. To achieve these goals I've decided on attacking the problem from different sides.

First of all, higher quality sounds. With my own recordings and a gold subscription on Zapsplat.com, I've been able to get better quality and, most importantly, better fitting sounds. When a scene evokes a very specific sound in my mind, I can now go and record that very specific sound by myself. This helps in creating motion.

For emphasis I've recorded different instruments like windchimes or a large gong and use sounds from Zapsplat to layer them and with some editing in Adobe Audition I got some interesting sounds for transitions, to highlight important moments, for the horror vibes or whatever.

And to create immersion, I've spent my time recording different ambiances. Roomtones, balconies, forests, little creaks, large streets at night and whatever I could find. And on top of that, like I already hinted, I've recorded some very important NSFW sounds. In Children of Morn every single woman, will gether own  moans and breaths and giggles and kisses and... you know the drill.

All of this put together I'm hoping to create a soundscape for Children of Morn that will make the game better, more enjoyable and more immersive, so that everyone can fall in love with their favorite characters.

That is all from me for this week. I hope you are as excited for the release of CoM as I am and you'll hear from me soon. Sorry if the end of the post  is a little bit rushed, my dinner is ready and I'm hungry : D