Hello everyone! I’m here today to post some info about the sound design of Qasir al-Wasat.

The concept behind Qasir soundscape came mainly from a perception trait of it’s protagonist. It is not from this realm, and thus have a tenuous distancing posture that brings a layered perception based on its opinions/view of this realm. This generated a scale: things of its realm are less abstract than our objects that are less abstract than our animals that are less abstract than humans. Unfortunately, animals had to wait due to scope limiting and they are planned to appear only in a eventual Qasir sequel. Everything that appears on the game is put somewhere in such scale of meaning before producing it.

Objects have a blend of normal and reverse sounds, animals would be reversed with a strong filter, and humans are so abstract that the they lose completely it’s reference. Every sound emitted by them are heard as a musical note (thanks to Prokofiev and the first animation sound designers). But it is not music itself, as it lacks several attributes. However, one attribute not missing is that every note is under a specific scale, strongly referenced to the Arabic Maqam, an ethnical “”melodic mode”" from traditional arabic music based on improvisation. Also, each distinct kind of human has its own instrument, all of them chosen to better represent the feel of the ambience of the game.

One of the biggest issues we had during the audio development of the game is that everything was… empty, dull empty. We did want to create an eerie atmosphere and work with the solitude of the protagonist in a not so comfortable zone, but… it got too dull. Fortunately, two masterpieces got into my hand (or.. ear =). One was the indie game Limbo and the other was Tarkovski’s movie Stalker. Both of them has a very similar approach to soundtrack, as they don’t really work with music in the common sense. But they create GREAT atmosphere with sound only, and we adapted several aspects according to what we have learned with them.

Wanna check it out how things are now? Download our public demo or pre-order it on Qasir’s website! ;]

Young! For all of you that wants to understand better what the hell is a sound designer, we found an interesting text - but portuguese only… (Portugal portuguese, btw).

We will start a brief-post-serie about what Tsar sounds will be and from where all this idea came from.
To begin with listen to Peter and the Wolf from Prokofiev (with a bonus: this version has Bowie as narrator!). It’s a composition written in 1936 at Soviet Union in which each character is represented by an instrument. More info at wikipedia, an interesting reading.

And what about Tsar? Yeah, this idea was our starting point, mix it with the game’s conceptualization and in the end each character will be represented by a different instrument!
Wtf? How can this happen?
Stay tuned, more sound updates soon!

The last fortnight was a productive one. The game prototype is now running in 0.1 version, we’ve got the pathfinding algorithms improved and our test dummy character; a Kremlin Guard warmheartedly called Josino, Iosifka in Russian; is getting it’s first scratches of a.i., starting with the ability of hearing, which, by the way, will be of great importance for both NPCs and the Player in Tsar Project.

Another important Milestone achieved in this last week is that all the initial ConceptArts for the Characters are done, that means that we’ve completely defined the aesthetics of the game and the appearance of all the classes of characters and the individual special ones. At this stage the Visual Art Department changes it’s focus to the Backgrounds, and Character Design will be on hold ’til we got the initial development of the Concepts for the rooms of the Kremlin, which is scheduled to end at the end of the Month. Talking about schedules, the Project Schedule has just been revised and optimized in a new project management tool this week.

In the other Departments, Beto and Bruno finished the most important aspects about the Game Dynamics (combat and ambient interactions, to be specific), the Enemies descriptions, and have planned the next steps of the Level Design documentation. Aural Art Department just finished the plot of the Conceptual Soundscape. And, last but not least, our dear Screenwriter is heavily working in the creation and development of the many scenes and dialogues of Tsar Project including the multiple endings of the game. Of course, her work is highly confidential as it is a torrent of spoilers.

So yesterday we’ve told you about the Tsar Coffee. Now for the hard work: it keeps going on. Marcel just returned from the 4th Information Design International Conference in Rio, in the Tsar Project I’m in the last steps of the Character Design creative process, Game Design and Plot are tidying up the core events of the game, Vermon is working dutifully to implement a fine a.i. pathfinder algorithm, and Sound Design just finished it’s creative guidelines.

As the new fortnight beings we’re overlooking the administrative aspects of the studio and will go back to the Kremlin works tomorrow. And so those are the news from the last few days.

See you shortly!