At the recently concluded CTS2023, Mr. Wang Fan, an audio expert from DeNA China, introduced the application of CRI ADX in DeNA China's latest work "Echoes of Fate: Sighs on the Strings", which received a lot of praise at the event.
In order to have a deeper understanding of the audio design in this work, CRI China came to the headquarters of DeNA China and conducted a special interview with Mr. Wang Fan.
Jony@CRI Middleware China：
Hello Mr. Wang Fan, at the recently concluded CTS2023 conference, you brought us the sharing of "Application of CRI ADX in China", which received a lot of praise on the spot. To learn more about the game's audio design, we've curated this interview.
First of all, the first question, can you tell us about the members and division of labor in the audio team of this project?
王凡@DeNA China:
Thanks to CRI China for the interview.
I was basically responsible for the entire audio design of "Echoes of Fate: A Sigh on the Strings", including the processing of sound effects, mixing, audio middleware, and correspondence with the program, and I brought two Xi students to help do some auxiliary work.
Jony@CRI Middleware China：
Mr. Wang is in charge of so much, it is really hard.
THE SECOND QUESTION IS, WHY CHOOSE CRIWARE'S CRI ADX AUDIO MIDDLEWARE, AND WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES OF THIS PRODUCT?
王凡@DeNA China:
First of all, DeNA itself is a Japanese company, and our Japanese headquarters also has business contacts with CRIWARE's Japanese headquarters, so it was natural to choose your company's products.
Then, in the process of trying it out, I found that this product is really good to use, which allows people to design game audio without traditional audio production software, and all sound resources can be imported into CRI ADX for processing.
What's more, the UI of CRI ADX is very similar to our common DAWs, with very intuitive display of waveforms and tracks, which is very convenient for those of us who Xi are used to DAWs.
Jony@CRI Middleware China：
I learned that Mr. Wang is actually a rapper, and it can be seen that he has a lot of experience in music production. For music producers, the UI of CRI ADX is really intuitive and convenient.
The next question is, can you briefly describe the sound effects and music design workflow for this project@DeNA China?
In terms of sound effects, since this is a story-oriented work, we will read the script at the beginning, and then have some meetings with the planner to determine what needs to be produced. In principle, we want a lot of sound assets to be reusable, which makes sense for the size of the game.
At the end of the meeting, we have a list of the sounds we need to produce and work on. After that, the production phase begins.
In terms of music, it will also list the requirements in combination with the specific scenes in the game, such as day or night, indoor or outdoor, city or jungle, etc., all of which need to be matched with corresponding music.
In terms of specific music production, we will do some of it ourselves, and some of it will be supported by the Japanese headquarters, and in general, it is relatively flexible.
For example, the theme song of our work was sung by Japanese singer Mika Nakajima, and the piano music of the characters in the game was also recorded by Japanese ACG pianist Tentacle Monkey, which helped Japan a lot in these places.
Jony@CRI Middleware China：
It can be seen that "Echoes of Fate: Sigh on the Strings" has indeed put a lot of effort into the auditory experience.
The fourth question is, what features of CRI ADX are used in this work, can you briefly introduce them?
王凡@DeNA China:
In fact, we have all used the main functions of CRI ADX, such as the React function of volume avoidance, the Block function, the Selector function, the Random Cue function, the Marker function, the AISAC automation function, and the DSP Bus function, etc.
For each type of voice, we will limit the number of simultaneous pronunciations when playing, and this is the Voice Limit function in CRI ADX.
One point worth mentioning is the emotion management system in the game. We made different versions of the music based on the four emotions of joy, anger, sadness, and fear, and then randomly triggered them in the game in the form of Random Cue. And we also marked different tracks, so that when the music is triggered, it doesn't always start from the same position, but it may randomly go to different parts of the music.
When we made these designs, our philosophy was that we didn't just need to have specific sounds in the game, but more importantly, we needed to make those sounds better expressed.
It can be said that the sound design project of "Echoes of Fate: Sigh on the String" is a project worth learning and Xi.
Jony@CRI Middleware China：
It's really a real sense of your love for game audio design, and I kind of want to learn Xi project.
The next question is, there are a lot of classical music tracks in this game, can you tell us about the role of these tracks in the game?
王凡@DeNA China:
There is actually a lot of music in the game, and these music resources have different roles in the game. Each character in the game comes with three or more classical arrangements, resulting in three music systems that cover all game modules.
The music itself serves as a background music, but it also serves to advance the game's story. For example, before the character "Fate" appears in the game, a piece of "Fate" music may be played, implying that the rest of the plot will be related to "Fate". In addition, the mood of the music corresponding to different characters such as "Bolero" and "Little Star" is also different, and there can be multiple combinations and combinations in the game to achieve richer musical expression.
Jony@CRI Middleware China：
I believe that many students who have studied music have the idea of personifying classical music repertoire since childhood, and our "Echo of Fate: Sigh on the Strings" can be regarded as helping these students realize their ideas.
The sixth question is, can you briefly introduce the "interactive music" in this work? Wang Fan @DeNA China:
Most of the interactive music design in our work falls into the category of "lateral migration". When we were designing, we were working with music files that were not just tracks of music, but music files that had been mixed.
For these music files, we will classify and mark them according to emotion, speed, and other indicators, and then trigger them by shuffle. Each time the player enters the relevant scenario and story, a different music will be triggered.
This difference is reflected in the different versions of the repertoire, we have a pure piano version of a classical piece, an orchestral version, a version without a main theme, and so on. On the other hand, it is also reflected in the difference in the playback paragraphs, that is, each time you enter the track, it is not necessarily from the beginning, but it is possible to go directly to a random paragraph, switch between different passages through some fade processing, and so on.
We did all of this on the CRI ADX.
Jony@CRI Middleware China：
To add a little knowledge to students who don't know,The implementation of interactive music mainly includes "horizontal migration" and "vertical migration"Two kinds,The interactive music in this work is mainly achieved by "horizontal migration"。
I am curious, did you encounter any difficulties in the process of audio development of this project, and how did you solve them later? Wang Fan @DeNA China:
When using CRI ADX, we occasionally encounter some bugs, and then we will report the bugs to the ticket system on our CRIWARE China official website. After that, the CRI China technical team will start to deal with the problem I reported and give me the corresponding solutions.
In this regard, I can give full marks to our CRI China technical team.
I remember one time, because the problem encountered was really difficult to solve, CRI China directly sent a teacher to provide door-to-door service. The teacher worked late with us that day and didn't leave until the problem was finally solved perfectly. That experience really made me feel the passion that CRI China wants to provide value to game developers.
Jony@CRI Middleware China：
CRI China's philosophy is to provide value to game developers, and we will continue to do so.
I would like to know how to experience CRI ADX's adaptation to game engines? Wang Fan @DeNA China:
The engine we used for game development is Unity, and CRI ADX doesn't have too many problems in adapting in this regard, and the integration is going well. For some of our special situations, the CRI team also made special solutions for us, and we were generally satisfied.
Jony@CRI Middleware China：
If you encounter any problems with engine adaptation, as long as you report it in time, CRI's technical team will provide a solution as soon as possible.
THE LAST QUESTION IS, WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SAY ABOUT CRIWARE@DeNA China'S MIDDLEWARE PRODUCTS?
In this regard, I think that CRI ADX's visual editing as a feature of this product must be retained. In addition, I hope that the UI of this product can be made more beautiful. The function itself is very powerful, and it would be perfect if it could look better on the outside.
Jony@CRI Middleware China：
Thank you Ms. Fan Wang for taking the time to accept our interview and wish DeNA China good results in the game.
Wang Fan@DeNA China: Thank you, and I wish CRI better and better development.
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Founded in 2019 with a registered capital of 2 million yuan, CRI Middleware China is a comprehensive technical service company dedicated to providing audio, video, and 2D graphics related development tools and solutions for Chinese game development companies (CP, independent game developers, console development teams, etc.), and is committed to building a bridge between Chinese and Japanese developers. CRI Middleware Co., Ltd., the company's major shareholder, is a veteran game middleware manufacturer from Japan, which has been committed to helping local developers in China solve the pain points of audio and video since entering China in 2016.
"Echoes of Fate: Sigh on the Strings" is a classical music theme RPG game launched by DeNA China, the game story takes place in the world after the invasion of "Night Meteorite". In order to save the world and make music resound in the earth again, players will play the role of "conductor" and lead the "performer" girls with the power of music to fight together.