With the release of Severed Surround System the first objective of the ATMOS project is complete – to make available Severed Heads music in 7.1.4 surround and be ready to produce music in a cinematic and game ready format. Complete, in that the foundation is laid but there is obviously much further work to do.
I know of at least one person that is keen to develop Blu Ray music releases and will be seeing about that in the coming year.
It’s been a challenging project but a hell of a lot easier than game design which is like trying to chase fish knee deep in water – wriggly smooth for them but a real work out for me. Game design never stands still, anything you do will always be a bit behind. For example game sound has been surround for years, and Dolby ATMOS is just a basic expectation, not a spice. Music production is a tiny mouse squeak in this context.
I’ve been looking very closely at the latest version of Unreal Engine. I’ve spent years pouring my money and time into the Unity ecosystem, but the sunk cost fallacy applies. Not just money but expertise. Sorry Tom but looks like this is the baseline for future development in game, film and live music and no one gives a damn about your past labours. Sigh.
The decision right now is – go straight to working on Luna or spend a year on rebuilding the old HH/Snowglobe titles as Super Snowglobe. If I am going to have learn Blueprint and all the technologies in UE then maybe do it on an existing title. Also recall that HH was made a decade ago and is unable to be upgraded in Unity – it’s already orphaned.
I should also make a few simple toys just to get my head around stuff like pre-rendered acoustic surfaces and MetaSound. Did you know there’s an entire modular synthesiser built into UE? Which is data driven like MaxMSP? Yeah. That’s like 1/100th of it.
All of this is January, and by February I might know if other collaborations have been born or died. It might all be pushed back. Who knows.
Unreal Engine just keeps getting more amazing. I have tried to find more info on the audio implementation but it still seems a bit mysterious. The audio features are mind-boggling, being able to directly link audio parameters to the entire rest of the game is huge. Oof.
I would love to play HH, what a shame it’s not available. I’d particularly love to play it in VR, but… technology erosion.
I am working hard on a playable update with both games joined together. It runs and can be navigated but it is not finished just yet…
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