Rattrap551 on 25/9/2007 at 17:42
Hi all,
Am new to forums, but a long-time Thief series fan. I am an amateur filmmaker, and for some small projects I find myself drawing upon Thief 1 and 2's snd.crf files, mostly for ambient-type noises but also footsteps, doors, etc. Anyway, as I set my goals higher in film, I am realizing that one starts to encounter trouble when using someone else's sound effects. Uh, yeah.
My question is: How were sounds engineered in Thief 1 / 2? Granted, the more blatant sfx (metal clanging, footsteps) were straight recorded, but what of the more ambient musical tones? The pulsing, looping music that plays throughout the "Framed" mission in Thief 2? I would imagine a number of softwares could do it, but does anyone have specific information on how Thief 1 & 2 went about the process? Thanks -mark
jtr7 on 25/9/2007 at 22:43
Scour the web for Eric Brosius. He's da man! There may be clues. His wife Terri played keyboards in the band they were in together--Tribe--before they joined another bandmate, Greg LoPiccolo--who'd went on to work for LGS--and they all worked on Thief together. Terri did, among many other key things, voice-overs. Who knows? Maybe Eric used her keyboards for some of the the work? There are videos out there. There is also the "Making of" video from the Thief Gold disc, showing Eric at his workstation. There's no footage of anybody creating any sounds at all, though. No foley, no voice-overs, no layering of sounds in a wave editor. I can't remember if the program Eric had on his monitor during the interview is visible in the footage.
He's back with Greg LoPiccolo at--what's that studio?--they made "Guitar Hero", and won an award for their work.
Muzman on 26/9/2007 at 00:17
The doors and so forth (and feet and swords etc) are generally library sounds, which are typically licesensed in big collections.
Making music and other sorts of sound uses any sort of gear, as its all different and it all might come in handy. Musos like the Looking Glass folks would have accumulated a wide variety of kit over the years, hardware and software, and spent a lot of time experimenting with it.
Aja on 26/9/2007 at 00:22
A guitar or piano note can be transformed into nearly anything with the right software.
jtr7 on 26/9/2007 at 03:23
But can you NAME the software that was used?
Quote:
...does anyone have specific information on how Thief 1 & 2 went about the process?
Nope. I've heard the library sounds in movies and on television. There are companies like "Hollywood Edge" and "L2" (L squared) that offer free samples CD's. Each sound library/disc set by category can be over a thousand dollars US, though, but they are big in the industry.
I don't know if Eric was using ProTools (Lite Edition, perhaps) or Cool Edit Pro (now Adobe Audition) or something else.
Muzman on 26/9/2007 at 04:03
Cool Edit would have been amusing shareware back then. It's probably something more like Wavelab or Soundforge.
Anyway, I doubt they would have used much that's specific. There isn't really a killer audio ap that's reasonably cheap, especially not back then. Protools perhaps, but they'd want a few lighter things to play with I'd think; a good waveform editor like the above, some synths, soft and otherwise and so on.
The piece from Framed is made by abusing one or two bell sounds in numerous ways and probably wasn't done in one piece or in one place. The rythmic part could be done in something like fruityloops (and therefore any more high falutin sequencer), forward and reverse playing a sample with some filtering and effects over the top, with the longer sounds done in a wave editor with some good time stretching and pitch shifting. Or they might have had an Akai sampling unit.
Who knows
scumble on 26/9/2007 at 10:00
There's a glimpse of his old studio in the "Making of Thief 2" video on one of the Thief Gold discs - not much is identifiable apart from a big master keyboard, but I never looked that closely. For '98 this was most likely a mainly hardware setup, much like the one Frank Klepacki (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Klepacki_WW_Office.JPG) used to work in. Couple of samplers, decent mixer (I think that's a mackie digital 8-bus), a few synth modules, effects processors.
Ultimately the main thing is how the gear is used. Eric Brosius combines things like edgy guitars, distorted drum loops, evolving pad sounds and film sound effects. One obvious one is scraping across the strings inside a piano, probably taken off an effects CD, used in a few one-shot sounds when entering certain areas - tension builder.
Another guess on what he used in part of TDS's soundtrack, in the old quarter ambients I'm pretty sure he used a patch from Maelstrom in Reason - a granular synth which fits quite well with his style.
Would be interesting to have another listen to guess at what's been done.
Rattrap551 on 26/9/2007 at 16:16
Thanks for the responses - interesting stuff. I will definitely check that name out. Did the same guy have anything to do with the sounds in System Shock 2, by any chance?
jtr7 on 26/9/2007 at 19:15
Yep. And Terri, too!
