GETTING READY TO MAKE OUR FIRST GAME (The Making Part 1)

Written by: Steve "The Rocker" Coyne

In our previous posts, we excitedly dished out the news that we , FREERIDER, were privileged to be a part of Rock Band 2 Network to be launched in the next few months. After some serious meetings with the people responsible for the creation and success of Rock Band, we rolled down our sleeves and got the party started. So, we chose and submitted the songs that we want to use in the game, and now we are ready to create our first game.

Our drummer/engineer, Jeremy,  spent some time mixing the tracks and converting them to wav files in his Pro-tools recording studio. He then emailed the tracks to me and to Todd,  (our vocalist/bassist) with a yousendit account. For those of you unfamiliar with the terms wav files and pro-tools, let me explain. A wav file is very similar to an mp3. The files that Jeremy sent to me were wav files which contain what was played by the individual instruments. One file might have the guitar on it, one file might have the vocals, yet another could have drums. In the Reaper software program, we can combine all the instruments, on separate wav files into one file. We can then balance levels of the individual instruments in a way that will be appropriate for the game. Why bother? You might ask. That's what we have to do in terms of audio engineering our songs for the game. Oh, and before I forget, Pro-tools is a state of the art digital recording studio program that Jeremy, our drummer uses.

So I opened my first Reaper file and started importing Jeremy's wav files. It was really very easy for me to do. I just opened the files and dropped them into the mixer window like you would on garage band or any other digital audio software. I do have to give Jeremy credit for doing a very nice job of making the tracks easy to work with. All I had to do was balance the volume levels. After I had my levels, I sent the files to Todd so that he could throw in some final touches. We were so excited doing this stuff, and the whole shebang of making Rock Band 2.

In a few weeks, we will tackle the next step which is putting the files into a program called Magma which further converts the files into a Rock Band game format. Then the next step, will be on the film studio swapping motion capture tricks with Michael Jordan, Tony Hawk and Jack Black.  Hehehe...I'm just kidding. But that will be another post, since we're not done yet. I'll keep you posted.

Here's a video of what I had just done in the initial phase of the making of Rock Band 2.

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Comments

[Vera]

It sounds all so exciting!

[Joy]

Whew! Rockers wife...keep rocking Bing...

[Bill]

Looks like this is going to be a awesome game bingkee. Rock on girl.