Hadouken: Super Street Fighter IV Team talks Sound and Voice FX
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href="http://shoryuken.com/content.php?r=81-Super-Street-Fighter-IV-1-18-10-Developer-Blog-Translation">SRK’s href="http://www.capcom.co.jp/blog/sf4/development_blog/2010/01/19_493.html">the Although they – The National – First off, tell us
Tomozawa: – – With that many, Tomozawa: Tsukamoto: Tsukamoto: Tomozawa: Tsukamoto: Now tell us about the Tomozawa: Tomozawa: Tsukamoto: Tomozawa: Tsukamoto: Tomozawa: Tomozawa: “The song Tsukamoto: I hope everyone Next week we’ll be talking
amazing Azrael has stepped up on the
translation front once again to bring Westerners
latest from the Super SFIV team, who are
talking about sound and voice
effects.
don’t talk about the new, and perhaps most memorable
sound effect in all of Street Fighter (the horrible
grinding sound after Ryu’s fist hits your jaw during his
Ultra II, the Metsu Shoryuken), there’s tons of
interesting stuff with lots of insights into all the hard
parts most people don’t even think about when it comes to
making games.
Tournament has finally gotten underway, and the first
Tokyo qualifier has been decided!* Also, the weather just
keeps getting colder. Everyone, be careful not to catch a
cold! This is Tsukamoto.
would like to talk about the voices and sound effects.
We’re gonna get really in-depth about the voices and
SE!
about the character voices.
For the character voices this
time around, not counting the prologue or ending, all
together there are around 10,000 bits of data. It’s
probably a bit unheard of to have this many vocal samples
for a fighting game. There are a lot of characters, and
also because of things like splitting one voice into
several parts, the overall number just
increases.
voice?
For example, let’s take Gouken’s
“Kinjite! Shoryuken!” (Forbidden Shoryuken). That isn’t
just “Kinjite!” and “Shoryuken!”. For the last half of
the motion, we match up the voice with the the action, so
it gets cut up into “Sho” “ryu” “ken”. For the arcade
version, that was the extent of the increase, but when we
made the home version there were more characters and
rival battles, so the data became about 3 times as heavy
as the arcade version.
There certainly are a lot of lines (battle narration)
during the rival battle.
When looking at a video of a
rival battle on an internet video site, in the comments
someone had said “Is there this much talking in fighting
games nowadays?” But I think on average the characters
won’t talk that much (laughs).
In manga/comics, before a
battle they often have a little verbal sparring. The
characters talk just about at that level.
Tomozawa:
Yes. In SSFIV’s
battle narration we’ve added and changed some things
around, so that’s something to look forward to. For
example, now right after the battle gets started there
will be some lines of dialogue. But if the character gets
hit in the middle of their lines then they stop talking.
So if possible, please refrain from hitting them and
listen until the end (laughs). Also, we’ve changed some
of the triggers that would initiate a voice sample from
the rival battles in SFIV, and some of them have
completely new triggers. So looking for those can be
fun.
– So there’s
something for those who have already seen the rival
battles to enjoy as well.
There are no rival battles that
use only the same voice samples from SFIV! If anyone
finds all of the voice samples, I’d give them a present
(laughs). I’m pretty sure you definitely can’t find them
all.
checking them also seems like quite a
task.
check these during a battle, so it takes time. For
example, if we want to confirm the FIRST HIT trigger,
that one only happens once a battle. So first we have to
try it for both the 1P and 2P. There were 17 of those
triggers in SFIV. So that’s 17 for 1P and 17 for 2P. We
also had both Japanese and English, so 17 x 4 = 68 voice
samples, and that’s just for one rival battle. We have to
confirm each one to make sure its the right voice, that
it did come out, and adjust the volume as well. At first
we didn’t really know what we were doing, so it was just
shots in the dark. But now we’ve got the process worked
out efficiently.
even as we were checking them we had no idea what they
were saying (laughs). But the feeling was right on the
mark, so that’s our sound team for you!
We worried quite a bit about
the English voices. With Japanese, as long as we could
hear it then we could confirm whether the lines were
correct or not. But I’m not a native English speaker or
anything like that, so there were a lot of things that I
didn’t understand, had no idea what they were saying.
There are also characters who speak with an accent, so
those were particularly difficult to understand. If I
couldn’t hear what they said, then I had to go back to
the script and confirm it, then go back to the battle and
see if I could pick it up. Characters who spoke easy to
understand English were fun, but for characters with a
special accent, especially El Fuerte, I had no idea. I
had to check many times “Is this what he’s saying?”
– Speaking of English, in SFIV
you can change the character voices to English – how was
this decided on?
As we want people to understand
the story and emotions of SFIV, we basically thought to
just have the voices in Japanese. But if we talk about
the impression of the series up until now, there are some
characters were players must have thought “I wish he’d
speak in English.” So for those players, we wanted to be
able to give them the option to have an English voice for
that character. That’s one reason. Also, from our
overseas players, a lot of people said they wanted to use
the original Japanese voices. For example, people who
want to use Ryu in his original voice. So in order to be
able to enjoy various styles, we set it up in SFIV that
you could change the character voices individually. Of
course, SSFIV will be the same.
English voices?
I mentioned this before, but
various countries have different ways of speaking, right?
So then characters end up having accents. The easiest to
see this in is Rose’s Italian accent, she uses a very
hard R. You have to roll your tongue for it. We put that
much detail into it, so if everyone would listen closely
and notice it I think it’d be interesting. Also,
attention was paid to the differences between American
and regular English. I have no idea though
(laughs).
characters to English and try out various settings. As
Ken’s Japanese and English voices are both cool, I can
never decide which one to pick (laughs). Also, Sakura’s
English voice is pretty high pitched, so that’s
interesting.
girl! Well, she may have graduated by now, but at the
time of recording she was still in high school. As her
voice has quite a different image from the Japanese one,
I rather like it.
English are pretty close to each other.
Ms. Sawashiro, Cammy’s VA, is
really good at English. She was able to smoothly read the
formal name of BLECE (Boiling Liquid Expanding Cell
Explosion) with no problems. We recorded two different
patterns, and her concern was “I don’t really have
confidence in a British accent”. Everyone who was there
could only say “Like we’d be able to tell the
difference?” (laughs)
I heard this from Mr. Endo,
but Cammy’s VA Ms. Sawashiro went to the overseas
recording to take notes. She spoke a few lines to Cammy’s
English VA, and only hearing that voice, the sound
director said to Cammy’s English VA “You don’t have to
speak yet”. Ms. Sawashiro is so good, that she was
mistaken for the English Cammy’s VA.
Tomozawa:
Rufus’s English VA
also gave it his all, not to be outdone by Mr. Hatano.
There’s lot of good stuff to listen to, so I hope
everyone gives the English version a try!
– Speaking of, judging from
the promotional videos the announcer’s English voice
seems to have changed.
Yes, its been changed. We
wanted players to feel with a quick listen that SSFIV was
new and different, and Mr. Endo felt that the easiest way
to get that feeling across would be through the
announcer. As this is a series update, there are some
sounds we couldn’t change, particularly the character
voices. So as this would be the easiest to understand, we
changed it.
SE.
The
environment, the hardware, even TV’s from when we made
sounds for SFII have all changed. So if we tried to use
the same sounds, it just wouldn’t fit. If we borrowed the
sounds from SFII and tried to force them into SFIV it
would just sound off.
There are people who want to
hear the old hit sounds from the 2D games. But SFIV is
presented in 3D, so having them in would kind of be an
ear-sore, I think.
has changed quite a bit. Especially in Alpha – in SFII
the hit sounds were quite heavy, but in Alpha they were
much lighter. We did study the previous titles, and
though it was really a trial and error process, I feel
like the SE we have now are the best fit for the
environment and the images. For example, in the past the
sound for punches and kicks were the same, but in SFIV
they’re different, so this is an area in which we’ve
improved. Also, there’s been a little change in SSFIV
from SFIV. We’ve tweaked the volume balance so its a
little easier to hear than in SFIV.
– How about SE that goes with
the stages?
For stage SE, first we have to
decide where exactly we are going to have sound. For
example, the stage designer had expressed a wish for the
car in the India stage to blow its horn. But the car
doesn’t really move around on screen, so if the horn
sounded people would probably wonder what it was. So its
best not to have that sound. Of course we had voices for
the elephants or anything else that sticks out, but the
battle is the main attraction, so we can’t distract from
that.
We
also can’t have move SE and focus attack SE covering each
other up. Its difficult finding a balance that preserves
the right feel and doesn’t interfere with the
fight.
Also,
depending on the stage materials, the jump, landing, and
knockdown sounds change. If you listen carefully, you can
pick up on it. On the Overpass Stage, the sound changes
for places on the ground with puddles of water, and the
Brewery has both metal and wood parts of the floor.
Talking about stages in SSFIV, the Korean stage has both
a stone pavement and asphalt, both of which make
different sounds. SE is pretty difficult.
It is.
Even if there’s just one SE that’s a bit grating to the
ears, it’ll be improved upon greatly. You can really feel
the passion of the sound team. I hope all the players
keep this in mind while enjoying the game.
– Do you have any favorite
voices?
the taunts. Even if you have to set them all one by one,
please give them a listen (laughs)! Also personally I
really like Juri’s voice, so definitely check her out!
Her voice is a big reason why she’s just a vibrant
character.
–How about
any SE?
Tomozawa:
doing it in 5.1ch. So its not just a basic flow of sound,
but everything happens point by point. Probably the
easiest to understand is the sound when the meter fills
up. Also, I really personally like the sound of the fire
on the Vs screen. Its kind of a background noise, but its
really nice. It might be a little difficult to hear just
in stereo though.
– I
don’t think there are a lot of gamers who are
experiencing the 5.1 sound though.
Tomozawa:
Yeah, there
probably aren’t a whole lot of people who have that
setup. But if you know someone who does, please go have a
listen! Also, the feel of the remixed BGM will change as
well under this sound system.
Aah, I don’t have a sound
system at home. …Well then, I’ll just have to buy one!
Give me some good recommendations later.
– Do you have any final
comments for the fans looking forward to the
sounds?
I’ll read that first.
composition, where to put in sounds, the sound effects,
all have been planned by the sound designer. Where to
loop the songs, the sound effects, and their dynamic
usage, if you can naturally get pumped up while playing
that’s what we were aiming for, so we’d be happy.”
As for me, I personally feel that voices
are the big focal point in fighting games. They’re often
called tools of fighting. As a tool, if we think about it
that way then it doesn’t matter if its there or not. But
voices include your spirit. Voices can bring out that
character’s specific traits, and you can also feel the
passion of the voice actor. Maybe you don’t really get an
appreciation for it in the arcade, but for the console
version, in the rival battles and things like that, it
really reinforces the characters personality and
background. This is something featured in all voices, so
if possible I’d like for you to listen to all of
them.
That’s
right. BGM, voices, SE are tools of the fight, just like
controls or graphics. They bring out an important part of
the experience!
enjoyed today’s entry. We got a chance to talk about some
things we normally don’t get to talk about. If you could
find an interest in how we made these things, I’d be very
happy.
about character design!
Until next
time!
