Developer Profile Nick LaMartina SGW
From Stargate Worlds Wiki (SGW)
Developer profile - Nick LaMartina
Hi am Nick LaMartina I am sound designer for stargate worlds.
(Music in)
(Intense drum and base house music)
(Music out)
NL: My background really is in music and sound editing & engineering, my wife was looking around for companies to out source work to and then she found this company called Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment we found they where looking for a full time sound person I was like, well, they certainly have to have music for this Stargate game that they are making so we decided to talk to them and eventually we ended up out here actually working full time with them and I have compressional work I could possibly want.
(Andrew Stien Associate Producer): He's kinda Goofy really actually.
(unknown female): Nick's a Sweet heart I love him to death.
AS: Nick is an oddball.
(unknown Female): He has this little dog that he loves so much and if you want to see Nick smile just ask him about peanut and he'll just sorta light up and go excited and he's also really good a Wii bowling and has beat me humiliated me several times.
(nick plays the keyboard and its says "please play Stargate words?" in choir style)
NL: please play stargate words?? (laughing)
NL: I certainly think that stargate has some interesting musical idea's that can be explored, from the premiss of gate travel, because you know going threw this wormhole basically and not knowing what's on the other side is this idea of unpredictability and consequentially there are musical possibilities that can be explored, that each world basically has to have its own musical identity it has to have its own creative identity so that its an impression that when you 1st walk out here's the presentation, here's the big lights and trumpets and everything else that's telling you the story about this when you come out, and I that's really neat device that can be used to that if your always exploring and seeing new things orally and emotionally something has to be happening to facilitate that.
AS: We where going through some different sound effects and we came across the Gao'uld ribbon weapons and we had first pass sounds at it, we came across one of them that has this it was like a human voice up underneath it that really added an eerie level to it and I thought what if we could do that to all the ribbon weapons to give it that eerie kinda tribal feel to it.
(Sound of the Ribbon weapon firing sounded like someone with a deep voice murmuring)
AS: He was all over it, he took it ran with it and add in allot of the different sound effects we tried out a bunch of different things and now when those ribbon weapons goes off or certain weapons are used, you can hear this kinda chanting undertone, in the sound effect that really add an incredible feel to it, when you hear it and when you pick up on it, you can't pick up on actual detail but your brain said some thing's just not right with this thing (laughter)
(Sound of another Ribbon Weapon sounded like a warthog but very deep)
AS: Its really cool I mean it tickles me to do that kinda thing.
NL: We have, where is it, we have debris falling where there's a dirt and stuff kinda fall out of a ceiling and so there's a Dirt attack a Dirt sustain a rock sustain a dirt release and metal release and all of these have 5 different variance and they also have the option of not playing depending upon how I weight it so when the person comes by here you get a number of different sounds and the number of possibilities is I think there is five hundred and twenty five different combinations that can play just off this single event so in terms of the sound its very life like its very engrossing I wouldn't say engrossing but wouldn't annoy the player as much as because there not hearing the same thing over and over again but this thing provides this package then is able to determine on its own how this is going to sound because it has already sequenced it on this time line canvas, so that game code can just once this fall debris fall debris and we've got 525 different combinations that can spring out of that but even more so when you take into account each one of these is events can adjust its pitch on a random basis or its volume on random basis so overall the audio quality is in Stargate worlds is aim at be variable your being dynamic, so its not going to imitate life of course we can't go into with little pencils and just draw this waveform but we can still combine a number of different things and then adjust them dynamically to depending upon the players experience or by predetermined behaviours and overall it become more life like and that we don't hear the same thing over and over again.
NL: I think the most exciting part about it is knowing that, I'm going to be writing better when its done, I never want to have my creative or emotionally or philosophy or what ever I don't want to have any of that stuff done I always want to be growing and changing and by identifying emotionally and creative art threw self expression, that become a very powerful way to grow up, and my music provided me with those opportunities, so to think then instead I could sorta look at that and that end goal and think boy there allot of work to do and there is but at the same time I can also look at that and say there are sure allot of opportunities to change and be something different, and that's more exciting to me than I am fearful off it. (Music in)
(Music out) FreejackeR -out.
