Preliminary ideas

This has taken a lot longer than expected to get up and running, mainly due to the fact that i have been using a hard back diary to keep all my records in check. Not really any excuse, but at least I have been keep a log. As such although it will obviously be dated on here as i post, I will include dated headlines so you can all keep keep up to date with my ideas.

September 22nd - 30th

My name is Stuart Wright and I am in my 4th year of Studying B.Sc. Computer Games Technology at Abertay University of Dundee. As part of this year I have to write a Dissertation on a topic of my own choice in which you are required to research entirely off your own back and write up our findings and conclusions.

The reason for this Blog that I have set up is to help myself, and anyone else that has any interest in my 4th year Honours Dissertation, keep track of my studies, research and findings over the next few months.

Now the subject matter and topic that I am most interested in is audio. All types of game audio from music and sound effects to scripted vocalization and environmental audio. I am a strong believer in the idea that audio can make or break an amazing game idea, just as in cinema. As such I am pretty certain that I am going to go down the path of doing something in the area of Adaptive and interactive audio/music within computer games.

From some preliminary reading that has been done over the summer I may try to go down a technical comparative road. The idea would be to compare two audio API's that are already widely used within industry e.g. FMOD, Direct Sound, OpenAL, XACT, to name but a few. I am not sure how feasible this is within the time scale or if I woudl even be happy concentrating on the more technical side rather than the creative for 7 months, only time will tell i guess.