The European developer community is about to meet at the Develop Conference & Expo, 14-16 July 2009 in Brighton, UK. The event will enable participants to get up to date with the latest development tools and techniques, make new contacts and catch keynote speeches and workshops. Innovation and achievement will be celebrated at the Develop Industry Excellence Awards. The event could be of interest to game music writers and sound editors.

EDIT: It’s worth noting that the early bird rate of £150 closes June 10. Click through for details.

With a comprehensive programme of seminars, sessions and workshops, the Develop Conference touches all levels of the development community. The seven-track conference programme reflects some of the major issues facing today’s developers including Audio.

This year’s Audio Track, taking place Thursday 16th July, will focus on ‘Real-Time Audio’ – the creative approach and practical techniques for manipulating audio on-the-fly according to game events and game states, exploring the increasing proliferation and use of run-time DSP plug-ins and dynamic control of the overall mix balance in response to the player’s actions and gameplay.

THE AUDIO TRACK THEME: Welcome & Introduction
0930 – 0945
Speaker: John Broomhall (Chair – Audio Track, Columnist – Develop Magazine & Independent Audio Director)
Session Description: Develop Advisory Board member, John Broomhall introduces and highlights this year’s Audio Track focus – “Real-Time Audio”.

THE DOLBY SESSION 2009
0950 – 1020
Session Description: Hear straight from the horse’s mouth the latest technical developments and creative opportunities arising from Dolby’s most recent surround sound and voice system advancements for game audio.

REAL-TIME AUDIO: Context Is Everything
1020 – 1100
Speaker: Kenneth Young (LittleBigPlanet’s Audio Designer, Media Molecule)
Session Description: Game audio always has been, and always will be, reliant upon real-time manipulation. The question is how much manipulation do we need and why? In this talk Young, the twice BAFTA-nominated talent behind the music and sound of LittleBigPlanet, will explore the history of game audio to establish how and why we’ve manipulated audio in the past in order to help understand many of the inherited methods and problems we now take for granted. Then, looking to the future, he will consider the advantages and disadvantages of emerging approaches and trends in real-time audio manipulation.

Break
1100 – 1120

GUERRILLA TACTICS: Designing Audio For Killzone 2
1120 – 1200
Speaker: Mario Lavin (Lead Sound Designer, Guerrilla Games)
Session Description: The audio guru behind Killzone 2’s acclaimed audio experience discusses his creative and technical approach to the project and what others can learn from Guerrilla’s latest PS3 outing including an examination of its real-time environmental audio modelling using raycasts and ADSR.

MOORE’S MORE STORY-TELLING POWER OF SOUND: The Eagerly Anticipated Sequel To Last Year’s Highly Popular Session
1200 – 1240
Speaker: Paul Moore (Ardmore Sound)
Session Description: With many attendees feeling he could easily have justified twice the time slot we gave him, feedback on Paul Moore’s ‘Inspirational Sound Design’ focused session last year was so positive that we asked him back – an Audio Track ‘first’. So once again, with videogames increasingly drawing inspiration from the rich heritage of movie sound design, Develop invites a vastly experienced film practitioner to examine how sound can be used to underpin emotional narrative, and to explore the fact that some of the best film sound is about the power of ideas not technical prowess or high fidelity. Moore will demonstrate how sound in the right hands can be a hugely effectively storyteller in its own right.

Break
1240 – 1340

ORCHESTRAL SOUNDTRACKS FOR VIDEOGAMES: The Vital Do’s & Don’ts For a Successful Orchestral Project
1340 – 1420
Speaker: Allan Wilson (Expert conductor, orchestrator, arranger, music supervisor and producer who has worked on videogames with James Hannigan, Richard Jacques, Russell Shaw, Jack Wall, Jeremy Soule and in movies with Danny Elfman, Christopher Young, Michael Giacchino, Christopher Lennertz, Graeme Revell and Marco Beltrami among many others. His game credits include the Harry Potter and Fable series, Call Of Duty 2 and 007 Quantum Of Solace. His film credits include Sleepy Hollow, The Shipping News, The Chronicles Of Riddick and Stuart Little 3.)
Session Description: Sit back and luxuriate in wisdom wrought through 27 years’ experience as Wilson plots a path through the avoidable pitfalls and signposts the tried and tested procedures that will assist in a smoother and more enjoyable journey to the ‘final take’ – as well as a considerable saving of both time and money. A must-attend session for game composers, music supervisors, producers and executive producers alike covering budgeting, orchestrating/arranging, conductor/composer liaison and relationship, hiring orchestras/specialist players/singers, studio/engineer hire and set-up, scheduling tasks and timing, music preparation/printing parts/scores and not forgetting the actual recording sessions.

PAINTING WITH SOUND: The Future of Procedural Audio
1420 – 1500
Speaker: Andy Farnell (64 Studio)
Session Description: Farnell will explain why he believes game audio development is set to eventually move from a data-driven to a generative model in order to cope with the demand for assets and detailed real-time control of sounds. He will reveal where enlightened developers are now and what changes new technology coming down the pipe will bring. Discussing a range of topics including efficiency, next generation architectures, tool-chain development, creative roles, automatic content generation, aesthetic issues (realism vs impact) of synthetic sources, psychoacoustic data reduction, object modelling, advanced analysis and parameterisation, he will provide an overview of the problems, advantages and research agendas in procedural audio.

Break
1500 – 1530

GOLD BLEND: Audio Code and Design Working Together for the Perfect Flavour
1530 – 1410
Speakers: Steve Emney & Ciaran Rooney (Disney Black Rock Studio)
Session Description: Rooney & Emney explore the vital interaction between audio designers, audio programmers and the game team shedding light into the grey areas that can occur when different disciplines work together. Who should lead the process and why? Who is empowering whom to do what? What is the real value of pre-visualisation work? The session will examine what is the most efficient path to defining and realising the overall audio vision without wasting time creating really clever but unnecessary technology.

THE 2009 AUDIO KEYNOTE – The Runtime Studio in your Console: The Inevitable Directionality of Game Audio
1610 – 1700
Speaker: Guy Whitmore (Director of Audio, Microsoft Game Studios)
Session Description: When it comes to adaptability, visuals are a decade ahead of audio in games. 3D assets, real-time lighting, shadows, texture maps, particle effects, and procedural animation, provide the processes for a highly adaptable visual environment. By contrast, fully mixed wave files, common in the majority of games today, are like 2D art; you can only see one side. They’re big and clunky and typically pre-processed. Yet there’s a desire and need to hear sound and music from all perspectives, from many directions, in various surroundings, and in different contexts. In order to effectively react and adapt to a non-fixed game timeline, audio content must be authored and kept in smaller component parts until runtime, when they are assembled and mixed. So take your entire music studio and sound design suite, including mixers, synths, samplers, DSP, mics, speakers, etc; virtualize everything and make it adequately efficient, then drop it all into your game authoring environment. Stir in a non-linear DAW, the right game ties, and some mixing intelligence, and there you have it; a complete run-time studio, ready with the flexibility to turn on a dime to meet the needs of the game.

THE 2009 OPEN MIC SESSION: What Next?
Ultimately, what are we trying to achieve? What will be the key factors for the development of game audio in the future? Where are we going? With free beer, possibly the best audio track session.
1700 – 1800
Speakers:
Alastair MacGregor (Senior Audio Programmer, Rockstar North)
Greg O’Connor-Read (Founder, Music4Games, Inc.)
Guy Whitmore (Director of Audio, Microsoft Game Studios)
Kenneth Young (Audio Designer, Media Molecule)
Session Description: An opportunity for all delegates and speakers to share their views and engage in debate on the future of game audio.

For details, visit Develop Conference.