Signal (ImplemenTournament)

This is my submission for Airwiggles' ImplemenTournament, a contest to design and integrate audio into the Airwiggles Asteroids game! 👩‍🚀🚀

I wanted to challenge myself to do game audio in a new way. There are no sound files in the game.  90% of the sound in Signal comes from livestreams of internet radios ranging from hardcore punk to hospital radio. 

💥 Each of the asteroids picks from about 25 online sources. If you fire at them, they'll switch to a new one.

🌌 The background ambience is streaming a recording of the space probes Voyager 1 & 2 as they passed by Jupiter.

🎻 When using the main engines, your ship plays a classical radio station, and each burst from the lasers plays pumping house music. 

🤖 Other sounds, like the 'boost' (left shift) effect and the interference/static sound made when switching stations, I created in MetaSounds. 

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Why?

Mostly, just playing around! I wanted to see how it would feel like to fly around these little snippets of the outside world - music, chatter, adverts, news. Can an asteroids game actually be a mix of jukebox, fluxus sound piece and anarchic playground?

Every time you play the game, it sounds different. It sounds different at different times of day, because the stations change the type of thing they broadcast. I find that on the hour, there's a lot more talking - maybe as they're switching programmes, or doing a few minutes of news items. And having different sounds really fundamentally change how you see the environment, and how you end up choosing to play.

Also, I just like making a mess.

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Credits, attributions, & thanks 🎖

The background ambience in the game are made from two recordings from the deep space probes Voyager 1 and 2 from a sensor called a plasma wave receiver: "Voyager 1 Jupiter Encounter" and "Voyager 2 Arrival at Jupiter".

Thanks to Airwiggles for putting this together, in particular the awesome Jon Kelliher who designed the game!

Open to see the list of radio stations that are streamed in Signal

• Big Tunes Radio House (for the ship lasers)
  
• Sonatica (the ship engines)
  
• All FM 
• Asian Sound Radio
• Classic FM
• Decay FM
• Fever FM
• Gold FM
• LBC
• Paranormal FM
• Resonance FM
• Rock Antennae
• Southend Hospital Radio
• Radio Cooperative
• Radio Grandes Lagos FM
• Peru Cumbia
• Business Talk FM
• Heart FM Christmas
• Comedy Club
• Radio Folklórica
• Muslim Vanoli
• Radio Hardcore
• Open FM Trance
• Romanian Dance
• LWR Comedy
• Britcom One
• Capital Dance
• Radio M1

For more about me and my sound design work, visit xaviervelastin.com/gameaudio

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