nick-lamartina
Latest
Stargate Worlds reaches 200k beta signups, dev chat on Friday
The Stargate Worlds team announced yesterday that 200,000 people have signed up for the game's beta test. That's not an unimpressive number, although both Age of Conan and Warhammer Online reported a lot more (but at later stages in development). Of course, history has shown that the number of beta applicants doesn't necessarily reflect on a game's post-launch popularity.In other Stargate Worlds-related news, the game's sound designer (Nick LaMartina) will be participating in a live dev chat that will be open to all on Friday the 22nd at 11:00 AM Pacific time. Head over to the Stargate Worlds website for details and links on reaching the IRC chat room where it will take place.When we visited Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment just over a month ago, a representative told us that the company was hoping to start the closed beta phase before the end of the summer. We've been a bit skeptical. Time's a-tickin'!
Listen to exclusive Stargate Worlds audio content
Music can be a really important part of MMOs, if the developer decides that they want it to be. In some games you'll almost immediately turn the audio down to zero and resume listening to your own stuff, but other games like Age of Conan have a musical score that demands to be heard. It is clear that Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment is aiming for the latter with Stargate Worlds, and they have offered followers of the game a chance to listen to some short clips at their community forums.You'll need to be a registered forum user to be able to listen, but if you take the plunge you can download two short clips, composed by SGW sound designer Nick LaMartina. They are both fairly epic and atmospheric, and leave you wanting to hear more. If you do check them out, you can use the links in the article to leave feedback for each piece in the forums.
Playing with audio
Stargate Worlds Sound Designer Nick LaMartina penned a dev blog concerning in-game audio. As pointed out by one of the SGW forum members, most players usually turn off a game's audio and turn on their MP3 player of choice. LaMartina hopes to change the way we all look (and listen) to game sounds.LaMartina isn't happy with the way game audio has been designed in the past. He asserts that maybe the reason players strip out the music, almost immediately, is because it's been designed wrong for so long. "Don't wait for them to become interested. Give them a reason to be." That's his motto, and he promises that the way he and his group are making the audio portion of SGW will give us all "something very special to look forward to."There has always been visual cues and clues, but why haven't developers utilized the high end sound cards sitting in all our rigs? Film makers have known for some time that the auditory portion of a movie is just as important as the visual. It's about time someone took this sorely underutilized gaming component... and cranked it!
