Hello! I’m the Art Director for World of Tanks,
and today we’ll tell you how we made the new sound.
Over the last few years,
we traveled to a lot to different places
where we recorded reference materials in a video.
We started recording sounds
to see how things worked.
And we came up with the idea
to significantly improve
the sound in World of Tanks,
because the materials we recorded
were much better than the sounds
we had in the game at the time.
So, for example,
if you watch the YouTube videos
about World of Tanks
released in 2011,
you can see that the visual component
has greatly changed since then.
But in 2015, we still had the same sound that we had in 2011.
There was nothing drastically new.
So, we needed a revolutionary leap forward
rather than an evolutionary one.
One of the best solutions to all those problems was
a complete change for the sound engine.
It seemed very daring,
but numerous issues told us it was time.
We needed that technological platform
to lay out every recording
that we had accumulated
over the years from when we visited the firing ranges
and recorded tank gun shots
and tank engine sounds.
So, we needed to prioritize all that
in order not to pile it up
but to implement it correctly.
We looked at what there was on the market and chose the
Wwise sound engine,
because it’s the best so far.
After our first attempts
of implementing something using it,
it became clear that our choice
and all expenses
that would follow were justified.
This is a crazy tool
with crazy capabilities.
We wanted to put a lot in there.
We had a great risk of
burying ourselves
in its capabilities
in an attempt to use everything it had to offer.
We could just bury ourselves
and lose a lot of time
just because of our enthusiasm.
So, we began planning
and designing some architecture.
Well, a few words about its history,
about how it was done
and how long it took.
We started working on Wwise in September 2014.
So work had been going on for more than a year.
We took our main subsystems
and worked on them first of all.
The subsystem for shooting sounds in general,
not only of the player’s vehicle shots,
but of all other players as well
is one of the main systems.
The second most important subsystem is hit sounds
because it helps you understand how badly
you’re damaged. That’s it.
The last things we worked on
were the least important subsystems,
like fence destruction,
trees creaking and birdsong,
which are the least significant
for the players and simply shouldn’t annoy them.
Many may think that the tank engine sound
is a very important subsystem.
But in reality,
it’s not so important for the game.
I mean it is important, but not key.
When we play, we should hear what happens
after we press the button,
for example, we should hear a shell fly
after we’ve fired.
We should hear that the shell has hit the target.
We should hear the vehicle explosion.
So, these are the main informative components
that require close attention.
It wasn’t easy.
We of course listened to each subsystem separately,
while we were working on them, and they sounded good.
But when we compiled everything
in a working build,
launched the servers, and started playing it,
we realized that not only
had we gone too far with the sound event prioritization system
and under polished it,
but in general,
the sounds that sounded good separately,
could sound very superfluous all together.
There were many improvements over the course of work.
We also adjusted things for our players.
I mean we received their feedback,
processed it,
gathered together, brainstormed ideas,
and thought about what we could do.
We added some additional requirements
and reworked what we had
already done.
So, our set of tasks,
our scope of work in general,
it wasn’t static.
It kept expanding.
But we customized the sound
according to the players’ requirements.
When we were preparing Update 9.14,
we were ready, let’s say,
to relax before the release.
We thought we would pass that milestone and rest a bit.
We held internal playtests,
fixed issues, then held a supertest,
fixed issues, then held a common test.
We fixed what we could,
but there were mainly performance issues.
And then we released the update.
With the release of 9.14,
we saw that player opinions
were divided in a strange way.
They were split.
So, they either liked it a lot,
or didn’t like it at all.
Yes, we started receiving feedback after the release,
and our team was very concerned about each comment,
about the sounds of “cooking pots,”
“driver’s teeth,”
and for all the spoons and forks
that rattled inside the tank.
They processed all the comments very attentively,
and then we would sit down and ruthlessly analyze the statistics,
how many players left their feedback
and how polar the opinions were.
We even took a little breather.
We didn’t start changing things
drastically based on player feedback.
We did the things that we understood and agreed on.
As for other issues,
we waited two weeks,
and only then started developing
our plans for what we were going to improve
by looking at the requirements
of our community.
So, we had a great number
of tasks piled up for the next update,
and we needed to solve them.
We needed to understand the comments from different people
who had different thoughts and perceptions of the sound.
They explained it in their own words.
So, we needed to find a way to process them
to understand whether we understood people correctly
and then do the right things to change something.
Update 9.14 was a big step,
and we knew it was a significant milestone.
We knew that if we released the sound,
of course we were going to release it,
we would then just improve it,
to implement things the players wanted
in addition to what we had already done.
And this is exactly how it went.
Update 9.14 renewed the main subsystems,
and we’re currently improving them,
and we react to what players don’t like,
we make targeted improvements.
If they don’t like the sounds for shots,
we remake them.
We monitor what we can do,
for example, to expand the content or caliber gradation.
If they don’t like how the engines sound,
we work on engines.
But the main scope of work
was done in 9.14.
We released the new sound,
and, to some extent,
it is like a tank
in stock configuration
that we purchase in the Garage.
Then we start upgrading it,
and so on,
and that means we’ve got improvements for our sound.
There’s content,
and there are many interesting things,
including the informative component.
I mean we’re going to improve
the informative game systems.
Our transition to the new engine
couldn’t be a small step.
One way or another,
it would have been a drastic step forward.
It’s not final, of course,
it means that we will continue to polish sound
and add new content,
and so on and so forth.
We already have big ideas
and features that we plan to implement in the future.
But right after the release of Update 9.14,
we were focused on improvements.
We have a clear understanding
of what we need to fix.
And I think we will make some big changes before the end of the year.
The work on the sound
will continue after the release of Update 9.15.
Sound is a very subjective thing.
And only your feedback,
especially your detailed comments,
can help us make it how you want it.
Participate in tests
and share your feedback.
See you!