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Stellaris Dev Diary #110 - Creation and Beyond

Hello all interstellar readers!

It is time for me to write another entry and this one will be a special one for me to write. For those that doesn't know me, my name is Björn Iversen and I work as Audio Director at Paradox Development Studios.

Hope that you all have been enjoying Stellaris since our update and Apocalypse expansion, it was sure super fun working on audio assets for blowing up planets! But working on Apocalypse was also the beginning of the end for my part. The plan was that when I was done with my work for Apocalypse it was time for me to move to another project here at Paradox.

When I first started at Paradox, I was really excited about creating cool sounding audio assets for our historical games and what kind of challenges I would be facing! Fun note, I have been trying out PDS games since Europa Universalis 1. So imagine how surprised I was when I first walked into the office, did not ever imagine that I would start working on a new PDS IP, that also was a Sci-Fi game! It is like every Sound Designer’s dream to work on a game like this! Who doesn’t like working on lasers and explosions! But in reality I started working more with kazoo’s and clarinet to create all those sweet UI sound effects.

My first workstation at Paradox back in 2015 when I was high tech.

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Btw I still have those white headphones, but I have changed my keyboard to something more modern and my surroundings has changed to something much more comfortable.

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Here is a screenshot of the madness that was my first audio session for Stellaris and it was not easy going through it all today due to lack of structure.

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My folder structure did not make any sense today or even back then.

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There was some problems opening all these old sessions.

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Going back and looking at the VO sessions to see how I did edit everything:

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You will see some attached audio files to this Dev Diary which are some really old and early drafts of audio assets that I recorded for Stellaris. There is a good mix of clarinet and other weird things, and to be honest I don't remember everything that I did back then.

It was a bit weird for me in the beginning thinking about the whole idea of me not working any more on Stellaris, it was THE project I started on from day one as a Audio Director. But over the years I have been involved with so much with Stellaris, been able to make additions that you as the community has appreciated and also some additions that you have might not been as pleased with. It has been a long and bumpy road for me, but I have learned so much along the way!

I’m really pleased with my work on Stellaris and what I did achieve. What I’m probably most happy about is well VIR turned out to be. It was quite refreshing including VO into a PDS title since we haven’t really have any VO before in our titles. Also how we have expanded with VO in Stellaris with all the new additions in Synthetic Dawn and Humanoid Species Pack!

But after working for a couple of years on Stellaris I need to start focusing on other titles, so I’ll give a short introduction to Franco, forum name @Audiomancer, that will be focusing more on Stellaris in my place.

Hello beautiful community! My name is Franco Freda, and I'm a Senior Sound Designer here at Paradox Interactive. I met Björn last year and I was honoured to have gotten the opportunity to join him and the Audio Team. I was lucky to get to work with Stellaris as soon as I joined in January, right on time for the wrapping up of Apocalypse and was immediately blown away by the quality of its soundscape. Let's just say that if Space could actually have sound, I would want it to sound like that XD!


I'm looking forward to sharing this journey with all of you, and hope to be able to share some of the new awesome stuff we're working on very soon!
 

Attachments

  • clarinet_no_effects_02.wav
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  • reaaaaaly_early_drafts_01.wav
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  • pure_clarinet_recording.wav
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  • early_drafts_gui.wav
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  • testing_synths.wav
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  • UI pack_03-10.wav
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I really enjoy the audio aspects of Stellaris. Great work!
 
But what's going on with Stellaris? I'm starting to get a bad feeling they are done with it :(

Wiz has explicitly stated that they are moving on to other aspects of Stellaris outside of war mechanics. In no way does that imply they are done with development.
 
I've always found the audio in Stellaris to be fantastic. Works where you need it, so much so to the point where many things you don't really notice, but when you think about it realize there is an audio effect for x action that just blends in while you are playing.

Nice work and good luck!
 
But what's going on with Stellaris?
They're moving assets to <new project> and putting some people in new roles as part of the sustaining work to get them more experience. Standard software life cycle stuff.

AFAIK Stellaris is their best selling game ever, so I doubt support is ending any time soon.
 
It's too late for April fools dev diary swap.
 
Thanks Metal King. As others have said, the audio of Stellaris is definitely unique (among Paradox games) and a strength of the game. Good luck with what you're moving on to do. Also: hello to Audiomancer.
 
90% of the time I play Stellaris on mute, sorry.
Nothing wrong with the sound, just stellaris is the game I play on the train or while watching a movie. Although I do love some of the VO!
Was hoping for a proper dev diary but on well.