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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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  • testing_synths.wav
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Well, I for one enjoy these little insights into life at a game developer.

It's interesting but something I'll never get to see first hand (probably) so I appreciate the glimpse!
 
Thanks for everything @Metal King (the Advisor voices are really wonderful and add so much!), and welcome @Audiomancer !
 
I was totally shocked for the first Galactic Civilizations 2 picture. Don't get it at all. Brad should be proud, there in his Stardock office...

@Wiz, be careful! I think we have a spy here, with this nice guy, @Metal King ... :rolleyes:
 
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Blorg VO - I'm pretty sure the Blorg don't speak in any of my games? Is this still in development?
 
And another person moved to a new <secret project>... I'll be waiting for the Vicky3 announcement at PDXCon 2018
 
The SFX has been one of the consistent highpoints of Stellaris, even if you don't think about it very often.

At the very least, we know that whatever this new project is, its going to sound awesome.
 
More of this type of DD :) I like to see backstages of Paradox Office :) Stellaris is one of this game where I don't turn off music after few hours of playing.
 
I've thought, that this dev-diary was a joke, so that I've waited for the real one ...

By the way, an official patch without localisation ? - That's a joke - For sure ?! - Or not ?