DJ Hero gameplay prototypes

Under the wing of our new owner Activision, the Audio crew at 7 Studios began developing some very exciting gameplay prototypes for the DJ Hero franchise. Our goal was to expand the gameplay mechanics of the franchise into a more engaging interactive music experience.

  • Pre-production research & documentation of games innovative to the genre.
  • Authored a game design document detailing prototypes for electronic music gameplay.
  • Designed functional gameplay prototypes in Max/MSP/Jitter.
  • Sound Design of crowd & background ambiences for the DJ venues in 5.1 surround sound, audio implementation using in-house audio tools & scripting language.
  • Designed & implemented a dynamic crowd 'mood mixer' in the game engine, featuring multi-point volume curves to create seamless transitions between crowd moods based on player performance.
  • I was selected by my department to document & provide an analysis of the audio pipeline in our new game engine, covering everything from new tools to the flow of scripting logic relevant to audio implementation, mixing, & DSP effects.
  • Leveraged existing debug functions in the game engine to create a revolutionary new tool for our department, a Max/MSP patch featuring a GUI control surface to manipulate mixer channels & DSP effects in real-time on an Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 console. The tool enables us to mix natively on a target platform including functionality to map generic MIDI controllers to console mixer & DSP parameters.
  • Programmed an equal-power crossfader in the game engine's scripting language.

Role: Sound Design, Audio Gameplay Design, Audio Implementation & Scripting