RPI - Chris Quinn

[waxen delta]

Hey everyone! So, quite excited to introduce to you our next interviewee! He's worked on some incredible stuff with Total War and is excited to answer any sound-related questions you have about the game 🙂
As always, please keep questions to only one and vote on any answers you'd like answered! 🙂
We'll be wrapping up around 5 pm but will keep the thread open till tomorrow at 12:00 BST so you can see the responses 🙂

[karmic geyser]

Is there any particular unit or character that you are not happy with sound wise and would like to improve?

[carmine latch]

are there any plans for improving the mid-battle SFX for armies engaging eachother from the on-the ground perspective to establish a more immersive feel, like the older Total War games?

[silver ermine]

Any plans on adding new sounds / music to older factions that are lacking a bit compared to newer ones?

[weary olive]

Will the vampire coast shanty and the ogre kingdoms song be added to wh3?

[graceful aspen]

Hello , would you consider adding more ambience/atmosphere sounds like from Elements during Battles ? and some Foley sounds for artillery pieces , arrows "loose" , galloping ? thank you .

[hollow smelt]

Will we see some more mod capabilities when it comes to sounds? I am thinking of for example modded battle music or so, since there are some really cool tracks (Paunch & Grim / Vampire Coast soundtracks) that are unfortunately only in the main menus

[waxen delta]

Chris: Kholek Suneater and Dragon Ogres are the ones I'd like to make a few changes for. They had some slight tweaks in IE and we supported a lot of them. With Kholek getting a new ability (Tempest Rage) as well as the persistent lightning VFX getting redone (both visuals and audio). However, seems some lightning VFX was added after we finished redoing these units so missed the fact he had lightning in a few attack animations. So it's on my list to quickly whip up some lightning attack sound effects for Kholek to go with the fantastic visuals!

Dragon ogres being from Total War: WARHAMMER I also means some of their assets are showing their age. So if I ever get a gap in my schedule id love to update the footstep sounds for them to bring them more in line with our modern assets.

[karmic geyser]

Will we see a fart with reverb for kugath attack?

[wet spruce]

This

[elfin bloom]

What was the one sound you had to make that required such specific tools to obtain the team sent confused looks your way?

[lament vessel]

Will WH1 and 2 races ever get more diplomacy voicelines to reference new factions? A lot of the older LLs only cover a small part of all the content that's there. The fact that Allarielle and Tyrion don't have anything for each other is a bit of a letdown. Dwarfs and Elves too. It'd be great to have some more variety and get that sweet immersion.

Also Orion horn animation wen pls

[icy nacelle]

Are there plans to give the Warhammer 1 races new musics ? I know with Warhammer 3 you've introduced a new technology for music that is dynamically changing but personally I really don't like it as it's losing a lot of identity and flavour, you'll often hear very similar musics between older races and even with the WH3 races.

[quasi violet]

Any plans to add back the unique end turn sounds for the races ? I know it's very minor detail but it added a bit more flavour to each races (always loved that gong when you end your turn with Tomb Kings)

[waxen delta]

Chris: Total War: WARHAMMER III's mix is something that's in constant flow. What makes us so unique as a game as players can bring infinite combinations of armies and we have to have systems in place that can support all that. So bringing in a doom stack of dreadsaurians presents different challenges for us than bringing an army of just skinks and Saurus.

So yes we are always trying to improve our systems to give a better audio experience, as with so many variables also being needed to be considered we are constantly nudging our parameters and using all new systems/ toys we get access to try and elevate the mix.

So yes we are always trying to increase the bar with each release and shall hopefully be constantly improving (including mid-battle SFX) until we do our very last release.

[ionic scaffold]

Can we get a Bretonnian dlc please?

And whats with the ridiculous speed changes in wh 3?

[teal meteor]

Any plans to add Slaaneshi Cultists to Morathi's faction? Given it is the 'Cult of Pleasure' I figured it'd be super thematic, plus an ability of cultists to summon daemons is really cool. Would be a great way to take what is currently implemented a bit furthur and really distinguish her more from other dark elf playthroughs.

[opaque kindle]

How did you do sfx for Cathay Grand cannon? That was my fav

[royal yew]

Hey, do "chants" exist for WH3 units, or are they removed ? I have not heard any of the wahammer 3 units do a "chant" is it a bug ?

[meager spade]

I'm very thankful for CA Team for Vilitch and how lore friendly he is introduced. I wanted to ask what was the most difficult part of the his development? I want also ask your opinion was is also possible to make his Chaos Warriors sounds more unique? Because warriors and chosen of Puppets of Misrule is more robot-automatons that living soldiers without feeling.

[lofty current]

Are there any plans to return/fix the voicelines that would trigger when hovering over pre & post battle options, like fight manually or sack settlement, and the audio triggers for clicking on the special lord TK technologies, both of these were broken through WH2s lifecycle

Also will there be more modding support for audio, like being able to add new sounds without having to override old ones?

[gleaming apex]

Will we hear some locomotive sounds in the next DLC ?🤔 🙂

[waxen delta]

Chris: Fun fact about the audio team, we are split into 3 departments. Dialogue, Music, and Sound Design teams. So music isn't necessarily something I work with, so I'll do my best to give the perspective I have.

I've talked to the music team about our trailers, as clearly fans love the music in them. The problem is what works in a 30-second to 2-minute trailer doesn't necessarily work in a game. Our music in the game is driven by so many parameters and variables that change depending on what the player is doing, whereas the trailers are a clear linear timing with neat beginning middle, and end.

So, yes, the trailer music is awesome, but it wouldn't necessarily work in the game. Luckily the music we do have in the game is just as awesome if not more so. We have a lot of clever people on that team that are always a joy to work with.

[clear flax]

Will we get dwarf prebattle theme back? xd

[waxen delta]

Chris: I had to do some unspeakable things to porridge with a plunger to get the sounds of Skrag's caldron. I wanted to make all the sludge of his stew sound as disgusting as possible. One of my co-workers walked in on the mess and we all agreed never to speak of it again.

[silk patrol]

Are you gonna make new songs for old factions? Bretonnia, dwarves and the Empire sharing songs is a bit of a sad thing, because they are so distinct. Bretonnia being medieval fanfare, the Empire more prussia, and dwarf, well, dwarf, right?

It's just beautiful to hear the dark elf music being so thematic, or the GLORIOUS Nehekharan tunes, but then going back to wh1 factions is a gloomy situation as far as sound is concerned.

Thank you!

[minor wigeon]

As I've seen so far there are optimisation issues in the game. And it really annoys me and I am sure it annoy other players as well. Especially loading screens. I have to wait sometimes after 5 minutes. And as turns go on higher loading screen and lagging are starting to be more and more. When will Total War Warhammer III be optimised? Or is it on your schedule currently?

[waxen delta]

Chris: Immortal Empires was a great chance to do an inventory of how our game sounds and get a list together of all we'd like to improve.

So we have this fantastic list of improvements to make, it's just finding the time. Our new content always takes priority but we try to be smart and when we make something new, see if it can be applied retroactively.

[waxen delta]

Chris: The Nurgle giant Regiment of Renown we introduced in Champions of Chaos has our best fart attack. It's an ability so it's got the biggest mix on it. Just a big massive fart, a must-have on all campaigns it's available in.

Hopefully, that spell and reverb are exactly what you're after. I'll make a note to investigate Kugath fart attack animation though. Make sure the fart is "beefy" enough for grandfather Nurgle.

[worthy zenith]

You said the audio team is split into sound design, music, and dialogue.
How often do the different teams interact/work in tandem?

[waxen delta]

Chris: I said earlier about how we have different teams within the audio department and this is one that our dialogue department would handle. I shall do my best to answer from my perspective though.

Voice lines for legacy characters get tricky as we have to get the budget, write up all the lines bring the actor back in, and record all lines. Edit all lines, implement in-game, mix and then test. Also, don't forget about localization in multiple languages.

As you can see it's a very long process that would sap away much-needed resources on future content. So yes, we always try to be smart and if an opportunity to touch something easily comes up, we'll always jump at it. Voice lines are a bit trickier as it isn't as simple as me just wanting to improve some assets, it's a big process with many moving parts. Never say Never though!

I'd be very much down for doing the Orion horn. I did Imrik's a year ago for his dragon horn ability so would be a blast to do something similar for Orion. As you can imagine Immortal Empires brought a lot of changes to legacy characters so if we ever have a smart opportunity to do this, you know we'll jump on it. Nothing in the immediate future however I'm afraid.

[warped pelican]

Chaos Dwarfs are on the horizon!! Question is. Any insight on if there will be a distinctive separation between Hobgoblins working with them and those of the Eastern Steppes??

[toxic kite]

Would you consider adding old tracks to the game like "faith steel and gunpowder" or the WH2 menu theme?.

[knotty leaf]

What was the most difficult sound to make? Wich one re you the .ost proud of?

[waxen delta]

Chris: Yes! Patch 2.3 will be bringing back the unique end-turn sounds. End-turn sounds have become a bit of an internal joke within our team as we do try to keep up with the comments and we didn't realise how well-loved they were. So it's been a priority for us since 2.0 but some of our new tech/systems hindered us a bit from getting it out sooner.

In Total War: WARHAMMER III we made modular UI kits. Essentially the plan was to instead of making a bunch of bespoke sounds, make bespoke sound sets that are generated at run time in the game. So when you click a button like Khorne it sounds like Khorne but isn't the exact same sound as before as generated from several pre-defined Khorne sounds.

This worked really well in nearly all cases.... except end-turn sounds. So yes it's been a priority for us but we had to untangle the system a bit to get it to play nice for end turns and everywhere else, which now is the case. We nearly had it ready for 2.2 but we decided to play it safe and give it more testing before sending it out into the wild (especially since it's the number 1 audio comment).

Keep an ear out for the Skaven mod UI sounds though, as that was the only one I was fortunate enough to be involved in as I was busy working on other aspects of our game. Hopefully when you click "start battle" you get a nice warp lightning flavour!

[gloomy tartan]

Is there a chance for Banners and Musicians?

[waxen delta]

Chris: I didn't personally do this unit and unfortunately can't quite remember who did! However, what I will say is we have been doing cannons for a long time and have plenty of good examples in the game to use as inspiration.

Cannons are very important so they have a lot going on under the hood in regard to the mix to make sure they stand out above the chaos that is Total War.

A trick we use a lot is making a "main" sound for the cannon that plays at all distances the cannon can be heard from across the battlefield, this gives the cannon its power.

However, we will also play a "close" sound on top of this that you only hear if you are close to the cannon and this will give you all the fine detail that makes that cannon sound so satisfying at a close range.

This implementation style is used on the grand cannon as well as the iron blaster which was the most recent artillery cannon I did.

[waxen delta]

Chris: Pretty often. Sound Design and Dialogue often work together and communicate as we have to work on the same animations and whatnot, as well as discuss ideas.

Music team, we don't work with quite as much but we still have crossed over and the music team is great at recording some wacky staff with their instruments that we can use as sources in making creature voices!

Also want to flag at this point that we have a fantastic dedicated Audio QA team and a dedicated Audio Code team. Those are the teams that hold us up and make Sound Design, Music, and Dialogue sound as good as they can.

[waxen delta]

Chris: Best Sound I personally feel I made was the big impact in the Purple Sun of Xerxes spell. I find it so satisfying every time it activates. It's got a cool state on its implementation where it mutes the whole game besides itself like it's sucking the life out of the ambiance. Very appropriate for the lore of death spell.

The most difficult will always be anything to do with the Daemon Prince. He very likely has the most complex audio setup in the game as it was needed to accommodate all possible configurations the player could make. So I easily must have made 100 + assets for the Daemon Prince and I had to make sure all of them played nice with each other. So I had to ensure for instance that he had fire wings they sounded ok if you also equipped Nurgle sludge feet and whatnot.

[maiden crescent]

What plugins do you use to manipulate and enhance your recordings? Are there any free ones you can recommend?

[night pasture]

Will the team consider making the Norscan marauder model a bit more unique when the faction gets a rework? Currently they use the same model and voices as the WoC faction, which wouldn't be too bad if the model wasn't reused 10 times in the faction.

[earnest yacht]

Chris: I have been a big fan of FabFilter plug-ins for about 6 years now.

Pro Q is by go-to EQ.
Pro R I love for making big and abstract reverbs. I love using it to process voices/ whispers in magic to add a spooky organic element.
Pro C and Pro MB are 2 of my highest used compressors.
Saturn is a fantastic saturation plugin to bring some real crunch to a sound.

I’m not sponsored by fab filter I just love their toys.

A free plugin that I absolutely love is Softubes Saturation Knob. It’s such an easy and simple-to-use saturator that I can quickly throw it on my processing chain and make a sound a bit more exciting.

I recently just used it on a more cinematic piece I was working on that had bats in it. Bats are high pitch and pretty annoying, but I massaged them a lot with EQ then just threw on a saturation knob to really make them pop. Worked really nicely (well at least I think it worked nicely)
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[earnest yacht]

Chris: In THREE KINGDOMS: FURIOUS WILD DLC we introduced elephant drummers. They were super awesome as their drumming played in sync with the music. I've always loved that and wanted to see it in WARHAMMER III, hopefully, at some point, there will be a unit introduced to justify bringing over this cool tech.

Nothing is on the cards any time soon however, hopefully, one day though.

[lament vessel]

Dunno if I can ask another question having had one already answered but how do you go about making the more fantastical ambient sounds for the world map? Stuff like Athel Loren, Chaos Wastes, Skaven cities. Are there certain things you try to look for to add that magical element?

[earnest yacht]

Chris: We recently just remade all WARHAMMER I and WARHAMMER II race settlement sounds. To bring them up to the standard of the WARHAMMER III RACES. This came with patch 2.2

So, this hopefully makes them all very unique and gives the flavour of those races purely from the audio. These will play whenever you have the camera near the settlements on the map.

We also have loads of different ambiances play at different parts of the map, so hopefully, the atmosphere sounds different enough in a subtle way that you can tell when you are in Naggarond vs Lustria.

We also love finding cool campaign props to play off like the howling citadel.

I was heavily involved in the prologue map and that was super fun to design as it was more of a traditional level design as opposed to the more standard open world of Total War. That allowed me to have a lot of fun with how sounds played there.

So in the beginning Kislev bit is all desolate, cold, and pretty spooky. Then it turns into a really abstract and magical Tzeentch soundscape in the middle with all these Tzeentch monster beak props screaming from the walls. Lucent Maze atmosphere was super fun to design as it was so abstract I could really push it in any direction I wanted.

Then finally it was the Khorne’s section of the map where I did my best to capture hell on earth.

The screaming canyon was also really cool to work on, if you sit at that area of the map you will hear the wind " scream".
Hopefully, all of these ambient sounds really helped tell the story the prologue wanted to tell.

[earnest yacht]

That’s all for now! Thank you everyone for participating 😊 Big thanks to Christopher Quinn for joining us today. Watch this space for more Rally Point Interviews in the future 😊

[jovial shale]

Congratulations for the soundscapes and the general quality of the game.

I would like to know if one day it would be possible for each of the races to dialogue in its own language? and not only in English but with different accent. For example elves and dwarves have sentences in an invented language, but unfortunately not all of them. Thanks 🙂