VORPAL: An extensible and flexible middleware for real-time soundtracks in digital games

Abstract

Real-time soundtracks in games have always faced design restrictions due to technological limitations. The predominant solutions of hoarding prerecorded audio assets and then assigning a tweak or two each time their playback is triggered from game code leaves away the potential of real-time symbolic representation manipulation and DSP audio synthesis. In this paper, we take a first step towards a more robust, generic, and flexible approach to game audio and musical composition in the form of a generic middleware based on the Pure Data programming language. We describe here the middleware architecture and implementation and part of its validation via two game experiments.