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Meet Martin Galway!

Update #6 · Oct 23, 2012 · 24 comments
This is the first in a series of posts which will introduce you to the crew behind the development of Star Citizen. 

 Chris Roberts and Martin Galway go way, way back: they attended high school together in Manchester, England, and Martin was there in 1983 when Chris made one of his first commercial sales to Optima Software (Martin aged 17, Chris aged 15). After a few years at Ocean Software carving out his legendary status as Commodore 64 musician,Martin came to Austin in 1988 as a contractor, to help develop Times of Lore; two years later he returned permanently to take a job as Origin Systems’ Audio Director. From then on he was responsible for increasingly complex audio projects including sound effects, music and, as the Soundblaster took the market by storm, speech. Sharp-eared Wing Commander fans may recognize his voice as a Kilrathi in the original Wing Commander II demo! Martin’s audio work at Origin would go on to be an instrumental part of Strike Commander, Wing Commander III, Wing Commander IV and others. He headed up content creation on Origin’s first CDROM game, a port of “Ultima 6″ to Fujitsu’s FM-Towns PC. To hold all the digital speech samples for the game, Martin’s PC had the largest hard drive in the building at that time - a whopping 320MB. 

 Martin joined Digital Anvil shortly after it was founded in 1996 and was responsible for the audio on all of their games, in addition to earning an on-screen screen credit in the Wing Commander film! Long a champion of getting ambient background sounds exactly right, the scope of his work can be best appreciated in Freelancer’s vast and varied universe… and his voice shows up once or twice, too! Martin’s fame predates his work on Origin’s classics, though: he may be the single best-known composer for the Commodore 64 and has a rabid following in that community. His “chiptunes” for that early system are known worldwide and are routinely sampled and remixed today. 

 On Star Citizen, he’s back in the sound engineer chair again, creating and mixing everything needed for the GDC Online demo shown on October 10th. It’s an incredibly complex task: something as simple as the sound the player’s boots make while climbing the ladder into the cockpit might require combining half a dozen or more samples. He’s already developed great ambient, directional noise for things like the UEES Paul Steed’s engines, so that they shift from speaker to speaker and fade away as your fighter passes around them. Its deep rumble confirms you’re in the presence of something gigantic. In short, every single sound you hear in the finished game will have over two decades of Wing Commander and Freelancer experience behind it!

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Comments

    1. Missing_small

      Creator lovfro on November 11, 2012

      Thank you Mr. Galway for the music to Parallax

    2. Fb_profile_picture.small

      Creator Lane Todd Denson on October 24, 2012

      Awesome. Just promise that Star Citizen's music will be composed on a SID chip.

    3. Missing_small

      Creator Jan Wouter Arendsen on October 24, 2012

      Can we get an updated version of Comic Bakery as an easter egg or playing in a bar on some planet? Still part of my regular chiptune playlist ;-)

    4. Fb_profile_picture.small

      Creator Shane James Michael Hillen on October 24, 2012

      Did Martin compose the music used in this kick starter trailer? If so where can I buy it?

    5. Tdo75f8_my-little-pony-stormtrooper%20-colour.small

      Creator Patricia - Knightmare of ObsidianOrder on October 24, 2012

      Always great to be introduced to the crew behind the scenes.
      Looking forward to another awesome soundtrack :)

    6. Sunrise_dual_monitor-other.small

      Creator Björn Fernkorn on October 24, 2012

      IS THAT AN XBOX CONTROLLER OVER THERE?????? :O
      I would die for Joy if the game could be steered by an Xbox controller :)
      (Excuse my bad English Please)

    7. Boba_fett_01_gravitar.small

      Creator bleachorange on October 23, 2012

      Martin, I look forward to the sound of... well, everything. Thanks!

    8. Missing_small

      Creator Rad on October 23, 2012

      Love Martin Galway's music, and listen to various remixes & reinterpretations of his songs quite frequently.

      I hope he's also going to do the (part of) the game's soundtrack, not "just" SFX work?

    9. Arnoidrite.small

      Creator ☜☆RSF☆☞ Back Armikrog **We want YOU!** on October 23, 2012

      Great info. Looking forward to meeting more of the team.
      I also loved the idea of having radio stations for our ships playing awesome music. ;-)

    10. Image.php.small

      Creator tarasis on October 23, 2012

      Wow I didn't realize Martin Galway was connected to Origin & Wing Commander. I know his music from the chip tunes days and indeed still listen to some of it to this day. Good music overcomes the means of its generation :)

      Thank you Martin for years of pleasure and its great to see your are involved in this.

    11. Icinix.small

      Creator Icinix on October 23, 2012

      Awesome!

      Also - the lesson here is its ok to balance to your monitor precariously on top of other things.

    12. Fb_profile_picture.small

      Creator Ivan Malyushytskyy on October 23, 2012

      Shouldn't 99% of the game be played in total silence of space?

      (I know I know, fully realistic "space" combat in a vacuum would be a bit boring but still!)

    13. Pa_profile_5.small

      Creator Iron Jason Hahn ~Komurin~ on October 23, 2012

      @Lars radio would be awesome!

      I do love these updates, keep up the ambitious work!

    14. Missing_small

      Creator Darren on October 23, 2012

      Im very happy to see Martin is part of the new time. I grew up with the commodore 64 and the tunes that have made him a legend.

      @lars, radio stations sound like an excellent idea.

    15. Avatar68240.small

      Creator Nemo Pohle on October 23, 2012

      No way... Martin Galway. I recorded the Wizball music to tape in the 80's - seems I need to consider the soundtrack pledge now ;)

    16. Image-210118-full.small

      Creator Chris Conley on October 23, 2012

      Oh wow. I've never even seen a Commodore in person but I know his music. This is seriously awesome.

    17. Nexus2.small

      Creator Aletheides on October 23, 2012

      @Joel: Microsoft Intellimouse 1.1A. Have a couple in a drawer due to the buttons stopping to work correctly after a while.

    18. Missing_small

      Creator Lars Gronholt on October 23, 2012

      can have radios stations available to ships playing all of Martin's classics, please? Wizball especially :D

    19. D6a17ce748f906f7963f50051879d9ebaa970a83_full.small

      Creator Inquisitioner on October 23, 2012

      They should offer a joystick that'll go awesome with the game in some tier.

    20. K1dblitz-large-whitebg.small

      Creator k1DBLITZ on October 23, 2012

      Good to see focus on the game's audio. Sadly, most games overlook this area. Any chance we will be able to leverage aftermarket sound cards with hardware accelerated audio, or will it all be done in software?

    21. Screen%20shot%202011-12-06%20at%207.54.26%20pm.small

      Creator James Floyd Kelly on October 23, 2012

      I've got such fond memories of Wing Commander, but I absolutely LOVED Freelancer. I still wish I had my original Gravis joystick purchased just for these games.

    22. Avatar.small

      Creator Roland on October 23, 2012

      Awesome, audio is just as important as visuals and people tend to overlook that aspect. Glad to know someone very qualified is working on it.

      I attended an academic conference and someone was demonstrating how to capture the audio profile of soundscape such as fire, waterfall, and turn them into mathematical description which can generate unique and neverending sound of fire burning or waterfall splash. To me that is very impressive.

    23. Space-monkey.small

      Creator simone[Lechuck on RSI] on October 23, 2012

      very nice read! wait to see all the others from the team :D

    24. Missing_small

      Creator Joel on October 23, 2012

      what versions of Microsoft Mice is are those? (1.0 1.1A) ???????

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