Realtime Associates
| Realtime Associates | |
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| Founded | 1986 |
| Headquarters | El Segundo, California |
| Website | www.rtassoc.com |
| Other Names | Realtime Associates, Seattle Division INTV Corporation |
Realtime Associates is an American game development studio founded by David Warhol. In April 1994, a division in Seattle was created by Steve Ettinger (under the request of Warhol), which had been sold to KnowWonder, which eventually became F9E, which was then changed to Griptonite. Now, the studio is Glu Mobile.
The company started out developing for the Intellivision, and subsequently started developing NES, Game Boy, SNES, and other various consoles.
Besides game development, various game developers would outsource audio to Realtime. Some of these companies included Interplay, LucasArts, and Ironwind Software.
Contents
Games
Music Development
Game Boy
The composers would write MIDI files which were converted to David Warhol's sound driver. Warhol's sound engine was very picky where if a note overlapped another on a channel in the MIDI file, the converter would hang said note and play it forever. David Warhol also designed a custom chip which could connect the Game Boy sound chip to a MIDI keyboard.
Genesis
The company used GEMS, except for Barney's Hide and Seek, which uses a custom sound engine, possibly by David Warhol.
GG/PICO/SMS
David Warhol created the sound drivers and wrote a MIDI conversion tool.
NES
MIDI files were created by the composers (mostly in Cakewalk), and then were given to David Warhol to arrange for the NES' four sound channels. Then Warhol would use a tool he wrote that would convert MIDI files to his sound driver. The DPCM was almost never used in games with this driver due to Warhol not knowing how it worked.
Warhol arranged the composers' songs in an interesting way; rather than use the triangle channel of the 2A03 for bass, Warhol used one of the square wave channels instead, while using the triangle channel for melodic and harmonic parts.
SNES
David Warhol created the SNES sound engine at Realtime Associates. MIDI files were converted to his sound driver. The instruments were taken from various SNES games and they were provided by Sony.
AAAHH!!! Real Monsters uses SLICK/Audio sound engine from Bitmasters.
N64
Greg Turner uses Software Creations' N64 Sound Tools, which included on Nintendo's N64 SDK. On both Sesame Street games and Rugrats: Scavenger Hunt, developers converted voice recordings to MORT voice compression technology by Factor 5 and LucasArts.
Audio Personnel
The following composers worked at Realtime Associates:
- Chris Grigg - Contractor from LucasArts.
- David Govett - Composer (from Team FAT).
- David Hayes - Composer.
- David Lawrence - Contractor from LucasArts.
- David Warhol - Lead sound programmer and composer.
- George Sanger - Composer.
- Greg Turner - Composer.
- Eric Neilsen - Composer.
- Eric Swanson - Composer.
- Rick Rhodes - Composer.
Logo History
1994 logo
Present logo
