Engines and Middleware MU3410 - Week 14

Assignment Submission

I’ve submitted my Engines and Middleware assignment! On the day, I was a bit of a stressed mess, and I was rushing to get a few final little tweaks and finishing touches done for the deadline, but on reflection, I think that overall things went okay. I don’t think I managed to fully get my mix under control to the point I was fully happy with it. However, I think the side-chaining and ducking systems I set up definitely helped to clear the mix up during particularly hectic gameplay moments.

Futureworks Year 3 Intro

Started my third and final year of studying Game and Interactive Audio at Futureworks today; I can’t believe these past few years have flown by so fast! I spent this week going over the various module handbooks I’ll need to refer to over the course of this semester, so that I’m ready to hit the ground running when tuition properly starts up next week.

This is it, time for one final effort! *Cue Halo’s epic warthog run theme*

School of Video Game Audio - Wwise Demo Reel

Here's the Wwise demo reel I made after taking the fantastic Wwise course at the School of Video Game Audio. Overall, I’m pleased with the audio assets I produced for my audio re-design of the Wwise Adventure Game, and I feel that I’ve been able to implement them appropriately via the Unity-Wwise integration. However, I also feel that my interactive mixing skills definitely need a lot more attention! My source ambiences such as the windmill and river still feel a bit too loud in the mix in places, and I didn't get to spend as much time as I would have liked on getting my SFX objects consistently organised into actor-mixers, which would have allowed me a much finger degree of control at the mixing stage. Still, on the whole, I'm pleased with what I was able to accomplish during my time on the course, and I feel that I now have a decent grasp on the fundamentals of Wwise. Thanks for all your help and guidance Leonard + Viviana!

School of Video Game Audio - Evil Spit Plant Sounds

Here's a few of the Evil Spit Plant sounds I've been making over the previous two blog entries set to gameplay footage to show how the sounds work within the context of gameplay.

School of Video Game Audio - Weapon Sounds + Project Asset List

Designed the initial projectile shoot sound for the enemy spit plant in the Wwise Adventure Game this week.

To create this sound, I used a combination of monster and gun samples (SoundMoprh's Monster Within, Watson Wu's Battle Rifles and Pistols and Airborne Sound's Free Firearm Library) plus my own vocal recordings to create a punchy yet still organic projectile launch sound.

Inspired by a really cool talk on gun sound design by Barney Oram at last month's Game Audio North meetup, I split my sound design for the spit sound into several layers. These were:

• Punch Layer - This initial layer contained a combination of bassy sounds to give the spit event a meaty kick. This layer includes a kick drum sample and the first transient from some shotgun blasts to suggest the poison projectiles are exploding out of the plant's mouth after a build-up of pressure.
• Slime Layer - As a substitute for the traditional mechanical layer of a gun sound, I used several groups of slime/gore samples to emphasise the organic nature of the plant, and to suggest that the enemy generates the spit projectiles is a very messy process!         
• Vocal/Character Layer - To further add to the disgusting/revolting feeling I wanted to achieve with the slime layer, I also included processed monster vocal sounds to suggest that the poison projectiles the spit plant launches at the player are being regurgitated up from the plant's innards before being projectile vomited at the player. Gross!
• Tail Layer - This layer contained hissing vocal sounds I recorded to give a natural decrescendo effect to the end of the sound as it decays away.

I then imported these layers into Wwise and arranged them into various SFX objects and random containers within the play actions of the Enemy_EvilSpitPlant_ShootBullet event.

View fullsize

The Enemy_EvilSpitPlant_ShootBullet event in my Wwise project. Randomised pitch and volume offsets were applied to certain layers, and randomised delay offsets to the vocal and tail layers were used to vary the playback speed of the latter sections of the sound.