My Wwise experience so far!

For the passed few weeks we have been learning elements of the game engine Wwise, a sound engine for interactive games made by AudioKenetic. We started by learning the process of implementing sound effects to static objects in the game Cube. In the first video walkthrough you hear the sound of the portal. This is the first sound I placed, I used an ambient piano loop I created after putting it through a granular synthesiser. I thought this fitted well. I adjusted the distance range of the sound as when I first put it in you could hear it all over the map at the same volume. I set it so that it could be first heard 500 (game distance) away from the object and it would get increasingly louder as you move towards it. A problem with the way this sounds which I'm unable to change is that when on the other side of a wall and within the distance you can hear it like you would as if there was no wall there. This is a parameter Wwise doesn't have without an external piece of software.

I then created four different shotgun sounds all varying very slightly. To do this I downloaded a range of different shots from FreeSound along with bullets hitting the floor and various reload effects. Initially I layered and exported these sounds in one MP3 (the shot, bullets and reload) this worked effectively as all fitted to the visual. We were then taught that you could have the three sounds separate and time them to fit the action. I ended up doing this as it was more accurate and easier to change the future. I set the four shot gun sounds on a random playlist which picks and plays one randomly, the reason for this is so the same one sound isn't constantly played making it more believable. My next step with this gun is to add reverb depending on the room we are in. I also created a sound for the machine gun. In this demo it isn't complete as it's not perfect yet because there is one file that plays fully even if you hit the trigger once. Also if you hold or spam the trigger the files overlap as heard in the video.

We also covered implementing music stems into the game which trigger progressively as you success through a different map on the game which has enemies and rooms that you unlock. We were given stems from a Nine Inch Nail track with a set out brief on how Trent Reznor wants them implemented. At first I found the process fairly simple using the logic we were told on how Wwise works with music. It got increasingly difficult as more curve balls were thrown in for example one stem playing followed by 3 others randomly played on a loop. With the added element of fading the two tracks in nicely after a bar. Theres many steps you have to remember and I often found myself thinking I had the right settings, generating the game to find the files all playing at once or another small problem due to the settings. I eventually got my head around it and want to post a tutorial video on this blog of the process. I am also going to compose some of my own stems that increase in intensity as the level progresses. The video below not only shows my poor skill at the game but also how the music changes throughout the levels.