Assignment 3 | Sound in Unity

This is really odd because I am backlogging this recount(this post is being written on the 20th of May). At the time that this is being posted, I was not considering sound and was more focused on modelling to catch up from last week but to keep things in order I will discuss the sound design here...

What I should have been working on:

Sounds that I'm looking for currently are...

Non-necessary sounds

I had a look on Free Sounds.org and found mostly what I was looking for.

Attributions:

The aura sound coming from the buoys was: yolk bangin FFT.wav by Saltbearer -- https://freesound.org/s/533532/ -- License: Creative Commons 0

Bell sound: Bells 1 by Pixabay -- https://pixabay.com/sound-effects/bells-1-72261/ -- License: "free to use and distribute"

Soft waves: North Sea, Whitley Bay, 21 October 2006 [1].wav by mikehirst -- https://freesound.org/s/24047/ -- License: Attribution NonCommercial 4.0

Heavy waves: Pirita Storm waves06.12.2015.flac by jrosin -- https://freesound.org/s/330408/ -- License: Attribution 4.0

Thunder cracks: Thunder Claps, Constant, Strikes Boomy, Storm Cracking by PNMCarrieRailfan -- https://freesound.org/s/681514/ -- License: Attribution NonCommercial 4.0

I think all sounds in this game will be diegetic to enhance immersion.

To edit each of the sounds I opened up Adobe Audition to normalise, compress and make sure each file is loop-able.

When adding each of the sounds I played around with the graph to make sure the sound was non-linar🧐

3DGraphOfSound

(Future discovery)

Later down the track, I came across an issue with how I wanted the 3D sound to work and how it ended up. I initially wanted the sound to have very little transition distance. meaning most of the bubble was max volume and only a small portion of the outer rim contained the transition. In this small transition distance, I wanted each bubble to overlap. The image below shows the setup I was using right up until the playtests.

ocean side view

This was an issue later because I didn't realise that the sound being a ball meant there were dead pockets.

Ocean top view

I ended up scaling the areas up but this meant you could hear both at the same time at full volume. In future, it would be nice to find a way to make the 3D volume in a box shape, either with unitys features or write a script that would allow an empty box to emit sound.

What I was working on:

I still didn't have a good idea for a change to represent. Considering Thomas had said something about being able to play the game for upwards of 15 minutes. The corridor was too short and didn't have enough assets and the moving object idea was very small, And most importantly neither had any substance because there was no real idea behind the change.

I had discussed a change in mental health when coming up with the corridor idea and I wanted to take that idea a little further, so this week I sat down and properly brainstormed how I could represent and symbolise this idea. I decided the best way to tell a story could be to construct a metaphor... show don't tell. First I was thinking of making a forest, continuing this idea of 'developing' the environment based on the player's movement to show the journey of the player/person, I wanted the forest to thicken and become more dense the more the player moves. In a perfect world (where I know how to use c#) I would program a game on a single tile that simulates a forest and increases the density based on the player's movement, and once the player has collected some objects(keys, mushrooms, rabbits or something) the simulation reduces and the player reaches a goal.

This would represent my experience of going through high school. In the beginning, there is an end in sight but the longer it went on the harder it got, and to get out ultimately I relied on seeking help from friends and family, and reaching my destination(despite there being a long road ahead).

The forest idea was cool but (1)I had heard and seen a lot of people in class doing forests and I wanted to do something newish (2)Thomas had mentioned that "managing to get water into your work could be really cool" and (3)I love a challenge. So instead of trees in a forest, I chose to pursue a boat in an ocean.

Most of this week was just formulating these ideas, rather than designing anything tangible. just doing some Googleing and preparing myself with some questions that need to be solved before I commit to the idea.