Hi
So to begin my blog properly i have decided to first talk about my journey over the past 6 months into games development and audio implementation. But first a confession, before last Summer i was a Game Development Virgin, never created anything using these tools in my life, so rather than go outside and enjoy one of the hottest summers on record, i decided to take advantage of the cost of Audiokinetic's WWise (it's free) and the new affordability of Epic's Unreal Engine 4 (about half the cost of a student night out) and well...lose that virginity. That felt awkward to type.
So first up i got familiar with Wwise, utilising their very handy Youtube tutorials and the LIMBO demo project to get to grips with the various switches, mixers and containers that are the backbone of the middleware.
After this i decided to move on up and tackle the big challenge, a fully established development tool. After some research and advice from those already in the field, i settled on Unreal Engine 4, which is a fairly new engine, meaning there aren't as many tutorials and guides to using it, especially when compared to the ubiquitous UDK tool. However again, through the Youtube tutorials and official documentation i got to grips with its operation, in particular the new Blueprint system, which meant i didn't need to learn C++ , which was a huge plus (sorry for that pun).
From here i devised the basic outline for a large chunk of my Final Portfolio for my final year of my Sound Technology degree at LIPA. The idea is to devise an interactive playable Game Audio implementation demo, which demonstrates my skills in Sound Design as well as incorporating those Assets in game. My "blueprint" for the level looked like this:
Though a little crude and primitive, it had all the elements i need. A start point, several information points and several areas each with unique sounds or creative implementations. I am currently building this as you can see here :
However on top of developing the physical space for this demo i have also been creating individual implementations in Blueprints for systems such as; a charging laser gun, reverb volumes, triggerable buttons, and more...
A good example to note here is the Droning gun, which features just one short audio clip for the main sound, this is looped and then has its pitch parameter increased over a 2 second period according to how long the button is pressed, imitating a sci-fi laser gun. Upon firing this is reversed which gives a charging down effect. I feel this shows a good way to maximise sonic output from very little, in terms of actual recorded audio.
So that's part one of my Game Audio adventure! stay tuned for more updates i suppose. Where i will detail my integration of Wwise into this project, as well as how all these individual elements will combine into a final playable level.
That was a long one, thanks for reading!
Until next time
Haroon