During the week, I learnt how to change some parameters in the general setting of the property editor to make a completely different audio in Wwise by changing the same audio, which saves the system CPU and reduces the amount of memory used by the audio. Before getting into Wwise, I added sound effects to some game clips. For example, in some shooter games, the sound of a character changing ammunition is a coherent change of ammunition made up of two different audible audios. In a regular sound effects project, I would have had to use two various audios in Daw, which would not only have been cumbersome but would have increased the amount of memory I had to run. In Wwise, I can change the Pitch value of one of the audios to make one audio into two sounds without adding memory.

As last time, I started by importing an audio file. For all subsequent studies, I practiced with the sample game Cube, a shooter-adventure game given on Wwise’s website.

在导入完音频之后，我只需要进行复制黏贴就能创建一个不增加内存的相同音频。由于角色挥舞魔法棒后会有一颗新的Ice gem放入魔法棒中，这一个动作会有一个连贯的声音。被我复制的声音只需要修改它的音高就能当作视频中补充Ice gem的声音。

After that, I also learned about the randomization of audio; for example, if a character swings a magic wand when a crystal ball is fired and lands, there will be the sound of debris. It would be boring for the player to use the same sound repeatedly. So Wwise’s randomization allows for many different fragments of sounds to be played with various patterns. This increases the randomness of the game’s audio, which makes it a much richer listening experience for the player.

I knew about this software two years ago and, at the time, I didn’t bother to find out about it. But at the start of this collaborative project, I decided to find out more about it.

Along with Fmod, Wwise is one of the most popular game audio middleware in the gaming industry; Wwise allows audio integration with major game engines such as Unity and Unreal Engine. It is also possible to design and edit within existing audio. In addition, Wwise can perform real-time audio detection and process audio sources in real-time. In addition, Wwise has many features, such as music interaction, mixing, and audio dynamics. I’m just starting to know the keys and some simple audio integration. I am following the tutorials on the website to learn Wwise step by step.

In the first lesson, I had to create an event, Wwise has a game call and an Event relationship, and at first, I found the logic of the two very difficult to understand. But as I made connections later, I slowly understood that a game call is a command given by the game engine, and an Event is a command created by the audio engine to receive that command. A lot of the theoretical knowledge in the software will only become more apparent after practice. First of all, I want to create an Event in Project Explorer.

In the next step, I need to import the audio into Wwise, and when we double-click to open the audio, the window below will open. From this window, I can make some basic adjustments to the audio, such as pitch, volume, and some filters. This interface is very similar to the audio modifications in the DAW. Still, it is much more convenient than in the DWA, as all the essential changes are already included in this interface.

After that, I will create an Action. An Action is a command that makes the game live with this command. We need an action once we have the events and the imported audio. In the Event viewer, we need to go and make the Action start “playing”. So the audio needs to be dragged into the Action. This will allow the audio to be heard directly from the Event.

At this stage, Wwise needs more time to digest.

After our first offline meeting, we decided that the theme of the game we wanted to make was a horror game and that the game was an escape genre. At the moment we have decided that the theme music for the game is a jazz-based music genre. We also listed several phobias that could be used in the game, such as claustrophobia, fear of heights, deep water, darkness, and spiders. All of these phobias are an inspiration for us to create content for each level. We also assigned our roles in the meeting.

I found some examples of games for horror games, this game has a straightforward color scheme, and the boy has to avoid obstacles such as water monsters or hounds and has to use his body to decipher some levels. The boy can die in many ways, including drowning, being shot with a gun or tranquilizer dart, being bitten by a dog, being trapped by a security machine, being blown away by a shockwave, and so on. One of the STAGES in the game we plan to make is Deep Water Phobia, and the content and sound of this video below is an excellent examples to refer to.

In the game, we can hear the difference between above and below-water sounds. The sound on land is obvious, but we can only hear a muffled sound underwater. I checked that sound propagation speed is about 4.5 times faster underwater than on land. So underwater, our ears and brain are not used to dealing with the shorter duration between each ear’s premonition of sound waves. Therefore, although we can still hear the sound, we need help determining the source and distance of the sound.