In the last lesson I learnt that a game call is a message passed between the game engine and the Wwise audio engine. So far, we have used simple Event game calls to represent various situations that occur in the game (such as Wwizard throwing an Ice Gem). However, there are times when more details about a particular game situation need to be communicated. For example, what kind of ground the player is walking on, how much life (i.e. HP) is left, whether the player is currently dead or alive, etc. All of these conditions can affect the sound we want the player to hear.
In Cube, the Wizard is constantly on the move; sometimes chasing monsters, sometimes dodging attacks. But as with many first-person perspective games, I could never see the player’s feet. But does this mean that he doesn’t have feet? Of course not! There is an implied job for the audio department to help the player believe that they are actually standing firmly on the ground in the game and not floating in the air. To do this, I can add the sound of footsteps to the player’s movement behaviour.
To achieve this, the game needs to tell Wwise when the player is moving. This can be achieved using simple Event game calls. However, there are many different ways to implement this. For example, sending a game call when the player starts moving, and another when he stops moving. The way this is done in Cube is that each footstep of the player is sent as an event. If no footstep event is sent over, it is assumed that the player is not currently moving.
I learned three types of game sync, switch, game parameter, and state. The switch is the ability to change the sound of a character’s footsteps on different textures, for example, from grass to wooden floors. This can be done with a switch. The game parameter is a parameter that can be determined in the game, such as lifetime value. The state is a transition that allows the character to go from or to death, and usually, the combination of state and switch, I think, is closer. This is because when the player’s life level reaches a certain low, the game will automatically sound a heartbeat to alert the player that the life level is low. This state can then be combined with parameters and controlled with RTPC curves.
