After our VR students completed most of the visuals, I set about creating the sound effects. For the initial interface menu of the game, I designed two sound effects, the first being the sound when we navigate through the menu is crossed, while the second is the sound of a click. This is because I observed that many games have a sound when the menu bar is navigated but not clicked so as to add to the richness of the game’s menu sound effects.

The first act of our game was a very peaceful and comfortable indoor scene. So I recorded the sound of birds chirping outside the window and the corresponding sound of the characters stepping on the wooden floor. I also sampled an upbeat jazz track, setting up the scary atmosphere later. For the footsteps, I used mix pre6 to help me record a higher-quality footstep sound.

When the character finishes drinking the water, the scene changes to a nightmare scene. I added some samples of crow calls and some thunder samples. And in the indoor space, I recorded some footsteps with creaking wooden floors. And I turned the upbeat jazz into a staccato recorder sound. I knew that the steering and position of the character in Unity would affect the size and orientation of the sound heard from the vocalist, so I added some pan and volume automation to the DAW to make the video presentation fit the sound better, and so simulate the realistic effects of the game. However, it is much more complicated to do this automation directly in the DAW than in Unity or Wwise.

For the subsequent skyscraper scene, I recorded some ambient city sounds and some wind sounds. This creates the impression that the character is in a very high environment, making the player feel more in danger. This scene has many different textures of footsteps, such as wood, glass, and iron. So I have recorded three different types of footsteps. I think footsteps are very important, especially in an adventure game like this. Because the realism created by the footsteps makes the player feel like they are in the world. Unfortunately, in the group’s version, footsteps were not included in the game due to time constraints and technical complexity. Let’s be more efficient and expand our technical capabilities.

For the later playground scenes, I recorded a lot of footsteps on the grass and recorded some natural ambient bird calls. I used an alchemy synth to create a few dark and low tones for the background music. I also sampled some waterphone and cone tones to add to the creepy atmosphere. I think the most difficult sound to record and produce for this part was the sound of the clown crawling past because at the beginning, I didn’t imagine what kind of sound to overlay or how to record the fast crawling sound directly. Because I tried to record a few, but none worked very well. So I recorded the sound of a quick shaking of clothes, which was similar to the sound of a clown crawling.

For the final confinement phobia section I followed the previously recorded concrete footsteps and sampled some pick up and throw away sounds. I didn’t do much with the sound effects in this section, as the other group members’ background music was already the best in this scene to make the game more puzzle solving and meaningful.

Anyway, I put all the sampled and produced sounds into the film, and I think the result is still excellent and we can continue to work on the game if we have time. This project also gave me the experience of working with students from different disciplines and prepared me well for my future career direction.

There are many screams in our games to create a sense of terror, and adding screams can create a scare effect. There are many places in our games where clowns suddenly appear, and screams are one of the sound effects that play an essential role in these moments. The sudden high-pitched sound of screams can make our games even more terrifying.

In final Crits, Ingrid told me about the Wilhelm scream, a familiar sound effect used in film and television, which has been used in over 200 films since the 1951 film Distant Drums. The sound effect is often used when a character is shot, falls from a height, or is thrown from an explosion. The most likely source of the scream is actor and singer Shelby Woolley, named after a character, soldier William, who is hit by an arrow in the 1953 western The Charge at Feather River. Although the film is the third in history to feature this sound effect, this is the first use taken from the Warner Bros. sound effects library.

After listening to this sound effect, the scream might be more suited to a comedic film than to create a scary atmosphere. And having sampled the William scream to fit in our game, this William scream may not be suitable.

In VR, we must abide by the same moral theories as in reality, although it allows us to enter a virtual world. I remember some previous news reports of criminals committing violent acts against others in the virtual world and even molesting women. Back in 2005, someone was arrested by the Japanese police after using software to beat up virtual people and loot their belongings in a virtual game of life and then selling them for real-world money. I remember a story from last year that was much discussed on the internet about a female VR character being raped by another male character while sleeping. While the victim didn’t physically cause some effects, there can be colossal damage psychologically. I have checked some information, and there is no clear law written out about what penalties are received for some criminal activity in the VR world. Nick Brett, a lawyer at a London law firm, has commented on these phenomena, saying, “If a woman is sexually assaulted virtually, that in itself should be illegal, but it isn’t at the moment.”

Some VR games have also added necessary measures to protect women from new forms of harassment. Meta’s Horizon Worlds, for example, has gone live with a “personal space” feature: each avatar is given a private space with a 2-foot boundary to prevent overly intimate interactions.QuiVr, a game in 2016 where female players were chased and harassed, also features a ‘power gesture’: the player simply crosses their arms to move from the current space. The creators of some games need to keep up with the times and make them more comprehensive and safe. That’s what game designers have to do.

I believe that a good VR game is not only a great experience in terms of graphics, sound, and story but also needs to have mechanisms in place to protect the user’s privacy. And to avoid unethical content and behavior, such as virtual violence and sexual assault to ensure that users can play legally.

Equally, decolonizing VR is important. Colonization is the process by which a country or region is dominated and influenced by the political, economic, and cultural power of another country or region. In the VR field, the concept of decolonization implies reflecting on and addressing issues such as racism, cultural hegemony, and Western centrism that may be present in VR technology and content. It emphasizes the importance of marginalized and oppressed voices, cultures, and perspectives and promotes the principles of equality, diversity, and inclusion. The goal of decolonizing VR is to promote multicultural participation and representation, foster creative work and storytelling based on non-Western perspectives, reduce prejudice and preference for Western culture, and provide more platforms and opportunities for oppressed communities and non-mainstream perspectives.

Decolonising the Digital: Collaborative approaches to virtual heritage

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.

In this week’s learning, I have looked at how to do 3D Spatialization in Wwise. Like in reality, the sound in games naturally gets louder as we get closer to the object making the sound. Just like when we hear an ambulance coming from a distance and driving away, the low frequency of the sound increases as we get closer and then decreases until the sound disappears. This is also the Doppler effect.

I created the Attenuation curve in Wwise, which can be seen in the diagram as a table on the xy-axis. The x-axis represents the unit distance specified in the game, and the y-axis represents the attenuation magnitude. With this table, we can change many parameters, such as the volume level and the filter level.

I also looked at Cone Attenuation, which is the change in sound when the player is facing the vocalist but at the same distance from the vocalist. However, when I first adjusted this parameter, I was very confused about the position of the vocalist and the character because I thought that the center of the circle was the listener and the white dot was the vocalist. But in fact, it was the opposite: the white dot was the listener, and the vocalist was placed in the center of the circle to project the sound into the surrounding area.

Earlier, I also looked at audio randomization and space automation exists. For example, when a fragment falls to the ground, it will bounce around but its position will not be fixed. So this is where the Position Editor comes into play. In the image below, points can be added to make the object’s path. For example, in the game, the character’s hand is on the right side of the screen, so the sound of a piece falling on the ground will be more to the right. So you can put the frame on the right side to draw the points.