Saturday, 10 May 2014

Refectory Project - Sound & Code


This was a completely new area for me, I have never done sound design for anything before and I can't completely remember how I got round to doing it. I think we just decided that some sound would bring the whole thing to life.

I enjoyed doing the sound, and was apparently very good at it, however it is not something I want to specialize in, nor can I picture myself doing it for any extended period of time, however the fact is I designed some sounds.

I went about this by first considering what sounds we needed, most of which I got and did not have to go back and obtain later on.

I made a list of any sounds we needed and decided that whatever sounds I was gathering, I both should and would need to edit them. For this task I downloaded Audacity, which conveniently had a portable version which I could load directly from my hard drive.

(sound list?)

To gather any initial sounds I needed I started with the internet, which after searching round I discovered that http://www.freesound.org/ was the best resource. Barely anything on there you can use in its raw form, however after editing and combining sounds you can reach the result you are looking for.

http://www.freesound.org/
 
 
Please see sounds on submission disc

As good as this website was, there was a limit to what I could obtain, so some of the sounds I needed to record myself. I used a Roland Recorder which I borrowed from the university stored to get any sounds I needed. The most fun I had with this was recording my own "effort sounds" for the character.

Please see sounds on submission disc

Next came the most time consuming part of the task, which was editing and producing the sounds. I did all sorts of things, such as chopping sounds up, layering them, changing the speed, pitch, adding effects, editing the volume and more.




Some sounds were very easy to create, it could be a case of cutting and layering a few sounds to obtain just what you are looking for. However other sounds were a huge pain, it took a long time to get them right, which sometimes involved very small tweaks, or creating something to scrap it and start something new. This really tested my patience but I eventually managed to get a result where I needed to, there did have to some times where even though a sound wasn't exactly what we wanted I had to call quits on it and move on.



The final pool of sounds I am very happy with, some could have been better but I feel like I tackled the time quite well. The skills I learned haven't completely gone to waste as I used them when designing sounds for Flood Rush, though on a personal level there isn't too much of a benefit to me, which I feel was the biggest down fall of tackling this area.


I also feel it is a shame that a lot of the sounds were left out of the final build, there unfortunately wasn't time to put them all in and code triggers for them, but I still have all the sounds, and it is clear to here what they were intended for.

I worked on part of the process of putting the sounds in to the scene.

I created a unity scene with speakers rigged up to music in order to test and demonstrate 3D sound, I also tried to play a sound when pushing a box, however I think I was told not to worry, so did not finish coding it.
https://googledrive.com/host/0Bzo0UfEzLxYea0F3V2VlbnNhWWs/TieIn.html The build is also on the submission disk.

I also coded the walking and running footsteps, and the jump and land effort sounds to work with the character controller. I had some help from Ricardo making sure the right sound played when landing, depending on if you were pressing the sprint button. I found this quite challenging and very rewarding. It was interesting because Ricardo introduced me to a logic system which I then needed to get my head round and use it how I needed.

https://googledrive.com/host/0Bzo0UfEzLxYedmRZSHhZRnFTbWs/Coding.html
The build is also on the submission disk

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