Working in game audio, I’m always looking for exercises and challenges to push myself and my skills. After mocking up videos on Twitter and doing some themed compositions, I decided to work on a project to sharpen my audio integration, music composition and sound design skills. The thing is: right now, there is no such external project available. So I had to make up my own project.
What I knew is that I wanted to work on an interactive project utilizing Wwise. For this, I needed to find a game to integrate sound in. After having some fun with Unreal as well as Unity, I decided to go with Unity for this project. Why? I wanted to focus primarily on Music and SFX integration and not on learning how to use a game engine – my Unity and C# skills are good enough for this task. Unreal will have to wait for the next project!
The next step was to find a game. I tried some examples by Unity and decided to go with the FPS Microgame. Choosing an FPS for a project might be cheesy, but I liked the aesthetics of the project. Also, I think designing some Sci-Fi weapon sounds and a suitable soundtrack will be a fun challenge.
I integrated Wwise and set up Git + LFS (with GitHub) for version control. I’m using GitHub, since the desktop client is easy to use and more than enough for this endeavour.
I went through some FPS Microgame tutorials and created a small level with enemies, intractable items (such as puzzles and physics props to toy with) and a boss fight.
Finally, let’s talk about the essence of this blog post: the grand plan! Usually, I’d just go straight into composing, designing sounds and implementing – oh, but not this time! I want to plan things out a bit and set a scope as well as deadlines for this project. There are a few main motivations for this, especially I want to
- learn some things about Wwise Interactive Music and Spatial Audio
- define specific deadlines for every step in the project, so I don’t lose track and get caught up in things which are not that important
- learn if my estimations are correct (often, they are not! 🙂 )
- see how much the end product will differ from my initial plan
- document the progress for fellow game developers and audio friends
- train my ability to focus and work deeply on planned tasks
- have fun 🙂
DEADLINES
- 24th April 2022 – Game Design (Level, Interactables, Enemies) + Setup (done)
- 1st May 2022 – Concept, scope and plan for the project
- 15th May 2022 – Sound Design and Implementation
- 29th May 2022 – Music Composition and Implementation
These are just some arbitrary deadlines and serve more as a guidance. I will try to complete my tasks for the deadlines as punctual as possible, but quality goes over quantity. If I’m not satisfied with the outcome for the sprint, I will allow myself a few more days. The final schedule will be exposed in the wrap-up!
So, what can you expect for the next few weeks (or maybe months)? I will write and publish regular posts here and on Twitter. I will inform you about the process, helpful insights, unexpected roadblocks and other things. Also, I will document my progress as videos on YouTube.
Stay tuned and see you around! 🙂