The Viking Village, FMOD Integration and Lighting Design
As I write this blog post, I am completing my Viking village after three months of blood, sweat, and tears, overcoming several gaming errors, bug fixes, and hurdles along the creation process. Yet, as I write these words, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and my study break is quickly approaching!
This semester in game audio has been a real eye opener. As much as the discovery of new middleware has helped me create the immersive experience that I wanted to portray in my game. The visual development side has also been a lot of fun, despite seeming like an enormous barrier to overcome when previously looking at unity in class.
If i was to break the past 3 months down in terms of progression both in my skillset and in game development, it would go as such:
The initial phase was dedicated to discovering the map and diving back into the world of unity, followed by the integration of external assets and discovering the vast open space that is the unity community, This lead to my first and failed attempts of coding however with some guidance and the use of you tube tutorials i was able to confront this difficult task and begin to develop the game in a way that i would have a strong enough storyline to allow me to have exciting sound design to accompany them. I quickly learnt that the possibilities for transforming the Viking village from something “vanilla” to something exciting and unique were endless, and it was really up to my own creative vision to take it in any direction I wished.
This aesthetic decision was one of the hardest to make, yet I believe it to be the most important. As i’ve seen in my research for the industry analysis paper where I delved into the world of immersion and the steps it takes a player to achieve. Strong visuals and audio are key to maintaining flow and can be used in many ways to nurture the player into this euphoric state and keep him there.
If i was to have opted to use assets that fell a little less into the aesthetics of the game i believe that would be an interpelling point for the player, extracting them from the game as they ask themselves “why is that there, it looks weird, or not align with the rest of the graphics or the storyline” because of this reason i decided that i would use as many of the assets that were already in the game yet revisit them in my own fashion. The game and the elements provided already looked great so at first i was a little apprehensive about what to change. Then I had what some would call an epiphany moment when i started touching around with the lights. I quickly realized that light would be what would help me differentiate this game from others and create a “mood” that was undeniably authentic and aesthetically pleasing.
The second game changer for me this term was the integration of FMOD into the user interface of Unity. Where I had encountered multiple issues in designing the sound for Ellen in the previous game audio module, with FMOD all of the problems I was having, managing the levels, Spectral layering, randomization, etc. all just fell into place. I finally had a tool which could take my ideas and improve them by sheer practicality and accessibility. All in all, I've had an amazing experience this term in game audio. Prior to the module, I had already had thoughts of pushing sound design for games as a new career path, and this module has confirmed that I would really like to give it a shot. There is something incredibly calming yet exciting about not just composing music but making an entire universe of sound with the only limits our own imagination.
