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Page 1: Project 2 Air Hostess Simulator - WordPress.com · 2019-06-03 · Project 2 Air Hostess Simulator. Unit 7 P01. P1 - Identify the relationship between UX, usability and ... The typography

Project 2Air Hostess Simulator

Page 2: Project 2 Air Hostess Simulator - WordPress.com · 2019-06-03 · Project 2 Air Hostess Simulator. Unit 7 P01. P1 - Identify the relationship between UX, usability and ... The typography

Unit 7 P01

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P1 - Identify the relationship between UX, usability and utility.

Usability relates to how easy a UI is to use. A UI is easy to use when it's easy to learn,

efficiently made, memorable, has error checking and satisfying. A UI that's easy to

learn will give the user a better experience as they don’t have to navigate and get

annoyed that they have pressed 3-4 buttons before finding what they need. You can

make a UI easy to learn by labelling it well and also copying what other UIs do to

follow a standardized pattern which is intuitive to the player. The efficiency of a UI

allows a user to navigate it more quickly, this means that they don’t waste time looking

for something so they use the product more, this again means that they have a better

user experience. User experience relates directly to how the user feels about a UI. If

they have a bad experience for whatever reason, it will likely ruin the product as they

may feel overwhelmed. If they have a good UX, then the user will feel more

comfortable with the product.

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P2 - Explain how style and typography can impact a design.

The design of a UI can be impacted by the style and typography of said UI. The

style of a UI can relate to a lot of factors, such as colours and placement of UI

elements. The typography relates to the font choice and the size of that font.

Both of these can affect the Utility, Usability and UX of the design. For example,

if the buttons are placed all over the place, it can be unclear for the user and just

makes the program look messy and less professional, same goes for typography,

where if you use different fonts and irregular font sizes where not needed, it can

cause the program to also look messy and unprofessional.

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An example of using style well would

be using a consistent colour scheme

and placing the UI elements in a

consistent order. For a main menu this

would look like:

P2 - Explain how style and typography can impact a design.

An example of using style poorly

would be using an inconsistent colour

scheme and placing the UI elements in

random places across the screen. For a

main menu, this would look like:

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P3 - Research current user interfaces focusing on the principles explored in P1 and P2.

This UI showcases Civilization V.

The UX here is initially very poor

as there is a lot going on.

However, once you learn the UI,

the experience is much better.

This UI has a lot of Utility and

conveys all the information you

need to know, like how much gold,

culture and faith you have and are

gaining each turn, along with

what you need to do before the

end of the turn.

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P3 - Research current user interfaces focusing on the principles explored in P1 and P2.

This UI showcases the Project Cars 2 HUD whilst you

race. Whilst not interactable, this displays a lot of vital

information to the player. In the bottom right corner, you

can see your speed, gear, revs, engine temp, remaining

fuel, vehicle damage, tyre wear, temp and pressure, break

wear and temp and the suspension information. In the

bottom left, it showcases the times between each racer,

so how far away the person in front and behind is. The

top left showcases the current lap, players position and

whos in first, second and third along with who is in front

and behind the player. The top center showcases the rear

view mirror so you can see what exactly is behind the

player. The top right showcases the track layout so you

can see which corners are coming up next, along with

other player positions on the track. All of this has a lot of

utility, is fully customisable making it extremely usable

and providing a great user experience.

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P4 - Present to peers, your understanding of UI. Presentation must cover topics learn in P1, P2 and P3.

Here, I have created a

multitude of potential

UI designs for in my

game.

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M1 - Demonstrate an understanding of the larger relationship between technical and artistic design.

The technical design regards the technical limits of the hardware and engine with regards to

the UI. The Artistic design regards the visual aspect of the design, regarding how it looks. Certain hardware can constrain a UI and what it contains, for example, a controller UI will be different to a keyboard and mouse UI, or a touch screen UI because the user is physically constrained by the designer as to what they can press, where as, on a mouse/touchscreen, they can press anywhere on that screen. Some UIs get around this by emulating a cursor on the screen, such as Splatoon 2 on the Nintendo Switch. Sometimes, the engine itself can limit a UI, so UIs don’t have to be on a 2d plane, but can instead be a 3D visual thing, for games in VR for example. A 2D engine like GameMaker: Studio can’t deal with 3D and therefore this is impossible. The technical limitations can come down to file type also. The best format for a UI element would be an SVG file as Vector graphics don’t lose quality when scaled where as a JPG would as this is Bitmap. Sometimes, file sizes come into play, especially in the past where games were stored on a disc or cartridge and weren’t digital. This meant that everything would have to be technically optimised which could reduce the artistic integrity.

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M2 - Define the client brief, research a solution. Include usability, utility, UX and limitations of platform.

We have been tasked with making a game fitting to two limitations. Our brief consisted of a sentence which we could interpret how we wanted and our target platform. “Repeating patterns, remembering and increasing number of things” and the PC Virtual Reality system. With this in mind, we decided to make a Flight Attendant Simulator game where you have to take orders, remember them and hand them out. This fit our client brief.

First of all, our platform. At college, we have an Oculus Rift, and I have one at home, along with a few other members in my team so that is our platform.

Limitations of Platform:User Interfaces within VR are much different to the more mainstream platforms, this is due to the nature in which it works, UI’s are no longer restricted to a single two-dimensional plane, they can be fully integrated into a three-dimensional space. This is what I would like to focus on doing, something more interactive than a bog standard UI, something that isn’t limited, something the player can look around and see the scope. For our game, I would like to see the player using the UI from inside of an airport, a big space with lots going on, something that’s direct and immersive – how VR is meant to be played. We are limited in the sense that you can’t really do UI navigation, and the built in UI system within Unity is difficult to use with VR; its more for mice and keyboards and controllers.

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M2 - Define the client brief, research a solution. Include usability, utility, UX and limitations of platform.

Usability:It is essential for a UI to be easy to use or it may deter the player from accessing the game to its fullest extent. We would aim to have the UI be extremely intuitive and follow the standards of other VR games. The best thing we can do is use the pointer system prevalent in other games in VR. I would personally like to use button icons which are intuitive, maybe with tooltips. This is better that showing the player a lot of text; visual information is more engaging than buttons that state what they do on them.

However, although we want a visual looking UI, we still need to make sure we don’t have a lot going on, on one page, as it could confuse the player on what is actually happening on screen and what the different things do. So we need to make sure that when it’s implemented, that it isn’t cluttered and the colour scheme works well. If colours blend in too much also, it would be too difficult to understand so colours are also very important.

Utility:The UI system within the game would have a fair amount of options. Primarily related to audio and VR options. Graphics settings aren’t something we can implement as VR makes this difficult, so a higher end computer would be necessary for our game. However, the UI would still have the utility it needs. A VR Comfort option would be needed to control any potential nauseating events, like turbulence or walking. We would also allow the user to change the volume, this is a must for all games.

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M2 - Define the client brief, research a solution. Include usability, utility, UX and limitations of platform.

User Experience:For our UI, the user experience is a big thing. In VR, it’s a new experience, for some people, it may be their first time in VR and with this in mind, the UI needs to give a good user experience. If we make an interactive UI environment, then this is a good thing to showcase as it shows that a lot can be done with UIs in VR. This could be similar to how Lego Star Wars works for example, where the UI is less about a screen and more about the world. I believe this would give the user a good experience. We need to make sure that a new user can easily understand what each aspect of our UI can do and what it changes. We have to make sure the typography of our UI is readable, if it’s not legible, it won’t make sense to even the most experienced VR users.

All of this is so important, because if it’s hard to understand, people would be less inclined to play the game, which would cause sales to drop, ultimately losing money.

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D1 - Critically evaluate the produced prototype documentation.

The prototype I have chosen to work with is the monitor design, this is shown to the below. I

feel like this fits in well with my game and what we are trying to showcase. This is a fairly basic, but intuitive design and I believe that it will fit within the context of the game. The prototype made consists of 3 screens, a Main Menu screen, a Level Select screen and a Settings screen. They all follow the same simplistic design choice and I have tried to not clutter the screen with information; opting for icons instead of text.

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D1 - Critically evaluate the produced prototype documentation.

Positives:

The main positive about this design, is that it has good usability, the UI is clear to read and easy to understand what everything does. This means, that because everything is self-explanatory, the user should be able to use the UI to its fullest extent – this is from the perspective of a programmer however, and programmers often overlook user experience for utility.Another positive is that the UI prototype has a fair amount of utility, this comes from the options menu allowing the volume to be changed, along with how comfortable people feel in VR. Overall, this should provide a good user experience.Another positive comes from the fact that the design isn’t cluttered, and showcases as much information as I feel the player needs to know. As the player, you don’t have to go through and learn the ins and outs of a new UI because its different to everything that already exists, instead, you can jump right in and access the game to its fullest extent without much intuition.

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D1 - Critically evaluate the produced prototype documentation.

Negatives:

The negative of this design comes from how it will be used. Being a VR game that we are making, this makes it difficult to actual code sliders because none of us have made a VR game before, and it will be done in a way which makes sense to the programmer. This means that sliders might not work within the game and we will have to alter the design. Other UI elements might cause issues with the VR interaction and this will cause the design to be altered.Another negative is that there aren’t any graphics options, this is because of how taxing VR is on a computer. We have chosen a low poly art style, along with low quality textures by default – as they are mostly flat colour textures. This means that quality settings aren’t needed. Things like resolution also, this can be affected in the likes of SteamVR, as trying to change the resolution in VR can cause issues when done poorly so not messing with this is a good idea.

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Unit 7 P02

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P5 - Create a user interface prototype with three different visual styles using designs produced in P4.

This showcases my main menu screen with an options menu. The main menu contains 3 buttons, Play, Options and Quit. Doing exactly what they describe. The options menu showcases a volume up and down button and a back button. The bar in the middle shows what the volume is at currently.

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P6 - Collect peer feedback for prototype visual styles from both learners and tutors.

After getting feedback from my classmates and tutors. The main issue with my UI is a lack of feedback to the player as to what button they are pressing. As I am making a VR game, the default Unity UI system doesn’t work like it does with a keyboard and mouse - normally, if you hover over a button, it will tint sightly so you know what is being pressed. Instead of changing the colour, I will instead opt to make the buttons slightly larger so they stand out more.

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P7 - Improve on the previously created prototype based on peer feedback from both tutor and learners.

Here you can see, a before and after of the menu being used. Before is above, where they play button doesn’t change size, and below showcases the play button getting bigger when it's hovered over. This gives the player more feedback so they know exactly what button they will press. This helps improve the user experience with the UI.

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The prototype of the UI menu is very simple and easy to navigate for the player, with the game being virtual reality it needs to be clear and easy to click, the pointer makes it very easy to navigate around the menu as the player can clearly see what it is doing and where they are about to go, the buttons getting bigger when hovered over give the player better feedback as they can tell what they are about to press and gives them an indication that the menu is working and is interactive. The design of the UI is very bare and simple, it is very simply laid out with only 3 buttons for the player to use on the main menu, one which takes the player to the options menu which has a obvious back button to take the player back to the main menu. Each button is clearly labelled for the player so they can easily identify what to press. There is little to none artistic design in this prototype version of the UI menu, with basic typography and no colour, the layout is very standardized which will be very familiar to the typical player, I was focused on getting the technical side of the UI completed so it is intuitive to the player and easy to navigate which gives them a good user experience as soon as they start the game, encouraging them to continue on and play.

M3 - Analyse the produced user interface focusing on principles explored in P1, P2 and M1.

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M4 - Compare and contrast the prototype design with three current UI designs.

Beat Saber:

Compared to Beat Saber, the prototype design is fairly similar. Both this

prototype, and Beat Saber, use a similar pointer system, which helps aide the

player in seeing exactly what they are pressing. This is true for most, if not all,

VR user interface systems. Another similar thing, is using a World Space canvas

to showcase what the game does.

The biggest difference between the two, comes from the fact that the prototype

designed is on a monitor, which is fully opaque, where as, the Beat Saber UI, is a

slightly transparent floating screen - like a hologram. This fits with what Beat

Saber is and its style. But our prototype also does this.

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M4 - Compare and contrast the prototype design with three current UI designs.

VRChat:

Again, the pointer and world space canvas are the two things that make the

prototype similar to the UI used in VR chat. This shows us that it’s a good system

to use and that it’s also intuitive, meaning our design should give a good user

experience and be extremely usable.

The difference again, comes from the UI in VRChat being more of a holographic

display, where as the prototype I made, is more of a real world UI. Another

difference comes from VRChat having more of a HUD style - especially with the

top image to the left. I have not designed a HUD style UI, not even one which

can be shown and unshown. This is because I don’t want to clutter the player’s

vision as it doesn’t fit with the game’s style and it would likely annoy players.

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M4 - Compare and contrast the prototype design with three current UI designs.

Project Cars 2 (VR):

The prototype UI created is much different to to the Project Cars 2 one. This stems from Project Cars 2 being a VR-optional game. This means that it doesn’t use a world space UI, but instead a screen space UI, and doesn’t use the pointer system. In the lower image to the left you can see this. Where you are looking with the headset, displays a cursor which is used to highlight the buttons on the menu. You must then press this with the A button on a traditional controller or Steering Wheel; VR controllers are not supported.

Project Cars 2 also features a HUD which our game doesn’t.

Overall, the UI in Project Cars 2 doesn’t really compare to the prototype I have created because it’s used so differently.

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Unit 7 P03

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P8 - Produce final assets for a UI. Assets must include 5 types of information interaction.

These are the UI icons that I have made for my game. Going from left to right, there is a calendar, which is my level select/play button, a back button which is an exit sign, a plus and minus button for volume changing which change the values on a slider, a power button to quit the game and a cog to open the options menu.

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P8 - Produce final assets for a UI. Assets must include 5 types of information interaction.

I have also created a 3D model of a monitor for use in my game, this is what the main menu UIs are included on. I have also made an airport asset which isn’t explorable, but it does add space in the background for my menu. I feel like this adds a lot of information for the player.

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P9 - Import art assets using the methods taught in the implementation techniques of the unit content.

I have imported all of my image assets in the same way for my UI. These settings can be seen in the inspector window to the left. I have set the Texture Type to be a Sprite as this is the setting for UI. I imported the assets by simply dragging and dropping them into the editor.

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P10 - Set up the layout for the user interface using the imported art assets.

This is my Main Menu. This shows an image and three buttons. The image displays “Flight Attendant Simulator”, the name of my game. The buttons, going from left to right, are a Level Select (calendar), Options (cog) and Quit (power button). As you can see in the bottom image, when you hover over these, they display text telling you exactly what they do. Only one of these will display at a time, and will disappear when you no longer hover over them.

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P10 - Set up the layout for the user interface using the imported art assets.

This is my options menu. It consists of seven textboxes, two sliders and 7 buttons. The plus and minus buttons increase and decrease the volume output for Music and SFX individually. The arrows, change the VR Comfort between Low, Medium and High - this affects the amount of turbulence the player will endure. And the back button is in the lower corner with an escape symbol on it. As previously stated, the back button has a piece of text that showcases above it when it's hovered over. This gives the player more feedback so they know exactly what the button does.

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P10 - Set up the layout for the user interface using the imported art assets.

This is the final UI screen that I have. This is a “How to Play” screen and tells the player what they are meant to do before they start playing the game. There are two buttons on this page, a back button (escape sign) and the play button (calendar). They again, show text above them to tell the player what the button does before they pressed it. I chose for this screen to exist before playing the game, so that its almost forced that players read this and have an idea of how to play the game, this is because a “How To Play” button would likely never be pressed.

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P11 - Setup functionality ensuring the user interface is able to be navigated.

This video showcases me using each of the buttons on the menu screen of my game. This shows me navigating through the level select menu, the options menus and the main menu. This can be fully navigated.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zscZDUPjSdc&feature=youtu.be

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P12 - Setup main menu, which is visible upon starting the game.

As you can see in the criteria for P11, the menu opens up straight away when the game loads. This showcases menu when the player starts the game.

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M5 - Set up functionality for the game options section of the main menu.

As you can see in the two images, changing the volume options, affects this directly in the game’s volume mixer. These options change the volume options within the project, changing the SFX and Music volume both affect the game’s volume levels. This functionally works and is showcased in game. The video shown in P11 showcases this feature further in an easier to tell way - as its the actual build and not running for the engine’s game view.

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M5 - Set up functionality for the game options section of the main menu.

Again, to the left, images are shown which portray the graphics options. Here, you can enable and disable post processing, as the game will lag a lot on lower end hardware with post processing enabled. As you can see, this works in the game, removing bloom and colour correction from the game when disabled. The video shown in P11 showcases this feature further in an easier to tell way - as its the actual build and not running for the engine’s game view.

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Unit 11 P04

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Overall, this trailer for Dying Light sets the scene for the game, it applied a fear factor to what might happen in the actual game. It gives the environment an eerie atmosphere, the piano in flat adds a depressing emotion to the scene, since it’s a post apocalyptic game, it fits really well. The showing of the zombies and the cuts of silence adds tension to the trailer making it scary, which is obviously the game’s genre as it’s a zombie game.

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This cutscene in the game was a foreshadow of what was going to happen to Dr. Octavious. The explosion in the trailer with the electric shocks was the start of his downfall and slowly turning into one of the main antagonists in the game. It foreshadows him becoming Dr. Octopus. It makes the player worry about him because it obviously hurt, especially since as of now, it’s a good person who just wants to help progress in science, but he won’t be.

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This trailer mainly shows off the environment but the sounds and voiceover depicts the story behind the game. The voice-over gives the game a very eerie atmosphere, it explains the environment very well and sets the scene for the game. The sounds used really fits the look of the trailer. It makes it feel unnerving which fits the genre as it is a horror-esque game.

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P8 PO3 - Test scene video

This is the timeline for the video. The cut out parts are triggered sounds in the level. I have applied some spatial effects to these clipped sounds.

The first effect is a studio reverb and I used the swirly reverb preset. This basically gives the sound a wobbly echo.

For the second sound, I actually put two sound effect on the one sound; the volume was really low so I put a volume booster on and turned it up to 6dB and then I put a phaser on it and used the MegaPlexzor preset which makes the sound, sound wavy.

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M3/D2 - Test scene continued

For the third sound, I applied 4 different effects; I used a pitch shifter to make it sound deeper, I used the Dark Lord preset. I applied a volume booster because it was quite quiet beforehand. I also applied a notch filter to make it sound a little more deep. The final effect I applied was a flanger which I used the preset “Synthetic Yo-Yo” This made it sound like the sound go up and down in pitch.

This is what I did to the pitch shifter. I used the dark lord preset which made the sound a lot deeper. This is the flanger preset which is

Synthetic Yo-Yo; the sound goes up and down with this preset.

This is the notch filter settings, it makes the sound, sound deeper alongside the pitch shifter.

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M3 - Game Level audio

For the first sound effect, I applied two effects. The first was a volume booster because the audio is fairly quiet and with the volume booster, you could hear the sound a lot clearer. I also added a flanger with the robotic preset. This made the sound, a little bit robotic but still kind of fits the environment.

This is the second sound effect edit, I used another volume booster because the overall sound is quite quiet. I also used a phaser with the Zed Lepplin preset. This made the bass in the background wavy and gives it quite a cool effect.

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P8 PO3 - Premiere Project

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Premiere timeline with the video clip, the royalty free music I found and my audio clips.

P8

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P9 - The audio mixerThe really low mixer is the ambient music. It fits the atmosphere of the scene.

The mixer turned up really loud is my audio as it was quite quiet.

I haven’t touched the master volumes as I didn’t need to.

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ADR Sequencehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXL8PEnxgTk

Test Scene Soundshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDOoEtHO3gk&feature=youtu.be

Ingame sounds for my levelhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYQflL8ooRI

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Technical Report

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P10 - Technical ReportWhen making sounds, I used the software Adobe Audition. At first, it was a little bit confusing because it’s a completely new software I’ve never used before. But once I got the hang of the software and how it worked, I felt somewhat comfortable editing the sounds I recorded for my level in the first project this year. The hardest part of the software was figuring out the best way to use some of the effects to make the sounds, sound how I wanted. It took awhile to mess around with the different presets and some of the scrollers to figure out what they did and how it affected the sound, to overcome this difficulty I just kept trying until I was happy with how they sounded. A lot of the presets actually made the sounds sound how I wanted so that saved some time instead of editing the scrollers one by one. However, using the mixer to change the volume of the sounds, was very easy to use, it was just a slider to change the volume. Another easy step was trimming the raw sounds to either cut out unwanted sounds in the raw file, or for pinpointing certain parts of the raw sound. It just took time to do.

Using multiple sounds to make one sound was also tough, trying to get the sounds to sound right and how I wanted was hard. It took a lot of trial and error which did start to wind me up because I couldn’t get it right. Once I was happy with how my edited sounds sounded, I could import them into my level for our game.

When using the edited sounds in Unity, it wasn’t overly clear how to use the sounds at first but once demonstrations were done, it became clearer how to apply the sounds in different ways. One of the hardest things I found was figuring out the falloff for the spatial sounds. It was a lot of trial and error, but it wasn’t made overly clear how to effectively use the falloff scrollers. Another thing I found fairly difficult was getting the colliders to work on objects to trigger a sound when you jump on them, for a while, I just couldn’t figure out how to do it. I eventually figured out how to do it, then it became easier to do the rest.

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P10 ContinuedHowever, what I found fairly easy was using the mixers. It was just long winded and a lot of trial and error to make sure the sounds weren’t too loud or quiet. Another thing I found fairly easy, was doing the constant ambience it was literally just a drag and drop and making sure I set it to 2D sound and make the radius to the size of the area. I just had to adjust the volume of it using the mixers.

When using Adobe Premiere to do the ADR project, it was a little bit strange because I’ve never used the software before, but I feel like I picked up quite fast. Chopping audio up the exact same as Audition - probably because they’re from the same company, I felt comfortable with that area and getting the audio to sync up to the video I had chosen; but that relied more on my recording abilities. I found using the mixers a little bit tough at first because I wasn’t using the audio tracks correctly - I didn’t realise that the mixers corresponded with the audio tracks, but once I figured that out it became a lot easier to balance the audio because it actually made sense. Also, trying to get spatial effects to sound right was fairly hard - I couldn’t get the secondary sounds to sound right with the audio. It took a lot of time to try and use the spatial sound effects effectively and to sound like it fitted with what was happening in the video. Another thing I struggled with was the multiband compression, I didn’t understand it very well and I struggled to make the voices and sounds, sound clearer and better quality. Especially since I did it once and then my audio files got corrupted and had to do it all over again but I couldn’t remember the settings I used. Once I figured out how to effectively use the low mid and high tones, with the other settings such as gain and threshold, I managed to get my sounds fit a lot better and clearer. Managed to balance the volume even more so it fit the scene even better.

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P10 ContinuedI feel like I picked up some of the more advanced techniques fairly fast considering I’ve never used some of these softwares before or having minimal experience with certain aspects of some of the softwares. Techniques such as the trimming and balancing of sounds I’d like to think I picked up fairly fast. The balancing took a bit longer because of the mistakes I made at the start with the audio tracks and mixers. However the trimming I found very easy and managed to cut out unwanted sounds in my raw audio clip. Using the edited sounds in one multitrack I found okay, it was mainly trial and error to get the sound how I wanted. I used this technique for my main ambience sound, I think it worked out really well. I think using multiple effects on one sound was okay, once I knew what the different effects did and how it affected the sound clips, I managed to apply multiple and get them to sound how I wanted for my level in game. I feel like the sounds I applied multiple effects to actually came out really well compared to what I was thinking was going to happen.

For me, I think the most challenging aspects for the audio work in the first project was getting my sounds to work in Unity. I had a few problems when it came to the falloff of my spatial sounds. It was really difficult to to get the sounds exactly where I wanted and not hear them halfway across the map where I shouldn’t be able to hear them. This took a lot of effort to get correct using the graph to edit how it gets quieter and how fast it gets quieter when you walk away from it. I eventually managed to get it how I wanted, but it took a long while. I also struggled a little bit with getting the trigger sounds right, I couldn’t apply them properly at first but that was just silly mistakes. I did struggle with that more than most though.

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P10 ContinuedThroughout both projects, the software I found the hardest to use was probably Premiere Pro, due to it being a bigger software than all the others. This is because I had to factor in the video side as well as the audio. I didn’t struggle all too much with it, but it was definitely harder than Unity and Audition when it came down to it. It was just really long winded when it came to different things because I had a lot more to do; exporting individual sounds that I’ve had to put spatial sound effects on just to re-import them and have to apply a multiband compressor to it and go through all of that just got very long winded and repetitive - especially since I basically had to do it twice because my exported sounds corrupted and I lost all the progress I made on it. I stuck to it though and I feel I’ve learnt a lot when it comes to Premiere Pro and I would definitely use it again for video and audio editing.

think the multiband compressor was the hardest thing to master, since there was a lot going on. There was lots of different settings that did lots of different things and I was overwhelmed when using it the first time. Figuring out how to use each individual setting effectively was tough because some of the settings felt quite backwards to me - the gain is a good example of this, if the threshold was increased, if I turned up the gain, it would make the audio quieter. This threw me off at first as I didn’t realise it did that straight away.

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P10 ContinuedHardware

When using the field recording device to record ambient sounds and other spatial sounds, I didn’t find it too difficult to figure out. The hardest part was trying to not record unwanted sounds that I couldn’t control - The noise cancellation was quite low so I had to try and either time my recordings when them sounds stopped for a little bit, or had to take them into the software and try and edit them out. Making sure the sounds weren’t too loud or quiet was fairly easy due to the device having a built in decibel meter. You could tell if the mic was peaking because the bar would be full, and if it was too quiet, the meter would hardly fill up at all.

When listening back to my sounds, I was mostly happy with how they came out. There was one or two I had to re-record because of some of the background noise I couldn’t edit out. I’m happy with how almost all my sounds came out. The one I’m happiest came out the way it did was the fan hum, I used the A/C to get the hum and airflow sound and it came out really well. One I wish did come out better was the cardboard one. I feel like when I was recording the sound for it, I kicked the box a little bit too hard which made the sound quite loud and not really how I wanted it to sound. I was happy with how my door open and close sounds came out. They sounded exactly how I wanted by just recording a door opening and closing. When hearing the creek for the shelving, I knew with a little bit of editing it would sound exactly how I wanted to.

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P10 ContinuedOverall, I’m mostly happy with how my recorded sounds came out. I’d like to put more time into my sounds and edit them a little bit better, but with the circumstances of my team losing a member and all of us getting demotivated, I’m just happy with how the sounds I did record and edit, came out.

When recording field sounds, I wanted to have a glass smashing sound, but I didn’t want to smash an actual glass as that could be quite dangerous; I spent far too long trying to find something as close to glass smashing as possible trying to use different techniques but I just couldn’t quite get it. I had to resort to getting a secondary source sound from the website freesound.org. I had to do this with a wood stepping sound as I couldn’t find an area where I could get the sound around college that had the sound and was quiet so I had to use the same website to get a sound of someone stepping on wood. Since I was recording in college, there was nowhere I could find that was quiet enough to record the stepping sound due to there always being some sort of activity in the areas I wanted to record and the sound being fairly quiet and fast, it was difficult to distinguish what was the sound and what was background noise so I gave up - which is why I used a secondary source sound.

When recording ambient sounds, I chose to use the onboard microphone since it’s polar pattern is omni-directional, this means it picks up sound from all around it. This is perfect for ambience due it being able to pick up noise from all angles, whereas the other microphone has a cardioid polar pattern, which means it only picks up most of the sound that’s in front of it, which is perfect for foley voice recording. The only problem with the omni-directional microphone is that it was quite sensitive, so it picked up the smallest sounds. I had to wait until the area was quiet enough to record, and if it did pick up a small sound, I could probably edit it out. I also used the onboard microphone for the 3D spatial sounds, since it could pick sounds from all around, it worked really well to get a 3D sound.

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P10 ContinuedI didn’t actually use the condenser microphone in the first project because our game didn’t have any audio in it. Though, if I did have audio in it, I would have the microphone set up in a quiet room and make sure all other surroundings are also quiet. I would then record my audio.

However, for the ADR project, I did use it. I made sure everybody outside was quiet enough so that they didn’t get picked up by the microphone. Since it was quite sensitive I had to re-record some lines because it picked up background noise. The way I recorded was that I had the video I was doing a voice over for on so I could try and sync my voice up with what was being said so when I eventually put my voice over it, it synced up really well. I recorded each line individually to have a better chance at syncing up because I would probably end up having to record it many times over all the way through if I messed up or forgot the line. Once I got all the line done and I was happy with them I borrowed the SD card and put all the audio onto my hard drive and then wiped the SD card and put it back in the recorder for someone else to use.

If I were to rate my skills from one to ten, with my ability to use audio editing software and being actually able to edit sounds, I would give myself a solid six out of ten. I’d give myself a six because I’m obviously no professional when it comes to sound design, but I feel like I picked it quite fast. I also haven’t used to a lot throughout the projects so some of my sounds could sound a lot better if I put more time and effort into actually editing the sounds, but some of the more advanced techniques such as applying multiple effects to one sound and applying a multiband compressor. I feel like if I spent more time messing around with different aspects for the softwares for editing sounds, I could definitely bump up that score, but for now, I am happy with a solid six since I’ve only used it for a little bit.

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P10 ContinuedI would rate myself about a 7 when it came to recording sounds. I’d give myself this score because it really wasn’t hard. The reason it wouldn’t be full is because again, I’m not a professional and don’t have an ear for some sounds. I found it very easy to record the actual raw sounds, the most difficult part was trying to find sounds that could sound like something else. What I mean is for example, snapping a leek could sound like a bone breaking. You kind of have to have a trained ear to hear things like that which is what I struggled with. I managed to do it with one sound effect for creaking shelves by using a chair that creaks when moving. I feel if I spent more time trying to think how different sounds could be made, I could’ve made my sounds a higher quality, but I’m overall very happy with my performance when it comes to recording foley ambient and 3D sound.

For vocal recording, I’d give myself a five, this is because I haven’t done it anywhere near as much as the field recording since in the first project, we didn’t have any audio in our game at all. But when doing it for the ADR project, I didn’t find it difficult to do, the only reason I’m giving myself a 5 is because I’ve hardly done it and if I spent more time doing it I could record voices a lot better because I could figure out better positions for me and the microphone to get different effects. I’m also not a voice actor so my impressions are not good at all and I really don’t like talking into microphones and hearing my own voice.

Obviously my knowledge of sound design has increased since the first project, not really by much because I only used one other software for video and audio editing, but I have definitely picked up more techniques to edit and clip sounds to make them sound better or to cut out more acute sounds. Overall through both projects, I feel like I’ve learnt quite a lot. I’m not perfect at it and I would still have a lot to learn if I were to go into this field as a profession, but for now, I’m very happy with my knowledge of sound editing and recording.

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PO4 - P11When using the Zoom onboard microphone for field recording, I had to make sure the microphone wasn’t too far away or too close to the origin of the sound. If it was too close, it would cause the mic to peak and would make the sound, sound either too loud or just awful in general. Sometimes it would be a bit of trial and error to get it right. If it was too far away the sound would just be really quiet and not very good since you wouldn’t be able to hear it very well. When recording for ambience, I needed to make sure my mic placement was good enough to pick up the sound all around, but not pick up unwanted sounds. If I did pick up unwanted sounds, I could edit it out using the editing software.

When recording foley voice sounds, I used the condenser microphone. This microphone has a cardioid polar pattern. I just had to make sure that the microphone was positioned in a quiet room where it couldn’t pick up much background noise. The main focus was my positioning in that room. If I was too close to the microphone, it would sound far too loud, and if I was too far away I would sound too quiet. I had to make sure my positioning fitted how the audio sounded in the video I was using for my ADR project.

It’s absolutely possible that I could use the onboard microphone for voice, but the quality wouldn’t be as good as the condenser microphone due to it’s omni-directional polar pattern. It would pick up sound all around it, but if you’re in a quiet room it wouldn’t matter too much. But using a condenser microphone would work so much better.

However, it is very possible you could use a condenser microphone for 3D sound effects, you just have to make sure it’s pointed at the sound you want to use. It would pick up the sound just as well, with maybe a bit less of a 3D effect. Overall, I would still use the onboard microphone for 3D sound effects and the condenser microphone for voice recording.

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P11 ContinuedWhen recording audio for my level, I had to venture out of a studio environment to try and get an accurate sound that fitted into my game. I was able to do this for a lot of my sounds, but when doing this, there was obviously a lot of obstacles; I had to find somewhere that would work and give me the sound I wanted with the limited areas I could go around college, and also since it’s a public place, there would be a lot of background noise. To overcome this, it was mainly a waiting game.I had to wait until people either quieted down, or left so I could get the sound without any unwanted background noise. If I did and it was only just noticeable, I could just use the editing software to cut it out. If it was very noticeable, I’d just have to re-record and hope for the best. For finding the right room or sound for either my ambience or 3D spatial sound, I had a few ideas that could work for them, a lot of the rooms and sounds did work, but again the biggest inconvenience is that they were all public areas that had people in, so I had to wait for the right time to record when it was quiet enough. This took quicker than expected for my spatial sounds because the rooms were fairly empty and I just asked the people in there if they couldn’t make a sound for about 20 seconds, and once I was happy with how they sounded, I left to go and edit my sounds. So overall, it was a lot of trial and error to get the right time to record or I got lucky and I got the sounds I needed first time without any inconvenience.

When recording my voice for the ADR project, the cupboard in the classroom was turned into a makeshift recording studio. There was many differences to what we had compared to an actual recording studio. There was not much soundproofing - all that we had was a door between me and a classroom full of people. To make sure their voices didn’t get picked up by the microphone, I had to make sure the class was quiet for about ten minutes. This was risky because I can’t control what people do so sometimes the sound outside picked up, causing the microphone to pick up the sound. I had to re-record a few of my lines to make sure it was right with no background noise. The microphone itself worked perfectly, it even had a pop filter to avoid any unnecessary pops from my voice and it worked really well. It picked up my voice perfectly without any issues, it was human error for the most part, either me being too close or too far away or voices outside being picked up. If I were to improve the microphone, the only thing I could suggest is that it is quite sensitive. If it wasn’t so sensitive, I could’ve gotten my recording done marginally quicker than I did due to other voices being picked up. I would also add some soundproofing to the cupboard to help soak up some of the sound. Obviously we dealt with what we were given and overall it worked out very well compared to some other setups Indy companies use. I would use that setup again with a little bit more soundproofing.

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P11 ContinuedWhen recording my voice for the ADR task, I tried to plan ahead before actually recording my voice for it. I learnt the words but I also recorded each line one by one so I didn’t have to re-record the whole thing over and over in case I made a mistake. Once I was happy with all my recordings, I obviously took them into adobe audition. One of my strengths I feel was my ability to cut unwanted noise at the start and end. The sounds were mainly me pushing the button or breathing a little bit louder causing the microphone to pick it up, but I felt like my ability to crop that out without affecting the actual talking, I feel like that went well. Another strength of mine I feel was my ability to sync up my audio with the actual video. I feel like that went really well, it took me a little bit of messing around with line ups to the mouth moving and me speaking but I got it as accurately as I could and I’m really proud that I managed to do that.

However, I feel like some of my weaknesses were for one, the amount of effort I put into the recording. I’m not a voice actor so I can’t really do voices very well. I tried but it was definitely one of my weaknesses. I feel like if I were able to do a better job and masking my voice, my ADR project would be a lot higher quality. Another weakness would be that I was easily satisfied with how my audio sounded. I feel like if I put more time into how it sounded, it could definitely sound a lot better than it does. I feel like if I put more time into it I probably could have managed to get it near perfect when it comes to syncing up. But instead I kind of just settled with the bare minimum. That’s one of my biggest flaws when it comes to things like this, if I put more time into it I feel like I could make it really good.

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PO4 P12For my audio work, I feel like I definitely didn’t plan my time all to well. I feel like I put audio on the back burner whilst I focused on other things since it wasn’t something I was particularly interested in. This wasn’t my smartest move since I could’ve done a lot more in terms of sound design and make my sounds a lot better. I’m happy with how everything turned out but I should’ve definitely planned audio work into my sprint plans more effectively to get the best quality sound for my game. If I were to do it again I would definitely use my time more wisely to make sure sound design was used more effectively. It’s still not something I want to do but it is important for a game to have good quality sounds so I would definitely put more time into not just recording, but editing too. I feel like if I spent a good portion of my time editing my sounds to more than just me thinking that it’s good enough to it definitely being good enough, I feel like it would definitely make our first game so much better. Realising this is definitely going to help me in the future. I’ll put more consideration into other aspects of a project, even if it’s something I’m not interested in but still needs to be done. I also put far more time into other aspects such as the 3D modelling for our game because that’s what I cared about the most. But overall from the first project our team were completely unmotivated to complete our game after one of our members left without letting us know and pretty much had to re-work our whole game. This put a downer on the aspects we didn’t really care about, such as sound design. It’s not a very good excuse as to why it wasn’t done to a good standard, but that is one of the biggest reasons as to why I feel like it wasn’t done to a really good standard. I was proud of my sounds that I produced for my level, but overall, I feel like I definitely could’ve done so much better when it came to this unit.

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P12 ontinuedSince we were basically an indie company, creating audio would be similar to that of an actual indie company. When they make audio for their games, they have to take in consideration different factors, i.e, the equipment, studio facilities, funding, and resources. Since indie companies don’t have a huge amount of disposable income, they would struggle to get accurate sounds due to limited resources they can afford, and what they can use to actually record. A triple A company has a lot of disposable income so they can get beat perfect sounds for their games because they can hire professionals to do it, this is where indie companies will struggle because they pretty much have to use what they can which can sometimes lead to them having to use either royalty free sounds, or paying a small fee to buy professionally recorded sounds they can use. Since triple A companies can afford to do all that, they can have an abundance of sounds in their game recorded at a high quality. This can happen for indie games too, depending on how much money they have to spend on either a professional studio sessions to get voice near perfect or buying their own equipment to do it. It mainly boils down to how much indie companies are willing to spend on sound design, since it’s a big part to make a game feel realistic and make you feel immersed.

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PO4 M5When collecting my sounds for my game, I feel like although they were nowhere near professional standard, with the editing, I feel like my sounds were suitable for my level. I feel like with the reverbs and different editing techniques I used, I feel like they work well for a warehouse environment, however I did have to re-record some sounds as they didn’t sound quite right due to mainly background noise I couldn’t control, so they had to be re-recorded to sound right for my game.

When applying my sounds to my level in unity, since I have never done it before now, it took me a while to get used to it, I mainly struggled with getting the falloff right. I feel like it wasn’t explained greatly, but enough to have a basic idea of what to do. It took a lot of trial and error of messing around with the falloff graph to try and get it right or good enough for it to sound right which was quite time consuming. Also, using the mixer to balance my sounds was a weird one to get the hang of. It took me a while to figure out how it worked, I felt like this could’ve been explained a little bit better too. I eventually got the hang of it but it was also very time consuming to balance all the audio right due to it again being trial and error and I’m not a professional. I didn’t really struggle when it came to sorting my whole ambience, though, since it was just a 2D sound, it was very easy to implement. However, the triggers took a while to work since I’m not a programmer, I had to rely on our programmer to sort out code that would work well to trigger sounds since I couldn’t do it. It took me a while to figure out how his code worked because it was quite intricate but once it was explained to me by him, I managed to get the sounds to trigger when you enter the collider.

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M5 ContinuedFrom start to finish, I have learnt quite a lot of different methods and techniques to record, edit and produce sound overall. For implements my edited sounds in Unity, I have learnt a certain pipeline to make sure all my sounds work. To do this I obviously had to import the sounds into Unity. This was a simple drag and drop task, I just dragged the .ogg’s into the sound file I created in Unity for my level.

For the 3D spatial sounds, this was a bit more tricky because I had to make it a 3D sound which I had to turn on in the inspector window, then I had to mess around with the falloff using the graph. There was some presets I could’ve used but I tried to make it so it sounded really good. This took a lot of trial and error and actually wasted a lot of time because I did it for every spatial sounds because I didn’t fully understand how it worked and kind of just winged it. I also messed around with some sliders to try and get some volume settings right with it but I mostly used the mixer for audio balancing. I had to make sure that for the 3D spatial sounds, that the stereo panning slider was in the middle so it the sounds panned from ear to ear properly.

Trying to balance the audio in my level using mixers, this was completely new to me because I’ve never used the mixer in Unity before, it was completely new to me. It was explained how to use it but at first I struggled to understand how to properly use it and it took me awhile to realise that I had to make different groups for different types of sounds such as ambience, spatial, and trigger sounds all with their own master mixers and their own individual mixer. Once I realised that it was mainly trial and error to get all the sounds balanced, making sure they could be heard but weren’t too loud or quiet.

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M5 ContinuedThis did take quite a lot of time because there was a lot of sounds to individually balance.

With the sound triggers, I didn’t create the code because I’m not a programmer, I relied on our team’s programmer to create a script that would cause sounds to trigger when they entered a collider - Which he managed to do. He explained how to use the code, and once I got the hang of it, I managed to get the sounds to work on a trigger.

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PO4 M6In my first game, my level was set in a warehouse so there would be a lot of echo. Using a studio reverb was perfect to imitate that echo since that’s what a reverb does, its a basic echo. I feel like this gave my sounds more realism towards the environment and keeps the player more immersed. Obviously they weren’t perfect, but I feel like I did this to a good standard to the point where it’s somewhat realistic. I applied different presets of the studio reverb to different sounds - They were very similar, but I tried to make it so the more open sounds had more of an echo, and the sounds within the shelving to have a bit less of one because the boxes would absorb some of that echo in real life.

With a few of my sounds, I applied multiple effects to give it more of a realistic feeling. A good example in my first game was for the shelf creek - I applied 4 different spatial sounds to this. I applied a reverb, which was the echo to give the effect of being in a warehouse, I applied a pitch shifter and made it deeper because the actual creek the chair made was quite high pitched compared to how a shelf would creek, I applied a delay which made it sound more spaced out, so the creek wasn’t over straight away, it was basically slowed down a little bit. And the final effect I applied on it was a GuitarSuite, I put on a preset called breakfast of radiation which gave the sound a grungy feel which I thought fitted the environment perfect.

On the main ambience, I had used multiple tracks to create a kind of hybrid sound. I used the creek along with the door opening sound repeated with some effects on both audio tracks. On the door opening sound for the ambience, I used a reverb for the echo, a GuitarSuite with the preset “drunken” on it to make it kind of distorted, and used a chorus with the preset called “Broken Stereo” Which kid of made the sound jump a little bit and repeat a little bit.

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M4 - Multiband compression

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These are all the sounds I exported ready for compression. I exported them as a waveform format so it’s uncompressed as of now.

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These are the exported sounds as one big sound. These have the multiband compressor effects applied but not edited.

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This is the multiband compressor for the Dr. Octavious, these settings have made the audio clearer and louder.

I mainly touched on the low and midtones of this sound, I brought the threshold down to make the sounds more compressed. I edited the ratio of one of the midtones so it’s 7dB louder than the threshold.I upped the gain on the low and mid tone due to editing the threshold to balance it out.

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For this sound, I edited the mid and high tones. The only thing I did for the low tones was up the gain to make the low frequency sound louder.

For the midtones, I really lowered it to compressed it quite a bit. I also upped the ratio to 11:1 which made the audio louder to counter how compressed it was. I also turned the gain down a little bit. And the overall gain for the compressor.

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For this I had to use a DeHummer as well as the multiband compressor because the compressor added a hum, so I used the DeHummer to minimise it, I couldn’t get rid of all of it without losing some quality of the audio but it’s really hard to notice anyway.

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PO4 D3Sound design is a difficult to define industry. Games can have a high audio budget or a small one depending on the company. With Triple A companies, sound design can often take years of development to get sounds perfect. In Triple A, sound designers earn an annual salary of $71, 838 as of 2016(1) so it’s quite outdated and could have definitely have gone up by now. Compared to other artists such as 3D artists who make an annual of $73, 108(2), sound designers earn a few thousand less, but there is no date from when the 3D artist statistics was published so that could be more recent and could be fairly similar. With sound design, and other jobs in the games pipeline, with the more experience you have, the more you get paid. For the $71,838, that’s an average of eight and a half years experience.

For Freelance, since you’re working for yourself, you earn significantly less than working for a triple A company. The average annual income for a freelance sound designer is around $69,848 (1) which is less than a triple A games company. However this can vary a lot depending on how much work you get a year. If you don’t get as much work, you’re obviously not going to earn as much that year compared to years where you’re constantly busy. And again, with the more experience you have, the more you’re likely to get paid by the people hiring you.

(1) - https://www.gamesoundcon.com/single-post/2017/10/02/GameSoundCon-Game-Audio-Industry-Survey-2017(2) https://www.careerexplorer.com/careers/games-artist/salary/

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D3 ContinuedThroughout both projects, I have had to use secondary source sounds due to the inability to get the sound I wanted by foley recording. With some sounds, there was just no way I could figure out how to get that sound by using objects I could find. One of these was the glass smashing in my first game. I didn’t want to smash an actual glass on college grounds because that could put me at risk of injuring myself from glass going everywhere and it would put other people in danger of injuring themselves too. I tried other techniques on how to get something to sound like glass smashing - I spent too long googling different techniques to try and get something close and was running out of time so I opted for secondary source sounds. I used the website www.freesound.org and managed to find the perfect glass smashing sound that fit my game, and with a bit of editing, I managed to get it to sound really good.

I had to do this for a light bulb buzzing too because I just couldn’t find either a lightbulb that was buzzing or anything that even remotely sounded like a lightbulb buzzing. At first I tried to use my guitar amp at home but it just didn’t sound right at all and it was causing me a lot of stress and I was running out of time by this point so I went to the same website and managed to find a seamless buzzing sound of a bulb and it was perfect.

I also had to do this with the wood step. Around college there was literally nothing I could use to jump on wood. Since it was a crate you’re jumping on in my game, I couldn’t just use a floor because it wouldn’t sound right in my opinion, and I really wanted this sound because it would sound odd if I didn’t have any sort stepping sound when jumping on the crates, so I went on freesound and someone had uploaded themselves stepping on a wooden palette and it sounded exactly how I wanted and since they’re all royalty free, I could use them without any worry.

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D3 ContinuedFrom the start of the first project, I had an audio map made so I had an idea of what sounds I wanted where so I was prepared for when I went out recording. After a few days of recording, I came into some trouble of mainly being in a public place trying to record sounds that are quite specific. Since I couldn’t just tell people to leave or be quiet, I had to mainly wait for people to do that themselves or if was just a few people I asked if they could be quiet for about 20 seconds so I could record the sound and leave. There was also the trouble of not being able to record a sound at all because I couldn’t find a good way to record a sound and get it how I wanted it to sound. I feel like overall, I managed to get my sounds close to the the map I made. I had to make some changes due to me not being able to get them at all. A good example of this was the phone ringing, I didn’t end up using that at all and ended up using a computer fan instead due to it fitting the environment aesthetics better. As I got into it, it seemed that the phone just didn’t fit at all, so I changed it. Same with vent ambience. Instead of the vent ambience I made a ceiling fan hum, which I felt fit better as there’s more chance of a ceiling fan in an office instead of a vent. I think they would have sounded similar anyway but I felt the fan sounded better.

I also got rid of the monitor static sound because I thought that it might be too annoying and just kept the monitor off. To replace this, I used a trigger sound for when you jumped on the filing cabinets in the spawn office, it made a metallic sound when landing on it. For the creature sound, I had to get creative to figure out how I wanted my AI to sound, I feel like the sound I created using different effects in Audition fit the aesthetics of my environment perfectly and gave the the player a sense of fear because I thought it was quite spooky.

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D3 ContinuedOverall, through the first and second project, I have used a lot of different techniques and effects to create all the sounds I’ve used. Throughout my first game, I mainly used the studio reverb, this is because the effect the reverb does is kind of like an echo with a falloff. This effect was perfect for pretty much all my sounds in the first level since it was based in an abandoned warehouse. In real life the warehouse would be very echoey due to there being lots of different things the sound can bounce off, so the reverb gave the sound effects that echo a warehouse would have which I think would keep the player immersed. They weren’t perfect but I was happy with how my sounds sounded.

I also used a pitch shifter a fair amount, I did this because a lot of the sounds were mainly too high pitched for what I wanted so I brought the pitch down using the pitch shifter. I mainly used the “Dark lord” preset because it made the sounds really deep and I think it fitted into my level well with the grungy vibe. I also used this in my ADR sequence. Some of the secondary sounds I found were too high pitched for what I felt like fit in with the sequence, so I used the pitch shifter to lower the sound to work better with the video.

For my ADR project, I mainly used the volume effect for a lot of my sounds as my foley voice was a little bit quiet compared to the secondary sounds I got from freesounds.org. So with this effect, I could boost my voice audio, and reduce some of the other sounds. I did this for another reason too - In one of the scenes for my ADR task, there was sparks in the background and it didn’t sound right because it sounded like they were right in front of you, so I put the volume effect on it and lowered it to make it sound like it was more in the background, I did this with one of the voices too. I feel like I used this method well and it worked quite well overall.

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D3 ContinuedAlso for my ADR project, I used the multiband compressor on all of the sounds to boost the overall quality of the sounds and voices. I had to mess around with the high, mid and low tones of the different sounds. This boosted the overall quality and made some of the voices even clearer than they were. It also made some louder and some a bit quieter which I felt worked really well. I did however have to use a dehummer for one of the sounds because after using the compressor, it emphasized a hum which I didn’t want, so after applying the DeHummer, it reduced it a lot. You could still somewhat hear it if you were listening out for it but it was nowhere near as noticeable as it was before the DeHummer.

I used a phaser for one of the sounds in my Test level, I used a preset called “Zed Lepplin” which made the the bass behind it sound quite wavy which I felt worked well with what the sound was and how it was used in the scene. Since the sound was already a sci-fi esque sound, I think it made it sound a lot cooler, and fit even better in the scene.

I have used a flanger for one of my sounds for the test level scene, this basically made the sound wobble. I put a robotic preset on it to give it more of a static-y sound which I thought sounded good as an addition the the already wavy sound. I thought it fit the sci-fi aesthetic of the environment and sound.

Over both my Test Scene project and ingame sounds from my first project, I’ve used a notch filter. For the ingame sounds, I used the notch filter to filter out some frequencies because when using some of the effects, at one point it caused the sound to peak for a split second with a really high pitched kind of like squeak, so I used the notch filter to filter out that sound and it worked really well.

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D3 ContinuedWhen using it for my Test Scene project, I used it to make the 3D sound effect sound deeper than it was along with the pitch shifter. It made it sound quite scary and very grungy which I felt fit the environment, because sci-fi can still be quite scary because of aliens and things similar.

Throughout this year doing sound design, I have definitely learnt a lot. I have picked up key skills that I’ll remember if I ever do sound design again. I now know how to properly position microphones for field recording to pick up the best quality sound, I know not to get too close or too far away because it’ll either cause the microphone to peak if it’s too close or won’t pick it up to a good standard. My sound editing skills have also improved since the start of the year. I know how to cut out unwanted sound in softwares such as Adobe Audition or Premiere Pro. This is a key skill to definitely have overall. I also know how to effectively apply spatial effects to fit an environment, I feel like I did this the best because I’m happy with how my sounds turned out for my level in the first project. I feel like although I definitely could improve my sound recording and editing, I’m happy with how they were applied to my first level.

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D3 ContinuedI feel like I’ve learnt to kind of splice sounds together to make one sound is a really good skill I’ve learnt to do, because although I feel like I’m not very creative when it comes to sound, I’m kind of getting an idea of how sound designers think when they make sounds using items and objects to make a realistic sound. I feel like this is one of the things I’m most proud about because since I’ve never done sound design at all, this, in my opinion would be one of the hardest to pick up.

However, when doing sound design, I definitely have a lot of weaknesses too. A few of these being effectively using effects for sounds. I know I said I think my sounds for my first level were good, but I could definitely make them so much better if I actually tried to focus on what the effects properly did and instead of just using presets, I would actually use the sliders to get my own effect and it might sound even better. If I were to do it again, I would definitely try harder to apply the effects so much better.

Another weakness is going to contradict what I said as a strength but I see it as both a strength and weakness - not quite having an ear for sound design. Most of my sounds were the actual things making the sounds, so, what I mean is for example, my ceiling fan hum is literally a ceiling fan hum and the pc fan sound is an actual PC fan. I would love to be able to listen to one sound and think about how I could apply that sound and make it sound like something else. If I had that skill, my first project would have sounded so much better than it does.

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D3 continuedAnother weakness, especially when recording for ADR, is my confidence. I don’t like the sound of my own voice so when recording for the ADR sequence, I just wanted to get it over with because I hated listening to my own voice. If I was more confident with how I sound and wasn’t scared to try properly different voices, I feel like my ADR sequence could have sounded so much better when it comes down to the voices because Peter and Dr. Ocvavious sound pretty similar because I didn’t really try when it came using different voices because I felt really self conscious doing so.

Also, a big limitation to getting primary source sounds was that I was limited to college, since I wasn’t allowed to take the microphone off college grounds, I had to try and collect the sounds I wanted from areas around college which would obviously cause some problems due to college being a public place and I have no control over what people do or say which has a big impact on field recording. So I would consider this a weakness, but it’s not really a weakness I can control.

However, one thing I feel like I did quite well although I don’t like the sound of my voice, is that I’m quite good at syncing my voice and some secondary sounds. I feel like my ADR project was overall good and that this is one of my strengths, being able to sync audio with a video.

One more weakness would be that I was really bad at managing my time when it came to sound design. I kind of put it off, especially in the first project because I didn’t care about it so I focused more on other things such as 3D modelling and texturing and then I left sound design to pretty much until last minute. If I were to do it again, I would absolutely put more time into sound design knowing now how time consuming it is to make high quality sounds.

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D3 ContinuedOverall, I feel like my sound design project went okay. There are lots of things I would do differently, but I am happy with how everything has come together. If I were to do it again I would put more time into sound design because like I said before it is very time consuming and it is absolutely not something you should put on the backburner whilst focusing on other things. After doing it for a year, it’s definitely made me realise how important sound design is in the games industry and how big of a part it plays in actual games.

It’s given me a whole different outlook on sounds in games, and the people who do this as a profession. It’s definitely not something I would want to do for a job, but overall, I’m happy with how both my ingame sounds from the first project and the ADR sequence has come out. I’m happy with my quality of work produced but if I were to do it again I would definitely put a lot more effort into it.