Advanced Interactive Audio

AIA Postmortem

Sagar Jaggia

2694998

Hello, my name is Sagar Jaggia. I am a student at Full Sail University pursuing my Bachelor of Science Degree in Recording Arts.

The purpose of a postmortem is to focus more on the production process rather than the actual game itself.  Postmortems are also there to help the team decide on ideas that went right and also the ideas that were not so helpful.  The benefit to this is that it will help the team learn from their mistakes as rookies to help benefit them in the future so that the team will know what is better for the project and what is not.

UE4 Project

The first project I worked on was using the game engine Unreal Engine 4 to implement audio assets I created into a short plat-former game demo featuring a robot running and jumping through a city environment. Aesthetically the game is very futuristic and metallic in appearance. This lead me to ensure that all final assets appeared brighter and to have a common theme with each other. To help tie all of the submitted assets together I used layering and like processing to achieve a group sound. Reverb was applied to layers and mixed in to glue the audio together.

The game is about a robot trying to escape by running across the city and grabbing a helicopter ledge so that he can make his escape before the helicopter crashes into a bunch of police cars. In addition, to make sure that while playing the game the user does not run out of time there are pick ups that increase time. There are audio assets associated with feedback that alert you to changes in your time. The sound design was hyper-realistic in that there is a literal ticking feedback occurring during your boost.

Further feedback is presented with there being multiple “levels” within the stage. The upper level’s sound design is less busy sounding than the lower level giving the game a sense of realism.

Part of the entertainment included with this game is that you can control your robot however you want; Running, jumping, and sliding are all movement options. The sound design here was hyper-realistic in that the audio assets were selected and edited to specifically create a futuristic and robotic aesthetic. There is also immediate feedback associated with the movement of the robot, especially when sliding. Executing a slide will trigger a metallic screech that represents a tricky movement.

The music for the game was also entertaining and fun like the target audience would expect. It ties into the aesthetic of the game due to the reason that it gives a very futuristic and robotic feel.

The purpose of the game was a learning tool provided by epic games to understand how plat-former functions inside the unreal engine. The assets I created included all the foley for the robot’s movement (footsteps, jumping and landing, etc.), assets for a cinematic cut scene at the beginning of the game, which included car engines and explosions, city ambiences and some music.

I believe I achieved all the goals of the project implementation wise, which was basically implementing all the audio assets to the correct objects in the game in the correct way. The timing of my cinematic were on point, and no sounds really overpowered another except for an obvious stinger like a helicopter flying overhead or an explosion, and I also implemented every asset.

I faced a lot of trouble when it came to the animation and the creation of blueprints, as I got confused there a bit. Although I had a fair amount of time to design the 40 or so assets for the game, the timing of break created a lapse between time to work on the assignment and lecture topics that would benefitted me earlier during the open time to work. I was able to implement all the assets for the game, but there were several problems that I faced when working on the UE4 project. I had a lot of problems with my peak levels while working on the sounds assets and at the same time I also had issues with my channel count.

Wwise Limbo Project

In the Wwise Limbo project I learned so much about the middleware tool in so little time that it is almost unbelievable.

Our team was able to implement each sound file correctly in accordance to the events triggered in the capture log within the profiler layout.  It was easier to figure out the layout of the program and the navigation system was more user friendly compared to Unreal Engine.  I would prefer to use Wwise over Unreal Engine if I ever have to work on future projects.

For the sound design each 3 group members were given 30 list of sounds to design and implement in the game. For instance, in my list one main part that I was tasked with was creating the sounds for the Cart Roll. I wanted the aesthetic to be hyper-realistic and immersive. It was important for it to be hyper-realistic because the game allows you to be more focused on it due to the lack of visuals due to the reason that the whole concept of the game is dark and gives the player a very cold feeling.  The feedback ties into the dark aesthetic and then immerses you in the suspense of the game. 

After creating event plays and stops we were able to achieve an ideal implementation of sounds overall. For the most part our mix  worked well. Only a few sounds here and there had to be adjusted either to fit the rest of the balance or to be in accordance with the project requirements, such as the beginning footsteps being quieter than the running footsteps. We implemented a reverb effect to our footsteps to immerse them in the game.  In our project we got everything done on time, and completed all the required objectives; which I think is awesome for our skill level in the amount of time we spent using Wwise.

In all honesty it did seem very difficult at first to be able to complete every requirement of the project correctly in the amount of time given. It wasn’t so much the quality of the work expected that was daunting, it was that it had to be done entirely in 2 labs. Everything in the project went smoothly, yet some things took us a while to figure out, such as the timing of the events, specific file hierarchies, and the routing of the busses to fade out our ambiences in the UI menu. I felt that the ambiences were a little too loud and could have been reduced in loudness. After all, we did take the time to finish correctly and it wasn’t so hard in the end. It only seemed to be somewhat strenuous in the beginning of the project.

Working in a group was made unique by the conglomeration of each team member’s skill set for the greater good of the project. Throughout the project the inevitable hurdles were overcome by the help and knowledge of someone who knew what the other member was struggling with: We efficiently worked as a team. Some of us were better with speed and accuracy in certain areas than others. For the duration of the project we would switch who was operating the computer and working on each task according who was more competent in each specific area. I honestly believe there were all ups and no downs regarding working with a group.

Throughout the project we were able to learn and help each other in areas where we were lacking, put our heads together to defuse problems when they arose, and had fun while we worked together. We experienced the satisfaction of project completion together, which wouldn’t be possible to achieve if we worked on the game alone. Overall our teamwork provided the Limbo project with a well-balanced aesthetic that was easily characterized with the feel of the game. 

Below is an embedded video of the game that shows the implementation of my sounds for my portion of the game: