States and Mix Snapshots

Another powerful practice for manipulating an interactive mix is by using states, or in this context, mix snapshots. States can be directly related to, and commonly referred as, game states such as: combat, stealth, idle. They can also be used to define spaces such as a forest, hallway, or dungeon and, furthermore, can be abstracted to define any circumstance under which you may want to change the sound of the game. States are usually defined in the game engine and triggered within Wwise, where you can combine multiple states simultaneously.

	Designer Note
	When an object is registered to multiple states, a single property can be affected by multiple value changes. In this scenario, each change of value is added up together. For example, when two states in two different state groups have a volume change of -6 dB, and both become active simultaneously, the resulting volume will be -12 dB.

Due to the non-linear progression and randomness inherent in most games, it is often desirable to plan for a mix that can respond to events in the game dynamically as opposed to a static mix that does not change based on circumstances within the game. By using state changes to modify the properties of different mix busses, you can create a system for dynamically mixing the game. In a sense, it is like programming an artificial intelligence that is able to make changes to the mix in accordance with the rules specified by the sound designer.

States are defined in the game syncs tab of the Project Explorer and include settings for defining a default transition time or custom transitions based on changes between specific states.

Defining states and setting default and custom transition times

Once states have been established, properties that can be affected by state changes are available for any audio object or audio bus by adding a state in the States tab.