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Understanding the Wwise Project

A Wwise project was created to facilitate the integration of the Wwise sound engine into Cube. Most of the sounds in the Audiokinetic version of Cube have been modified from the original game.

[Note]Note

The Wwise project file is located in the following folder: <WwiseRoot>\Cube\WwiseProject.

The following sections describe some of the design decisions made in the Wwise project.

Building the Actor-Mixer Hierarchy

The Actor-Mixer Hierarchy is where sound assets are organized in the project.

For the Cube project, the following audio structure was created:

  • In the "Main" folder, four actor-mixers were created to group sounds into logical categories: Items, Magic, Main Characters, and Monsters.

  • Within the actor-mixers, a series of Random Containers and Switch Containers were used to add variety and distinctiveness to the sounds in the project.

  • Randomizers were applied to the volume and pitch properties for some magic and footsteps. The Randomizer randomly modifies the property values of the object each time it is played.

  • All sounds within the "Main" folder are 3D sounds that use game-defined positioning with a standard distance-based attenuation on volume.

  • In the "Maps" folder, there are sounds, voices, and music specifically related to the map "dcp_the_core". All voices and music within this map are 2D sounds that are streamed from the hard drive.

Building the Master-Mixer Hierarchy

The Master-Mixer Hierarchy is a separate hierarchical structure of busses and auxiliary busses that allows you to group the many different sound and music structures within your project and prepare them for output.

For the Cube project, the following bus structure was created:

  • Three main control busses were created: Music, SFX, and Voice.

  • The Environments bus groups a series of auxiliary busses. Each auxiliary bus has a reverb effect inserted that represents a room in the game. Which auxiliary bus is processing at runtime is decided in the game's code.

  • Auto-ducking was applied to the Voice bus so that Music is ducked when a Voice is played.

  • An RTPC was applied to the Volume property of the three main control busses. These volume controls were mapped to the in-game volume faders (using game console).

Using Game Syncs

In Wwise, game syncs are used to efficiently manage specific changes in audio that relate to changes in action or conditions within the game. In the Cube project, the following game syncs were used:

  • Switches - A switch group called "Material" was created to manage the different ground textures that exist in the game. Switches were created within this group for each ground texture, such as concrete and grass. These switches are used to define different footstep sounds for the main character as the surfaces change within the game.

  • Game Parameters - Three game parameters were created that correspond to the volume faders within the Cube game. These game parameters were mapped to the bus volume property of the three main busses using an RTPC. By mapping the faders to the volume properties, game players can control the volume of sounds and music in the game themselves.

    The game parameter "PlayerHealth" is attached the player's health gauge in game. No sounds use it by default. You can attach this game parameter to sound object properties.

    The Teleport looping Synth One sound uses the game parameter "Distance_to_Object" on the "Base Frequency" parameter of the synth to create an interesting pitch bend effect as you approach the teleporter. This game parameter can be reused on other sound objects.

Creating Events

Wwise uses events to drive the sound, music, and dialogue in-game. Events contain one or more actions that are applied to the different sound or music structures within your project hierarchy. For the Cube project, events were created and given names that matched the sound names triggered by Cube.

Understanding SoundBanks

SoundBanks are the product of all your work and are the final audio package that becomes part of your game. They contain a group of events, Wwise objects, and/or converted audio files that will be loaded into a game's platform memory at a particular point in the game. For the Cube project, the following two SoundBanks were created:

  • Main - Groups all events used in all maps.

  • dcp_the_core - Groups the events for the map "dcp_the_core".


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