Project Rage DevBlog #1

Welcome to my first blog post for this semester’s WolverineSoft project: Project rage. The current idea for rage is a beat’em up set in a cyberpunk setting. This semester I am working on the audio team to design sounds and music for the game. Currently we are still in the process of learning the tools to implement audio into the game such as Wwise and generating music and sfx ideas through sonic palettes and music snippets.

Generating Ideas (17 hours)

Sonic Palettes (4 hours)

Created a sonic palette to try to capture the sound of cyberpunk. Brought together many of pieces in media that I thought was a good representation of cyberpunk such as music from Tron: Legacy and Before the Night by Home. I also provided my reasons for why I thought they were good for context for the rest of the audio team. This took around 4 hours total, all of the time just spending listening to a bunch of music and selecting some to put down and write about. Here is the link to my full sonic palette.

Music Snippets (13 hours)

Looked at all the sonic palettes generated by the audio team to get a good idea of what type of music and sfx are included. Though there was some great examples, I thought that wasn’t enough to give me a really great idea of what cyberpunk should sound like. I was able to search on youtube for a lot of cyberpunk themed music and found a couple great mixes like this mix and this playlist. This took around 2 hours. For about 2 hours after that I listened and tried to experiment how to make the swells, sweeping synths, and fast modulation that are in so many of those pieces. Took around 4 hours in total for listening and experimentation.

Then I started to make two musical snippets of around one to two minutes to generate a prototype of the sounds that I like. In the first snippet (4 hours), I tried to experiment with a lot of different distortions especially in the bass. I created two sections, one with a repeating melody in minor and one with a fast arpeggio both to reflect the fast paced world of cyberpunk along with creating energy for a beat them up (2 hours). I then inserted alternating distorted and not distorted bass in some of the sections, differentiating by using many different overdrive and amp plugins along with a less gritty and more gritty bass sample (1 hour). I was also experimenting with the equilizer as well. In the beginning of the piece I was able to use a slowing increasing high pass filter to build energy and then release by a drop (1 hour). Link to the first snippet.

In my second snippet (5 hours), I tried to experiemnt more with the equilizer. I first created two sections like the first one with a repeating melody and the other with a fast arpeggio(2 hours). I used it to create vowel sounds in the synths which added grittiness and glitchiness in the sound (2 hours). I also tried to create a more interesting beat using the drum kits, after browsing through a ton of different samples I was able to piece together an big sounding drum kit and create a cool beat (1 hour). Link to the second snippet.

Since I have learned a lot of techniques in creating the different sounds that are commonly used in cyberpunk themed music I am confident that next time the process will become much faster!

Wwise Tutorials (5 hours)

Wwise is a audio implementation software that we will be using for our game. This software is new to me, and so I worked on two different tutorials on Wwise: Wwise 101 and Wwise 102.

Wwise 101 (3 hours)

I finished the first two sections for Wwise 101 which is the only ones that were currently relevant to audio implementation in our game. By utilizing a sample game called Cube in the tutorial, I was able to implment a sound for an attack inside the sample game. I learned from this tutorial how to connect Wwise with the game via game calls and sound banks. I also learned how to edit and create sound in Wwise and use randomizers to make one sound sample sound different everything the sample is utilized.

Wwise 201 (2 hours)

I finished the first two sections for Wwise 201 which taught me even more about audio implmentation, specifically how to manipulate music to play in random sequence and seamlessly blend and transition into each other. I also learned about reorchestration in Wwise and how to layer different sounds together to make one piece of music sound with different instrumentation everytime.

Meeting with the rest of the Studio and Audio team (4 hours)

I met with the studio every Sunday from 11-1 pm to discuss developments in the project as well as convene with the audio team to discuss current and future issues. For the next two weeks, we have decided to work on new music and sfx for the first level!