Three Wwise exercises

I did the Wwise implementation for three Unity course projects, including the voice priorities in a shooter and per-area SoundBanks for an Android build.

2023–2024, Howest DAE, Game Sound Integration.

Watch the recording (1:17)

Playback priority in Boney Boogaloo

A skeleton in a suit with a red bow tie hit by a shot on the graveyard hill, another skeleton rising beside it under a full moon

In the test scene, skeletons in suits keep rising over the hill, and more sounds play at once than the project’s limit of 256 voices allows. I set the playback priorities that decide what you still hear: nearby weapons keep playing and distant enemy voices drop out first. The skeletons crowd the hill from 1:04 in the recording.

I also trimmed the silence off the start of the files (0.495 s on the reload) and put gunshots, reloads and skeleton spawns in random containers, with six variations each for the shot and the spawn.

Ellen: ambience, footsteps and music by area

A MusicZone state changes as Ellen moves between areas, and the ambience crossfades over 6.5 seconds on each change. On the walk into the cave, the reverb changes with it instead of switching in one step.

Footsteps switch by surface (grass, earth, puddle, stone), and ten attenuation settings decide how far each type of sound carries, from 11 m for a breaking box to 155 m for the big gate. The music has a playlist for each area and a boss theme.

Watch the walk into the cave on Vimeo

Ellen in mossy ruins beside a creature, with a shielded enemy and a passage between the stone walls behind her
  • MUSIC Root
    • MUSIC Manager
      • MUS_EnteredBuilding_Playlist Container
        • MUS_EnteredBuilding
      • MUS_ExploreJungle_Playlist Container
        • MUS_Explore_Jungle
      • MUS_MainChamber_Playlist Container
        • MUS_Stem_EnteredMainChamber
          • MUS_Stem_EndOfDay_Concords
      • MUS_MainMenu_Playlist Container
        • MUS_Main_Menu
          • New Era
      • MUS_BossFight_Playlist Container
        • MUS_Boss_Theme
The music hierarchy in Wwise, retyped from the capture. Capture

Stomach Aches on low-memory phones

Stomach Aches is a shooter set inside a human body. For the Android build I gave each area its own SoundBank: about 670 KB for the brain, 384 KB for the mouth and 2.8 MB for the stomach. Entering an area unloads the previous area’s bank before the next one loads.

Each area’s ambience is a loop with random one-shots on top, like gulps in the mouth. The gaps between them use the Wwise Silence plug-in instead of audio files that only held silence, so the gaps need no audio data in the bank.