Wwise Projects
Three school projects where I kept breaking things. That's where I actually learned Wwise.
Three Projects, Three Problems
Three solo school projects at DAE, 2021-2024. A zombie shooter where I hit the 256 voice limit on day one. A platformer where zone transitions sounded like someone flipping a switch. An Android game that crashed on load because all audio was in memory at once.
None of them shipped, but each one broke something I had to actually fix — sounds cutting out, transitions that sounded awful, a phone that crashed on load.
Three Games, Three Problems
Boney Boogaloo
Zombie Wave ShooterMy first Wwise project. Wwise can only play 256 sounds at once, and in a zombie shooter that fills up fast — every gunshot, every spawn, every death scream takes a slot. I gave each sound 6 variations so it never repeats the same way twice, then set priorities so nearby gunshots always win over a zombie groaning in the distance. 44 sounds total, and nothing cuts out anymore.
Ellen
PlatformerPlatformer where I focused on making spaces sound real. A waterfall stays loud from far away, but footsteps disappear after a few meters — each sound type has its own distance curve. Footsteps change depending on the surface you walk on. The tricky part was zone transitions: walking from forest to cave crossfades over 6.5 seconds, and the reverb changes with it — big rooms sound big, tight corridors sound tight. No hard cuts.
Stomach Aches
FPS Platformer - AndroidFPS platformer set inside a human body, targeting cheap Android phones with 2 GB RAM. The first build crashed because all audio loaded at once. I split it so only the current zone stays in memory — Brain takes 670 KB, Mouth 384 KB, Stomach 2.8 MB. For quiet moments I replaced real audio files with generated silence, which cut memory use by 80%. The waterfall has 3 layers that change based on how far you are — sounds different at 5 meters vs. 30.
What Broke & How I Fixed It
256 Voices Wasn't Enough
What Was HardSounds were cutting out mid-play. Gunshots would just vanish. I had no idea voice limits were even a thing before this. Took me an hour of debugging to realize the problem wasn't my code, it was Wwise running out of voices to assign.
What I DidGunshots need to play. A zombie grunt 30 meters away does not. I set priorities so close, loud sounds always win. The other fix was trimming silence off files — sounds were holding their slot open on dead air. Not every sound needs to play. Some can just be dropped and nobody notices.
Zone Transitions That Don't Sound Like a Hard Cut
What Was HardWalking between areas sounded awful. Forest to cave, silence to waterfall. It felt like someone flipped a switch instead of the player actually moving through a space. A 2-second fade wasn't enough either - it just sounded like a bad DJ crossfade.
What I Did6.5 seconds was the sweet spot for the crossfade. Shorter felt rushed, longer felt laggy. But the crossfade alone wasn't enough - the reverb also had to change. Walk from a big cave into a tight corridor and you hear it shrink around you. Once the reverb matched the room, it actually felt like walking through a real place instead of hearing two tracks crossfade.
2 GB RAM and Every Kilobyte Counts
What Was HardThe first build crashed on load. All audio in memory at once - the phone just gave up. I had to rethink the entire loading strategy. You cannot treat a 2 GB Android phone like a PC with 16 GB.
What I DidBiggest win: replacing real audio files with generated silence for quiet moments — 80% memory saved in one move. Then I split audio into zones so only the current area stays loaded. Walk into a new zone, the old one unloads. The waterfall needed 3 distance layers so it sounds right both up close and far away. Total audio per zone never exceeds 3 MB.