#audiotest

Lost in the Forest

You're a kid, lost in the forest as night falls; your only companion your loyal dog, whose barks lead you out. A first person 3D low poly game Made in Unity.

Credits

We're four students making this game in four weeks; we are already at week three, so for this DevLog I will backtrack to show the process.

Kadin is scrum master, keeping scope and workloads feasible, coded character movement and created the terrain.

Kyle https://kyletanirau.tumblr.com/ greyboxed the level design, and with

Vinnie https://onceuponadevblogblog.tumblr.com/ is creating low poly art assets.

I am coding the audio, a key game mechanic.

Probuilder maze audio test

In week 1 I created a random maze in Probuilder, which I had never used before but found surprisingly good for greyboxing, adding UVs and textures. I chucked in a few of my tree and flax assets and a dark skybox, then walked the maze to see - could I follow the dog barking to get out?

Answer, NO! I got lost.

It was almost impossible to hear where the barking was coming from. I had to use scene view to work out where I was; without that advantage the player would be hopelessly lost.

Solutions

I broke the maze into several audio zones, each with its own 'dog' at the correct exit. This was more effective, but meant the dog sounded like it was 'porting' abruptly from one zone to the next just as the player reached the dog.

It was easier to locate the barking if the 'dog' was moving, so I animated each of the dogs just outside the correct exit for each zone.

I got sick of the constant barking; it was clear the barks needed to be more varied and randomised.

I added ambient forest sounds on each zone; these also changed far too abruptly.

I played with the idea of adding warning sounds for wrong exits; I happened to have a tiger growl, so I used that. It gave me a real fright when I walked around the wrong a dark corner. We wanted scary but not THAT scary! 

Overall I I learned a lot from a simple greybox audio maze test.

Simple basic audio test

The next step was to see if I could use Unity's audio settings to adjust the sounds so they more naturally faded off as the player moved. At Matt the tutor's suggestion, I set up the simplest possible scene: a player, a dog and a long road. 

Then I changed one of Unity's audio settings at a time. This way I could work out the best settings:

to locate the dog barking in 3D

To get natural falloff in the ambient sounds when walking in different zones (forest, birdsong, stream, waterfall etc).

This super-simple, basic audio test was absolutely invaluable in working out what each setting did.