Jonesy and the Courtyard
– a sound design demo by Andras Peter using Wwise and Unity.

The work is about to show technical and holistic interactive sound design skills using the “Unity” game engine by Unity Technologies, and the Wwise audio middleware from “Audiokinetic -Owned by Sony”. The demo is a 5 minutes long video recorded “gameplay”.

The game intends to showcase the designer’s skills for implementing sounds in a virtual interactive audio environment. All the sounds and parts of the C# scripts & visual elements were created/ edited and “wired” in the levels, by the designer.

The demo starts at „Jonesy’s World”, which is a small setting introducing the following design elements:

• Horizontal music arrangement and mixing and implementing RTPC (Real time Parameter Control)
  • Listen how musical composition is changing according to the player position
• Character dialogue
  • Basic NPC (Non Player Character) interaction
• Character movement
  • different steps on different surfaces
• Sound effect for picking items up
  • using custom scripts for designing interactive actions
• Basic visual level design
  • The level is a qiuck design of the creator of the sounds

Talking to Jonesy, the player will be asked to collect 3 items in the nearby area. Once all the three items are collected, the player is transported to the next world, the “Courtyard”.

The Courtyard is a pre-fabricated demo level, provided by Unity Technology. It is consisting of a large a Sci-fi structure within a remote desert environment.

On this level, the designer shows various sound design elements, while the player discovering the level. There is no definite aim for the level, there is no end of it as such. The fun never ends!

Components which are demontrated on that level:

• Different character Movement & type of surface sounds
  • showing different character sounds depending on the type of surface and speed of movement
• Ambiance Sound Design
• Inserting ambience background sound elements, which are changing according to the “time”
• RTPC control of sound effects
  • introducing sound control depending on interactive parameters
• Sound Emitters – game objects
  • Designing sounds for individual game objects
• Vertical Music arrangement and mixing – implementing music zones
  • Experiencing different areas at the game level which has different music
• Environmental sound design – application of reverb zones
  • Demonstrating the use of environmental sound design, using reverb zones as an example

In general, the demo piece is also demonstrating the following:

• Overall sound level mixing using Wwise’s console and buses The sound levels were designed using Wwise internal DAW facilities
• Sound clip design and editing
  • Clips design in Wwise and Pro-Tools

The following two videos are the same, but they are hosted in different places to ensure the video can be played.