This video documents part of our development process, team meetings, how we set up the exhibition for Presentation Day, and interviews and feedback from players.
(This video was co-edited by Ruxin, Linteng, Roger, Zhaoyi)
Author: Zhaoyi Yan
Sound design of the rooms
Yunjia Chen and I were in charge of the sound design part. After communicating with the room designers, we made the following table.
In the design of the basic sound, we hope to use a sense of unreality to express Alzheimer’s disease. For example, Sonic Detector and Radar, we used synth patches and reversed playback. In the sound design of each room, we communicated with each room designer and divided it into ambient sound and sound effects.
UI Sound
For the UI sound design, we continue the traditional non-realistic sound and make different sound designs based on the same style.
For the sound of the locator that explores the position of the room, we hope to use a sound that can be looped and not annoying, and this sound can also be distinguished in frequency from music and ambient sound.
You can audition some sound design:
Sonic Detector
Picture Appears/Disappears
Highlight Rubik’s Cube
Room Sound Design
We designed it based on ambient sound and sound effects, and recorded footsteps in different materials. In some rooms, we have made special designs, such as transfer Door.
Transfer Door
Also some items have more detailed sounds:
Microscope
In the original idea, we hoped to switch different ambient sounds in the classroom room according to the items we got every time, and made three kinds of sounds: exam, after class (noisy), after school (adding outdoor sound), but in the final game play, we chose after-school sounds to bring players a better gaming experience.
Also, we have a special sound production for dark rooms:
The dark room collapses after being triggered
For more details, refer to声音设计
Ideas for game narrative and projection
Narrative
“I” seemed to have arrived in a non-Euclidean labyrinth and couldn’t remember why I was there. I switched on the radio in the room and followed the instructions to complete the first room, at which point multiple doors opened and different choices took me back to different stages of my memory, and I needed to explore each room in the labyrinth to retrieve the pieces belonging to each stage of my life and repair my complete memory.
1. Once the player has completed the room assignment, is it possible to add subtitles or narration to connect Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development more closely to the content of the room.
With the workshop, we can achieve some interesting effects with max and apply them to our projections.
1. Overlaying the player’s real-time play footage with a gradually changing puzzle video to give the viewer a differentiated experience from the player.
Implementation solution: capturing real-time game footage via obs.
Inspired by https://www.adceurope.org/awards/annual/remember-me_729
2.The projection plays our recorded gameplay video and can make certain effects based on the player’s or viewer’s movements and sounds. The content of the projection is like a parallel world to the player’s gameplay world. Such as RGB video effects : https://youtu.be/sO5NaTjBvL8
Room Theme Concept （part1）
Room1——Theme： Nightmares
Keywords: weird, horror
- Description： Perhaps it was a nightmare the protagonist remembered. This room is designed to evoke the suspense and terror of being lost in a nightmare. The room may be in shades of green and brown, along with spooky elements, such as eerie lighting, such as flickering candles, or strobe light. The door is surrounded by creepy vines. When the player is close to the monster in the room, he will be randomly sent to other rooms. Only when the player keeps trying to overcome the fear, will he get the key to pass the game.
- Sound Style： A background soundscape of creaking doors, howling winds, and whispers.
- Visual style：
Room2——Theme：Inner world
Keywords: tranquil, peaceful
- Description： It is a room that belongs to the inner world of the protagonist, a world of tranquillity. At first, this room is very dark, with only one firefly that follows the protagonist. After the player finds the rose in the room and triggers the lighting, the number of fireflies becomes twice as many. When the room is bright enough (e.g. more than 50) then the room can be lit up and the key to the pass can be found.
- Sound Style：Sound effects can be designed to add the sound of leaves and breeze, as well as streams and birdsong.
- Visual style：
Room3——Theme：Space Capsule
Keywords: exciting, mirage
- Description： Becoming an astronaut may have been a dream of the protagonist as a child, and upon entering the room, the protagonist feels very excited. This is a weightless room with items floating in the air, the room can be in a single shade, or in shades of white and blue. The player needs to find the puzzle among the chaotic items and complete the puzzle on the console to open the ship successfully.
- Sound Style：The room can also play the sounds of a space station, such as beeps, the hums of engines, and other sounds associated with the workings of a space station.
- Visual style：
Methods for implementing spatial audio
I have done some searching and research into implementing multi-channel audio for games in order to enrich the sound as much as possible, and have included some solutions and relevant information below.
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In Unity——Convert multi-channel sound to video files using VideoPlayer and Audio Source playback.
I checked some Unity documentation and found a setting in the Unity manual for AudioSpeakerMode. I tried this but without success, so if we only use unity for this function, we can play it by turning the sound of a multi-track into a movie.
There is a setting in the unity manual for AudioSpeakerModel
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Implementation based on Steam Audio
With Steam Audio, we’ll be able to integrate both environment simulation and listener simulation into one.
This is the operating documentation I found in the user manual, using an Ambisonic source to implement a spatial environment.https://valvesoftware.github.io/steam-audio/doc/unity/guide.html
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Implementation based on Wwise
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- Use RTPC-Based 3D Positioning，this is based on theHead-related transfer function.
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Integrating Spatial Audio in Unity,
This is an introduction to this function and provides basic settings for Unity and Wwise projects.https://www.audiokinetic.com/en/library/edge/?source=Unity&id=pg_spatialaudio.html
The following are examples and solutions that I have found that may be relevant to our project:
In some cases, they require Wwise’s Bus Configurations
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- Using Ambisonics for Dynamic Ambiences, requires audio material in (conventional 1st-order ambisonics) format.
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- A number of Wwise plug-ins are available to assist with this function: Wwise Convolution, Auro-3D®, Resonance Audio, etc
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