In the last two weeks, I finished all the sound work in the tenth week, so the main work in the last two weeks was to integrate all the work parts and test with other team members. We scheduled three tests, two in Atrium and one in Studio 4. We also found some problems in the Wwise project, for example, the sound playback distance was not set correctly, the attenuation distance was different, etc., but they were all solved smoothly in the end.

In the first test

We successfully connected four distance sensors. When participants put their palms close to the distance sensors, they can control the sound volume to attenuate as their palms move. However, when they are completely covered by their palms or other objects, the sound disappears completely. When all four distance sensors are covered for a few seconds, our emotions and vision will automatically jump to the next stage. In each stage, the four speakers will play the same ambience of that stage, and the four sensors also control different ambiences in four directions.

In the second test

Since my computer was not compatible with Red’s sound card, I spent a lot of time transferring the entire project to Lidia’s laptop. On the same day, I tested it on the speakers in the Atrium room, placed the ambiences in all four directions on the corresponding speakers, and connected the visual and sound parts.

Project Critical Reflection

I personally did half of the sound work in this project and encountered many difficult problems, such as how to record the original audio? How to make these original audios into suitable ambience? How to cooperate with other students in the project? But these questions were well answered on the day of the exhibition on April 2, 2025. As a sound design student, I gained very valuable experience in this project. I have mastered the two softwares Wwise and Unity proficiently and understood the working principles. I believe this will be of great help to my future work. If I have more time, I will improve the quality and relevance of all sounds, and add some transition sounds when the emotions are excessive, so that the audience’s auditory immersion and perception of emotions will be enhanced.

The five-stage sound work was basically completed in the ninth week. Lidia and I completed the integration of the two projects on Wwise, and with the help of Leo, I created a Unity project to test our sound part. This was a very important progress, which meant that our sound could work.

In Wwise, a blend container is set up to control the five stages of sound, and they are staged, with a value of 20 for each stage, and connected to the FIVE_STAGES RTPC.

On Wwise

At this week’s meeting, Leo suggested changing the design mode of one ambient sound and five sound effects on each speaker to setting a “Center sound” on four speakers at a certain stage, which is our Main ambience, and adding five Ambiences to the speakers in the four directions of FL, FR, BL, and BR to connect touch designer for interaction, and changing from triggering SFX with distance sensors to triggering Ambience. I think this is a very good suggestion, because for Ambience, it can better reflect the sense of distance and the weakening of sound, which makes our project more playable. In terms of the sound work, Lidia and I shared this work, and I was responsible for “Bargaining”, “Acceptance” and half of “Depression”.

This is one of the Bargaining Ambience

On Unity

We built a project file with four speakers to simulate the Atrium room in Alison house and used it to test our audio, which was successful. In the next two weeks, we will complete all the sound work and conduct live testing in the Atrium.