Angry Bots Game: Music Composition and Sound Design
The music and sound effects were composed and designed for my Soundtrack Production module's graded exam assignment.
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We were given a brief which stated that we needed to:
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Compose 4 music tracks (for the various game stages)
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Compose 1 final cut scene music track (which would be played when our player emerges victorious)
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Design sound effects and ambience for the various sounds and rooms in the game.
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From this, we needed to rely on a game audio middleware known as Wwise to help us integrate our sound effects and music into the Unity software which would then be exported out as the game.
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For my music, the DAW used was Ableton Live and I used virtual instruments such as Kontakt, Spitfire Audio and Cheeze Machine for all the tracks.
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For my sound effects, I relied on an online library called Zapsplat.
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4 Music Tracks
This is my Ableton live session showing my 4 music tracks. Each track is for the 4 game stages.
Of these, 2 tracks use the horizontal resequencing method and 2 other tracks use the vertical reorchestration method of composing. This is due to the fact that games are not linear and thus the music created must be loopable and must also adapt to the game and be randomizable. Thus these are the two methods used.
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For the first track, it has a more calm and mysterious vibe to it since the game just started and our player is exploring the place.
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For the second track, our player has advanced to the next stage and the music is now a little more tense.
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For the third track, this is the stage whereby it is the most tense as our player has to unlock 2 doors instead of the usual 1 in order to advance to the next level and our player also faces quite a few enemies in this stage.
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For the fourth and final track, we have reached the last stage of the game and it carries more of a feeling of relief that we are almost there and it inspires us to head for this final stretch before we complete the game successfully.
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In order to increase the tension, I relied on the rhythm of the drum beats as well as the melody to help convey the feelings and vibe.
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Hero Theme
For this hero theme, it is when the player wins the game and during the post game scene, the music will play and the player's score will appear onscreen shortly after.
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I first scored it in musescore before exporting and importing the MIDI files into Ableton Live.
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I relied on music motifs to help create some repetition in the way it sounds such that it will be able to better stick in the player's head. Not only that, I wanted to be able to convey the feelings of what the player felt as we went through each stage, so it also functions as a reflective piece.
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This is a PDF and WAV file of my score, and a screenshot of my Ableton Live session.
Sound Effects
Finally, for the sound effects, I had to do multiple play throughs of the game in order to better understand what sound effects there were and how they correlated to the sound effects list given to us.
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From there, I used techniques such as layering and panning for ambiences like the outdoor rain or indoor hum to help achieve a wider stereo image which would help the player be more immersed in the game.
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For other things like footsteps and all, I also used layering techniques by using sounds of different frequencies, such as a lower frequency footstep sound and a higher frequency footstep sound and layered them together for a more full frequency spectrum and a fuller sound.
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As for the gunshot sounds, noting how the game is in a sci-fi genre, I made the gunshot sounds become laser gunshot sounds with the help of DSPs like Phaser.
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Once done, I imported them all into Wwise and did the appropriate routing and randomisation of sounds such that when played back in the game, the sound effects don't sound repetitive and instead it will sound more natural.
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This is a screenshot of the audio tab of my Wwise session.
By compiling all of these together and syncing it with Unity, our game is complete and is thus ready for export.