As I learn more about using the Wwise sound engine, I have been working on creating new sounds for the open-source FPS Cube.

Here is an early video from when I had just finished adding the basic sound elements for the enemies and weapons*.

The monsters and player voices were are all taken from vocal sounds that I recorded myself. Some were pitched and layers, others vocoded, flanged or otherwise modulated to get the right character. I’m quite proud of the performance I did for the hell pigs.

Getting all the sound elements off of a spreadsheet is one thing, but to get them all living together in an interactive environment is another entirely, I’ve learned. The game often throws legions of enemies at you at once, which can take it far beyond the chaotic battlefield and into the territory of bedlam. There are some sound elements that I was not quite happy with in-game and a few others, such as the rocket and projectile explosions, that were strangely missing from the gameplay, even though my Wwise project was pointing to the right places.

Since then, I have created and assigned various audio buses, limited the number of total sounds that can fire at once, and tweaked the distance LPF settings to try and get some semblance of aural order from the chaos.

I think this is a definite improvement in many ways but it is not quite there yet. I need to make some changes in the source code to add the rocket and fireball explosions. I would also like a reliable system in place for bodyfalls to be triggered on character deaths.

*I still have a placeholder or two in the project, including the spent shotgun shell bounces from the CRAS-WWISE tutorial. If you’ve got some spare shells that you can loan me, let me know.