Given how important sounds are to creating a cohesive environmental and experience I decided to add this to the curriculum before I create my level. This should actually be covered next semester but I will get it now so that my level can benefit from my knowing this material.
We need to draw a shape to define an area that is associated with a given type of sound:
Rollup Bar>Objects>Area>Shape
Make sure that Follow Terrain (top tool bar) is activated, then you can draw your shape. Double-click to finalize area.
The shape can also be given height. This might seem strange, at first, but it is necessary for vertical activity. For example say you were walking up a stairwell in a building. You might be over the horizontal threshold of a sound, but you wouldn’t want it to play until you got a couple flights higher, then you would begin to hear the sound. This is defined by the height:
Display Field (Rollup bar) makes the shape easier to see:
Once again, make sure to name your entities, as you will have many shapes, not only for sounds, on your finished levels. “River_west_02_ambient” might be good. The next step is to bring in sounds. This is especially important with sound. What you should do is give your area shape name and your sound entity name the same names, as they will be attached in order to function. More on that later.
Rollup Bar>Object>Entity>Sound:
You should place the entity somewhere that makes sense, for the sake of being able to recognize and find it, but its physical location has no impact on the sound. You could (bad idea) place it on the other side of the map but if it is associated with your boundaries then that is where the sound will emanate. Below you can see where to control various parameters. Name is where you load your actual sounds:
As I alluded above, once you select your sound you have to attach it to your area by selecting your area entity, and then select your target, which is the sound entity:
That’s it. That’s how you add sound to your level. To recap:
1. Define area for sound, both horizontally and vertically. Don’t forget to name it.
2. Create a sound entity and add a sound using Name.
3. Attach the shape to the sound entity using the Target space (seen in the image above).
Other thoughts/notes:
Depending on how large and complex your level is, you could just make one giant area that covers the whole level, and make ambient sound for that, then make smaller areas for specific sections. Or you could make three or four slightly overlapping sound areas, along with your smaller, more specific areas. Of course, as with white space in design, silence is also compelling relative to the sounds of other areas. An abrupt lack of sound in the right situation could be eerie and suddenly make the player very self-away, and could perhaps be a clam before the storm so to speak. The general idea is that sound deserves as much attention, foresight and design as anything else and is an element that can make or break a level.
Music can be combined with ambience. A good example of this is Doom 3, where, in some areas, the musical elements are actually part of the ambience.
Interesting ramble on sound and video games: What is the difference between sound in video games versus sound in film or TV? In film and TV sound is very linear. It has to be as it follows the edits and shots of a predetermined story line. In art history classes you learn about what defines one medium next to another, and what makes each unique. Well, what makes sound in video games unique next to sound in film and TV is that sound in video games is decidedly nonlinear. In fact, nonlinearity is what makes video games unique from film and TV. So, making a video game more linear actually moves away from its inherent strength. The more linear a game is the less dynamic it is. I am not a fan of games that constantly and precisely force a player down a specific path. I prefer to explore. In fact, exploration is a natural instinct and I believe that nonlinear experiences will become more popular as time goes on. If we blur the lines between film and video games, nonlinear experiences will become more popular as well. Why? Because there is no point in turning video games into strict linear experiences when we already have film for that. The key is balancing a larger goal with allowing people to naturally explore.
Eric Chamberlain 