Sound assets

Week 8 Session 2

I browsed the Pixabay website to look for some appropriate sound effects and background music for my virtual environment. I started with the starting point and went on each environment next to figure out the sound assets. The general feelings going to be expressed through the audio experience lead from vagueness and a glimpse of darkness to brightness and a sense of fulfilment. 

Initially, for the environment inside the station and the train, I found some kinds of announcement voice and station or train ambience. The voice of a broadcaster man is set in the middle of the station with a max distance is 23 to ensure it will fade out as soon as the players get on the train. 

I plan to have two distinct background music with the opposite vibes as I’ve mentioned. Particularly, I would say they depict sadness and happiness.

The first background music fades in when the players are halfway on the train before stepping into the dark room. Actually, the sound should be melodious and a bit gentle, not happy but not too sad. While going around and then going through an archway to the brighter room, that piece of music is maintained. Bird singing ambience is localised into the bright room to make it a bit joyful and let the players get a hint of positive change but not completely.

However, a problem I got was the environments were very close to each other so the sound effects were easy to dominate the undesired area. So I needed to adjust a lot the max distance and their positions again to make sure they function well in appropriate areas.

The second background music is in charge of creating a climax implying that it’s going to the end. It’s delightful to walk in a dreamy nature and brings the players the feeling of getting lost in a wonderland or engaging in a fantasy movie’s ending.

The second piece of music covers a big area.

I used to use two different sounds for two rooms but I felt that was too much to jump from this stage of emotion to another one quickly (in seconds). So I eliminated it.

At the very end, I found the wind chimes sound contributing well so I brought it into the natural environment. It helps create the liveliness of the surroundings and the emotional vibration. The dark room was also added the wind sound effect to create a deserted ambience.