Lecture: 2 hours/week
and
Lab: 2 hours/week
Lectures, demonstrations and hands-on studio experience
1. Careers in Gaming - Industry Overview
- Corporate responsibility in gaming
- Anticipated future innovations
- Storytelling through AV immersion in modern gaming
2. VR Technology Overview - How to use the VR Studio
- SteamVR setup
- VR calibration
- Controllers
- Practical application
3. Music for Games - The Art and Business
- Music-based games in Immersive VR
- Applications built for music production
- Virtual Reality musical instruments (VRMI) introduction
- Synth VR, Synthspace VRSoundstage VR, Lyra VR, MuX
4. VRMI Music Production Part 1
- Synth VR 3D Synth Music Production
- Synth VR setup
- Sound design creation in a VR Space
5. VRMI Music Production Part 2
- Lyra VR 3D Synth Music Production
- Lyra VR setup
- Sound design creation in a VR Space
6. Perception of VR Sound in Headphones
- Immersive non-diegetic audio rendering for VR
- Sound field vs object-based representations
- High Order Ambisonics (HOA)
- Head tracking technology
7. Impact of Immersive Sound on Gaming
- Binaural room scanning (BRS)
- Binaural room impulse response (BRIR)
- Personalized room impulse response (PRIR)
8. Unreal Engine Part 1: Introduction to the Game Engine
- Impact on the gaming and film industries
- Case studies of immersive audio implementation
- Sound classes, sound cues, rendering, metasounds, audio modulation
9. Unreal Engine Part 2: Spatialization Overview
- Panning
- Listener and speaker geometry
- Computing pan values
- Soundfield spatialization
- Binaural spatialization
- Interaural level difference, intramural time, spectral shadows, Head Related Transfer Function (HRTF)
10. Unreal Engine Part 3: Sound Attenuation
- Attenuation functions
- Inner shape, capsule radius, extents
- Falloff distance
- Enable air absorption
- Focus azimuth
- Attenuation reverb, enable occulsion
11. Unreal Engine Part 4: Audio Analysis and Visualization
- External audio control
- Audio console commands
- Audio gameplay volumes
12. Unreal Engine Part 5: Audio Debugging
- Debugging
- Audio memory management
- Component-based architecture
- Importing audio
- Audio stream caching/blowing cache
- Audio file requirements
- Priming a sound for playback
- Force wave to memory
- Trimming memory
13. Unreal Engine Part 6: Music System Quartz
- Quartz clock
- Quantization boundary
- Time signature and pulse overrides
14. Unreal Engine Part 7: Dialogue System
- Building dialogue waves
- Setting the context
- Subtitling
Upon successful completion of the course, students will be able to:
- Demonstrate thorough understanding and use of interactive audio-specific language;
- Apply the unique production requirements of interactive audio;
- Demonstrate competence with event-driven programming in the audio context;
- Demonstrate a thorough understanding of Object-Oriented Programming and related concepts;
- Implement interactive sound effect and ambience elements using Unreal Engine;
- Select appropriate sound Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and their corresponding Graphical User Interface (GUI) tools;
- Demonstrate a thorough knowledge of the complete game production cycle;
- Apply the full range of unique audio production skills required in a game development environment;
- Competently operate a VR setup.
Assessment will be based on course objectives and will be carried out in accordance with the Douglas College Evaluation Policy. An example evaluation scheme is provided below:
|
Case Study - Immersive Audio Tech for Games Research Paper and Presentation |
30% |
|
VR Music Production |
20% |
|
Unreal Simple Sound Implementation |
20% |
|
Unreal Immersive Audio Original Sound Design Build |
30% |
|
TOTAL |
100% |
Textbooks and materials are to be purchased by students. A list of required textbooks and materials is provided for students at the beginning of each semester.
Example texts may include:
- The Game Audio Tutorial (Stevens, Richard & Raybould, Dave)
- Creating Music and Sound for Games (Childs, G.W.)