GDX303 Sound design for games

Distinguishing features of digital games are their interactivity and immersion. Sound plays an important role in this, as a player’s actions can trigger dialogue, sound effects, ambient sound, and music. In this subject, students will develop the skills and knowledge to design, generate and manipulate audio elements for sound in video games. Students will incorporate Middleware and Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) software solutions to prepare audio and sound effects in a game engine. They will learn concepts and principles of sound and acoustic behavior in an interactive environment, understand audio recording and layering techniques, sound editing and production workflows. Students will apply basic programming functions to script game object components and trigger sound events in real-time while considering performance optimization and compression requirements to improve CPU and memory performance applicable to the development target platform.

By the end of this unit, students will learn how to prepare audio resources, edit and implement real-time sound events for character, animation and environments, understand the roles that music, dialogue and sound effects play in communicating narrative storytelling and how these sound components can affect gameplay and direct player decision making.