January 1 - January 7
The first couple issues to deal with when we returned from winter break were the decision to switch to the Torque engine, and the fact that much of the previous semester's work was lost due to a drive failure in our lab. Luckily, we had backed up our sound files on our personal systems to the point that our team's losses were minimal. As for the Torque issue, it didn't really affect our planning for the sound of the game. Since 3d sound is built into the Torque engine, all of the decisions we made about sound in the Fall semester remained unchanged. In fact, it actually seemed that executing the 3d sound programming would be easier in Torque than in Director.
January 8 - January 14
As the World team began to work on the creatures for the desert biome, we observed their progress and began to think about how the creatures' appearance would affect their sound. Working on a strictly conceptual basis, we began to collect raw sound materials to use once we had the animations we needed to create actual sound effects.
January 15 - January 21
We decided that we would go with a more subtle ambience for this game. As the game has become more focused on the psychology element, a more subtle ambience will allow the player to focus on the reactions of the more active elements in the game.
January 22 - January 28
The ambience we created consisted of two seperate elements: environmental sound, and ambient music. While music and environmental sound were already finished for the swamp and the forest, we had not created them yet for the desert, so once we began to see artwork from the world team, we started working on these elements. We also started working on footsteps for the desert biome at this time.
January 29 - February 4
Over the course of this week, progress began to be visible. Footstep sounds were completed for the desert biome, and we also began backing up our materials from the Fall semester to present, and consolidating them into one location.
February 5 - February 11
We recieved animations for the omnivore and the herbivore, enabling us to begin creating sounds for these creatures. Music and environmental sound are both in the critique stage at this time, but are looking good to be finished by next week.
February 12 - February 18
Environmental sound and music have been completed and posted. Progress is being made on herbivore and omnivore sounds, and several are already being critiqued. Carnivore animations have not been rendered yet, but we should have them in hand by next week.
February 19 - February 25
This week is completely crazy trying to get everything finished for the mid-term presentation. We recieved carnivore animations this week, and are rushing to have the sounds completed by friday. Omnivore and herbivore sounds are complete, but we are having programming issues with getting triggered footsteps to play in-game, so we are mocking up movement loops with simulated triggered footsteps to show at the presentation as a supplement to the game demo.
February 26 - March 4
Tuesday the 28th was our mid-term presentation. All things considered, it went fairly well. We had a build of the game semi-functional, and some sounds were integrated. We were well prepared with supplemental material to make up for the sounds that did not play in-game. Seeing the sounds that did play in-game was extremely valuable, and we noticed several that will have to be tweaked to make certain elements stand out more.
March 12 - March 18
This week has been spent playing catch-up within the desert biome. Based on feedback from our mid-term, is was established that the omnivore needed an "injured" sound to correspond with being attacked. We also made some new motion sounds for when creatures are walking in the water, and we updated the sound playback file within the current build of the game. We are also waiting on new animations for the creatures of the swamp biome.
March 19 - March 25
We recieved animations for the swamp omnivore this week. Will began working on creating sounds for this creature, Sam began to work on footsteps for the Swamp, and Drew started working on creating sounds to place in the world as audio emitters. Will also continued to work with Karen and the programming team on sound integration. Severral changes were made on this front, including switching the footstep playback method from triggered to looping.
March 26 - April 1
This week was spent doing more work on the swamp omnivore, footsteps for the swamp, and sound for audio emitters. We are still waiting for animations for the rest of the swamp creatures, and are preparing to be really busy creating sounds for these towards the end of this semester.
April 2 - April 8
This was probably one of the less productive weeks so far. Will was sick for most of the time, and Drew and Sam basically are on hold waiting for animations, although progress was made on footsteps and audio emitter elements.
April 9 - April 15
Things are starting to slowly pick up this week. Sam has finished with the dry swamp footsteps, Drew has compiled a collection of 15 sounds for audio emitters for the swamp, and Will is mostly done with the sounds for the omnivore. Added to this, we recieved the animations for the herbivore on Friday April 14, so we can now get started on creating sounds for those.
April 16 - April 22
This week was spent finishing the omnivore sounds, creating and critiquing the herbivore sounds, finishing up foot-falls for the wet and dry land textures of the swamp and sequencing them into walk and run loops for the omnivore and herbivore, and working with the animators to create a demo movie sequence to show off the desert and swamp biomes.