Dev Diary 37

Currently, the state of Lab 77 is as follows:

• 197 of 200 bugs have been squashed. All three bugs require further testing.

• Music and sound design implementations are being worked on.

Last Dev Diary I outlined the key remaining objectives for Lab 77. After a slower start to the following week, I got started on the first point, which was finishing the Wwise implementation by implementing the last set of volume controls for the voice over. Realistically, this should have been the plan from the beginning but I fear I was a little bit big headed thinking I could do it differently even though the players are used to certain set things which ought not to be changed as it would likely generate needless negative feedback. After implementing the volume controls I also implemented a button click noise for all the UI buttons. It is a small detail, but a very important one as it would only be noticed through omission.

Following this I started working on the implementation of the randomised voice over. This is meant to play one voice over line per set of levels, one set being 11 levels and there being seven sets, with some levels having dedicated voice over lines. To do this, I implemented a simple randomisation at the start of each set which randomises a number within the range of level IDs for that set. Then, when the scene is loaded, the voice over plays. I decided to play the voice over early in the scene, as I did not want them to cause a break in the flow of a level. This is something I am very focused on, ensuring the flow of the game is as uninterrupted as possible by having as few interruptions as possible.

After the randomised voice over I shifted my attention back to the UI. Namely, the implementation of the subtitles. Admittedly, I was hesitant to begin this due to my previous run ins with the Unity UI, especially with my InGameUI prefab which caused me massive problems before. Unfortunately the implementation of the subtitles has hit a snag. This is due to some difficulties with the Wwise implementation and a lack of knowledge and good documentation on how callbacks work and a few other issues. I do think it will be possible to resolve these issues as I think they are solved problems, the difficulty lies in finding the solution.

Annoyingly, implementing the voice over using Wwise has been difficult to complete. Firstly, the documentation from Wwise is severely lacking especially considering I want to implement this in code instead of using components. Secondly, when I have found code snippets from forums they have not been overly well explained which makes implementing parts or all of the forum code snippet difficult as I need to first determine what the parts do. I do believe this is a solved issue, but finding that solution has so far proven difficult.

That is all for this Dev Diary. Thank you for reading and more to come in two weeks.

-Olav