THE EXPLORER
Understanding the game
Discover the mysterious alien planet where principal engineer, Ellen's drop-ship has crash landed. Avoid the hazards, solve the puzzles and defeat the enemies lurking within the ancient ruins of this unknown civilization. Ellen's mission is to explore the unknown alien landscape. The Explorer is split up into a 2D game and a 3D game. Scroll down to see The Explorer 3D and how I used a different approach. The Explorer 2D is a side scroller and The Explorer 3D is a third person adventure game.
Process of Composition
For The Explorer I had taken themes from within the gameplay to try and create pieces around that. For example, 'Victorious' is used to convey victory as it is triggered when the player finishes the level. 'Chase' is used for when the player is in a battle with the boss as this is to enhance the dramatic effect of the battle.
2D
Integration - Using Wwise
The Explorer 2D is broken down into 5 zones. When the music was implemented at first it would stop from zone to zone, however I wanted to make it so there was no pause on the loading screens. The way this was achieved was by writing a DontDestroyOnLoad function in Unity for the Wwise components.
Each track was split into segments and then imported into Wwise. This allowed me to create a randomization parameter. For example, you can define which segment you want to play more often than others. I used this on the main segment for the main theme.
I also could predefine the fade for each event, creating custom fade for MainTheme to Combat or Puzzle to Boss, etc. Some fades I wanted more abrupt and others I wanted to gradually fade them in.
3D
Integration - Using Wwise
I used Wwise state groups to define the state the game was in. For example, when the combat music plays, I used colliders in Unity to trigger the enter and exit state. This allowed me to create zones for the music. I had zones for Combat and Exploration, etc.
I used the Random Continuous Interactive Music settings to ensure that when you played the game you would hear something different everytime during gameplay.
DIFFERENT APPROACH
As well as the orchestral pieces, I had composed some tribal influenced music if the developers wanted to take a different approach than the orchestral tracks. Due to the design of the game I composed tribal music inspired by South America and Africa.
Process of Composition
Integration
These tracks were implemented through Unity's audio engine. I used colliders to trigger certain events that were controlled by object tags. I also created a custom fade script so the tracks would fade into each other nicely. The triggers I created were using colliders and rigidbodies in Unity Engine. For example, the boss music collider would trigger when the boss has spotted the player.
