Sound within Unity

As sound plays a major part in any game, it is crucial that I include it within my game level. I tried to get sounds that would compliment my overall style and theme of the game but also add to the atmosphere that I wanted to achieve. I wanted something that would seem 'alien-like' / not of this world, hold some sort of mysterious quality to it but be slightly upbeat in the way of being suited towards a family game. I obtained my sounds from Soundtrack Pro and FindSounds.com. From Soundtrack Pro I was able to get some ambient music which would play in the background and from FindSounds I got my sound effects like the water and fire. I combined two different sounds together within Audacity that I had got form Soundtrack Pro, this ended up being the sound that would play as you would approach the mushroom tree. I found it quite fitting and it suited the style and feel I was going for.

Within Unity you can attach different sounds to either different objects or an empty game object. From here you can then edit the distance of when you can begin to hear the sound and when it starts fading away. Looping your sound will make sure that it will carry on playing from the beginning when finished so with ambient music it is always essential that this box is ticked as otherwise when the music stops it will take away the immersion from the game.

There are two different types of sound, 3D or 2D. 3D sound will move with the player, you can hear sound from the left and right, whereas 2D sound is static and doesn't have this affect. 3D sound is more realistic but it would depend on what you would want it for. I had problems to begin with as some of my 3D sound would distort as you would jump up and down, however I found out that this was due to the doppler level, so by dropping this down to 0 it took away the distortion. The doppler level is quite useful as the closer you get to the object the louder the sound will become and the further away you get, the quieter it will be. As I couldn't use this will my 3D sound I had to try and replicate this the best I could using the rolloff mode. I could adjust the distance of when the sound would begin and end so this was similar to the doppler level in some ways. With 2D sound, none of these settings are available so you do not have the same amount of control over it as you would with a 3D sound.

From the final crit, I got feedback saying the sound fits in and works well with my game level which I was hoping it would. There wasn't any criticism so I think I will keep it how it is and work more on the other parts of my game level from the feedback I obtained.