Sound Island by The Virtools Behavior Lab

Sound provides vital information for creating realistic sensations in a 3D world. Sound Island lets you experience a rich 3D sound environment, scripted in Dev's user friendly interface.

To navigate, use arrow keys and the mouse.


To return to the previous menu, use the ESC key.

as a Game: In this basic game, you must find objects on the island within the allotted time, but there are good object and evil objects. The only way to differentiate between the good and bad is through the music. Listen carefully. When you get close to a good object, the rhythm switches to a “good” pleasing rhythm, and when you get close to a bad object, the rhythm switches to a “bad” menacing rhythm. You gain time by taking good objects and lose time by taking bad objects.


as a Walking Tour: In this demo, everything is focused on experiencing island life. The island contains many hidden animals in the trees and river. Depending on your stealth, you will hear them when walking nearby… Be careful near the volcano!


as a Fly-through Demo: This non-interactive demo has a camera looping on a path to give you a good view of the Island.

Technical Features to Look For in the CMO:

• Scenes: The composition uses 4 scenes - Interface, Game, Demo and Walking. (One for each part of the demo.)
  
  
• Texture Animation: Use of “Texture Scroller”, “Sine Deform” and Rotation to animate the sky, sea, and river.
  
  
• Particles: the waterfall is made of particles.
  
  
• Background Sounds:
  
  
  * Everywhere in the island, there is an environmental sound that depends on your location. To know exactly where you are, we use an invisible object (Position) and its texture with several slots. Each color on this texture (Red, Green, Blue and Alpha) corresponds to a given music. The array “Environment Zones” describes the sounds and their settings for the different zones. Depending on where you are on the texture of these objects, the different environment sound merge to create a smooth transition between the different zones.
  
  * Step sounds are also Background sounds. Another texture is used to know which step sound to play and where (so far, we have only 2 areas, the river and the forest).
  
  * The game's music is created in real time using background sounds. The basic music is a repetition of the same sample 4 times as 4 bits. After each bit, if by chance you are closer to a good (or a bad) object, we switch to the bad or good music (that is also a repetition of the good or bad sample played 4 times). If you get further from the object, you get back the basic music. If you take the object, a break is played (different break for good and bad objects) and the music return to either basic, good or bad one depending on your environment.
  
  
• 3D Cones: Some of the island animals are represented by 3D Cones sounds that are played repeatedly but randomly. If you get close to the sound source, the animal becomes frightened and stops making sounds. If you remain static long enough, the animal gets confident again, and you should hear it. When you leave its proximity, it’s happy to see you go, so you should ear it again. 3D Cone sound sources can be visualized through cone lights (Son Light XX)- make them visible - they correspond to the sounds’ cones.
  
  
• 3D Sphere: The birds in the trees are represented by sphere sound that gives here better 3D effects for sound coming from the top of the trees. Their behavior is the same then for 3D cones.
  
  
Dynamic Copy & Grids: In the game, we dynamically copy the statues and place them randomly using a grid. The layer on the grid describes the area where we can put a statue. Only one statue per square is allowed.


• Use of Variable Scripts: For each scene, we have a script that contains only variables. Through these variables, you can modify the composition’s behaviors without looking at the scripts.
  
  
• Global Animation: On the walking tour, we play a global animation that animates the camera.
  

Notes:

- River Frames are currently unused, but we could attach additional sounds to them to have a movement sound effect on the river.
- We never change the volume of a sound more than once in a frame; otherwise, you would not hear it, since sound volume is set in real time, and the ear can only hear a difference after just 30ms.