Description
An introduction to the theory and practice of digital audio and music for games programming students.
Aims
The aim of this Module is to provide the student with the theoretical knowledge and practical skills required to implement audio facilities as a games developer and to work with audio professionals as part of a development team.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of this module the student should be able to:
1. Explain how audio and music are represented in digital form, and how this relates to human perception of sound.
2. Understand and apply digital audio production and processing techniques used in games contexts.
3. Implement and critically evaluate audio and music components within a games application.
Indicative Content
1 Introduction to Audio
How the ear works, frequency and pitch, amplitude, phase, sampling, aliasing, Nyquist, time vs. frequency representations, sinusoids, effects of basic operators.
2 Digital Audio
Digital representations, sample rate, bit depth, numerical computation concerns for audio ADCs and DACs, processing latency.
3 Audio Processing
Basic processing techniques and their implementations: normalisation, mixing, distortion, digital fillers, IIR/FIR, pitch and frequency shifting, ring modulation, reverb.
4 Audio Design for Games
Types of sounds used in games - sound effects, ambient sound, dialogue, music - sound editing, sound design in game environments, creating immersive environments.
5 Audio Compression
Lossless codecs, perception and masking, perception of quality, perceptual codecs, streaming audio, audio processing for real-time chat, producing audio assets for games.
6 Audio in Game Engines
Audio facilities in real-world game engines and middleware, linking sound to animation, configuring audio events and music, effective scene switching, comparing widely-used engines.
7 Digital Music
How music theory relates to audio basics, structure of music and basic compositional techniques, sequencing and MIDI, streams of notes, streams of control messages, synthesis vs. sample playback, waveforms, envelopes.
8 Spatial Audio
Perception of spatial audio, multichannel audio vs. binaural audio, environmental audio design, realistic reverb, characteristics of materials, reproducing an environment through interaction with a game engine, plugins for spatial audio.
9 Dynamic Audio
Uses of dynamic audio in games, case studies of complex dynamic effects, guiding the player, notifications, voices, dynamic audio middleware and integrating it with a game engine.
Teaching and Learning Work Loads
| Teaching and Learning Method | Hours |
| Lecture | 12 |
| Tutorial/Seminar | 0 |
| Practical Activity | 36 |
| Assessment | 96 |
| Independent | 56 |
| Total | 200 |
Guidance notes
SCQF Level - The Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework provides an indication of the complexity of award qualifications and associated learning and operates on an ascending numeric scale from Levels 1-12 with SCQF Level 10 equating to a Scottish undergraduate Honours degree.
Credit Value – The total value of SCQF credits for the module. 20 credits are the equivalent of 10 ECTS credits. A full-time student should normally register for 60 SCQF credits per semester.
Disclaimer
We make every effort to ensure that the information on our website is accurate but it is possible that some changes may occur prior to the academic year of entry. The modules listed in this catalogue are offered subject to availability during academic year 2021/22 , and may be subject to change for future years.
