Add a Sound

One clip, from wherever it starts to playing in the game.

1. Pick the category

Category What Example
SFX Sound effect Gunshots, footsteps
Music Music
Ambience Ambient Wind, rain, chatter
VoiceOver Voice over NPC dialogue, player voice
UI Interface Clicks, hovers, scrolls

Everything falls into one of those five.

2. Name it

AU_SFX_Wpn_Shotgun_01_Fire_02
│  │   │   │       │  │    └── Var: two digits, for a randomised pool
│  │   │   │       │  └─────── Action: after the number
│  │   │   │       └────────── Num
│  │   │   └────────────────── Descriptor
│  │   └────────────────────── SubCategory: optional
│  └────────────────────────── Category
└───────────────────────────── Type: AU_

The action goes after the number, and the variation after that. A pool of shotgun fire is
…_Fire_01, …_Fire_02, …_Fire_03.

→ Naming Conventions > Audio Clips

3. Record or source it

  • Recorded yourself? The raw take goes to Q-Dex, tagged, so it can be found again by
    somebody who was not there. /Assets/Raw is not in version control.
  • From a library? Q-Dex as well. Purchased and downloaded assets are never committed to a
    game repo directly.
  • Long-form material and large media go to Bubbly Backup.

4. Edit it

Audacity, to the studio targets:

Mono or stereo. Anything with a position in the world has to be mono. Unity cannot pan a
stereo clip to a point in space, so a stereo footstep plays flatly in both ears regardless of where
the character is. Music and ambience stay stereo; they are not coming from anywhere.

requireMono

Key Value
SFX true
VoiceOver true
UI false
Music false
Ambience false

Loudness. Integrated loudness to target, with the tolerance either side. Mixing by ear across a
session drifts; mixing to a target does not.

loudness (LUFS)

Key Value
SFX -18
Music -16
Ambience -22
VoiceOver -16
UI -18

Tolerance: 2

Length. A one-shot over the limit is almost always a loop that was not marked as one, or several
sounds that want to be separate clips.

maxDurationSeconds

Key Value
SFX 10
UI 5

5. Export in the right format

allowedFormats

Key Value
SFX wav
Music ogg, wav
Ambience ogg, wav
VoiceOver wav
UI wav

.wav for anything short and triggered. No decode cost, no quality loss on something you will hear
a thousand times. .ogg for music and ambience, where file size matters more than the handful of
milliseconds it costs to stream.

Working file to Assets/Source/Audio/<Music|SFX|Ambience|UI|Voice Over>/, exported clip to
Assets/Exported/Audio/.

→ Project Folder Structure

6. Into the game

Placed in scenes using the Bubbly Asset Editor. More details coming soon. Ask Janis.
In a level, ambience emitters and reverb zones live in the SC_[Level]_Audio scene layer, which is yours to lock and commit independently of everyone else's.

→ Scene Structure > Scene Layers

7. Check and commit

Check Your Work, then commit with the .meta files alongside their clips.