Honours Project Development: Level 3 Part 2

Level 3 introduce two new puzzles.

Violin stimuli + Bit Reduction Concurrent:

Violin plays fragment from Sergei Rachmaninoff, VOCALISE ( 14 Romances, Op.34, 14) on higher octave. Kontakt 5 with Spitfire Symphonic Strings Violin 1 Performance Legato was chosen for this sequence.

It’s separated into 4 different puzzles with different Bit Crusher effect settings from high to no bit reduction. The effect degrade quality by reducing Bit Depth and Sample Rate of audio.

Additional EQ was necessary to remove harsh and nasty artifacts which are inseparable element of this effect but it’s too unpleasant, so I attenuated it to a tolerable level.

Midi sequence was bounced to audio to create seamless loop.

Concurrent for this puzzle is made from yellow zig zags – based on one description of screechy violin taken from survey.

The same type of ‘Bit Crusher’ effect was used for the concurrent. For image it looks like picture is pixelated (contains less pixels which makes image less accurate and distorted).

Material Function was created for this effect and was applied in Material:

Finally, Material was applied to Blueprint which contain Plane object and ‘Pixel Size’ parameter is randomized between the range of a two Float numbers which can be changed in every single BP instance in the game.

Lower numbers = lower resolution, more degraded image quality.

At the beginning of the Level 3 the sound stimuli and concurrent are the most degraded and at the end of Level 3 both sound and image are not affected by any degradation.

Piano + animated colour and position of concurrent

Piano sequence was created with Kontakt 5 and Galaxy Vintage D Grand Piano sample library.

In this puzzle Piano plays 4 different sequences:

Piano sequence plays within a small range of pitch changes
Piano sequence with notes going up
Piano sequence with notes going down
Piano sequence with notes going down and up

First three sequences are based on Tchaikovsky The Seasons, Opus 37a (1876) January - At the Fireside. Fourth sequence is based on Beethoven Grande Sonata Opus 22 1st Movement.

The concept for concurrent is based on pitch of stimuli + colour and position in 3D space of concurrent. First puzzle which doesn’t have significant changes of pitch played on middle octaves contains concurrent with blue colour that change brightness but at very low level. Next two puzzles have stimuli with pitch (notes) going up (2nd) and down (3rd) and fourth puzzle contains stimuli where Piano plays from higher notes to lower and plays back to higher notes again.

The animation of concurrent was made in Blueprint. Material instance is created for Concurrent (Plane object) in BP and Colour Parameter and position is automated by Timeline.

Concurrent follows stimuli sequence : the higher pitch the higher vertical position and brighter colour (yellow on top and blueish at bottom).

Demo: