Audio Wizards, production has started

Hi @Tunmi

I was looking at the internet to see what Ange was meaning. I didn't find anything clear. Hope it was a good thing though.

I suppose many of you wonder why we aim to three games on one year. I will explain, because it is a nice story.

I am full time acoustics researcher and teacher at Turku University of Applied Sciences with a strong background on psychoacoustics. Two years ago I started to investigate on immersive audio algorithms. It was quite easy to realize that if I wanted to provide audio to videogames and VR experiences, I would need blind people to join the team, so the algorithms could be subjectively validated. Something like, if you want audio quality, ask the listener experts. I looked for research funding but that was not granted, and my former boss didn't support my ideas neither, but only his. So I decided, at the same time I keep working there for 7.35 hours a day, to make my own company of audio games. The hypothesis was: if we make immersive audio games, and blind people say they sound truthful...then time was not wasted.

At that time, looking for this audio expertise, I found Mikko Herranen, blind from birth, musician and music producer with 20 years experience. We are very good friends yet and we keep pushing together for this dream.

Saying all that, the reason why we can keep doing with so limited budget, is that we use a lot of students. All our university's ICT students need to do 30 ECTs credits of practice work on companies. So I offer them a project, and everybody benefits. The University because the students get the practice done, the students get a nice project, I get the work done, and you get (one day) your games to play. So far, in one way or another, 26 students have collaborated with us. Some more, some less. Some have gotten some money, some others just experience.

So this Audio Wizards is a project done by 9 students, who will work kind of independently, but using our own audio game engine. This process I think is really indie and risky. But I didn't find any better way.

Sure, at the beginning, the games will not be fully pro. But we hope you guys will understand that it would be just a temporal phase, and that with time they will improve. I suppose we need to do this together. So also, all your help to share the word about us to your network is very welcome.

Feel free to comment.

Hi @Angel

I love multiplayer, but we are not ready for it yet. The first version of Audio Wizards will be a survival mode to play alone. Once we get those mechanics well done, and we see the people is liking the concept, then we jump ahead.

In the opinion of our main programmer, Joshua, we need to increase the size of the team if we want the multiplayer to really work, and to modify our game engine to make the implementation possible. So everything is very open....but I keep dreaming.