Magic

One of my main responsibilities on Total War: Warhammer III is owning the area of magic. Magic (such as spells and abilities) is an iconic part of the Warhammer franchise.

Owning Magic meant:

• Liaising with other departments to ensure the sound design team had all the necessary information

• Working with and reviewing other Sound Designer's work to ensure the assets were appropriate (both technically and creatively)

• Liaising with outsourcers when necessary, ensuring they had the right specs and their work would work in-game.

• Mixing and Optimising all Magic that went into the game.

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There are many different types of spells that all require different types of setups. Most Magic was split into the following categories:

AOE Buffs/ Debuffs

In many ways, this is the most simple style of magic in terms of setup. Assets required are usually just start/loop/stop sounds.

These are triggered off the database entries of these spells instance. Meaning when in data that X spell plays, we piggyback off that information and attach an audio-type instance, which contains our start and stop events. This keeps it in sync with the spell, so our start sound triggers when the start phase begins and the stop is triggered once the design phase has ended.

Total War is a game with a vast amount of things to consider to keep the mix clean. One trick we use to stop these AOEs from cluttering up the mix is to use a set voice volume action on the event, to duck the loop volume after an appropriate amount of time. This meant if a spell lasted 30 seconds the player wouldn’t need to have the loop play at full volume for the full duration.

Ursuns Roar AOE

Projectiles

In many regards these work like standard non-magic projectiles present in Total War: Warhammer III. I also owned and managed the area of the projectiles of the game so I understood the systems and setup required to get the most out of our audio.

Similar to AOE buffs these are triggered purely from data. Each projectile has its data stored in the database of the game, we simply attach an audio type to these entries and that lets you know information such as:

• When the Projectile is shot

• Is it a single projectile or multiple

• How long it's in flight

• Is the player close enough to get a flyby sound

• When does this impact

• How many impacts

So with all this information, we can make the appropriate events and attach them to the design entries of all these components. This also has the benefit of allowing the ability to mix each aspect of the spell in a granular method.

For particularly large projectiles, we also have “ the explosion type” entry in the database (DB). If we attached an event to this we had the ability to put a “ sphere of influence” around the explosion. This meant that anything around the explosion would have its mix ducked, in order to make more room for the explosion and have a bigger weight.

In the case of multiple projectiles, we also had a “cluster set up” for dealing with impacts. If set up in a traditional sense multiple magic projectile launching and impacting on top of each other would result in the sound spamming. To combat this the cluster setup was invented, which was first used on my spell Amber Bow. The method is to design a “cluster” sounding asset that will match the sync of multiple impacts colliding at once. However, it was possible for projectiles to act randomly when launched so the system had to allow for projectiles to go rogue and impact early vs the rest of the projectiles. So in Wwise a switch group was made that would define if the impact should be a single or a cluster impact. If in data we can tell only a single projectile impacted, then the single audio plays, if more than 1 impact plays then the pre-made cluster impact plays. This keeps voices down as regardless if 1 or multiple projectiles impact, only one sound effect voice will be played.

Elemental Bear's elemental breath projectile & Markus Wulfhart's projectile cluster Amber bow

Bombardments

Bombardments in many ways are just fancier projectiles. All previously discussed rules apply but now with some caveats.

There is usually a bombardment entry in the DB that we use to play our “conjure” sound. This sound reflects the build-up in the sky before the bombardment is fired.

Isha's rain bombardment spell

Wind Attack/ Vortex/ Explosions

These styles of attacks are all set up the same way in that they are tagged directly on composite scenes of the spells. The VFX team will make composite scenes of all these spells so they can have visual sync on their end, we simply make a sound effect entry which we attach to our event then track lay it on the timeline of the composite scene as if doing a track lay for linear media.

From here we can also attach any necessary extra bits of tech such as the previously mentioned sphere of influence.

State Groups can also be set from here. For example, Purple sun of Xereus has a state on it that when it plays it ducks the audio of the rest of the game. This is done by having a state triggered that attaches to the mix bus structure of Wwise and ducks everything not organised under its exclusive mix bus structure, which meant for Purple sun of Xereus it could sound like it was “sucking the life” out of the game.

Purple sun of Xereus vortex spell

Combination

It is possible for some spells to be formed as a combination of the above types of spells. Such as Fate of Bjuna which has its skull as a composite scene (being like an explosion) while the AOE debuff is triggered purely from data and has its necessary events triggered there.

Fate of Bjuna spell