Magic Casting

As of Total War: Warhammer III- Champions of Chaos all 27 lores of magic present in the game have thematically unique sound design content. This was a system and aesthetic I spearheaded on the project. Prior to this every time a casting animation was triggered one generic magic sound effect would play, regardless of that units faction or lore of choice.

I devised a system that allowed us to bring uniqueness to each lore while at same time not having to re-tag all casting animations made over the last half a decade. The answer was to create a switch group in Wwise with all necessary lores, that way all types of magic could play off the same events. From here the switch group assignments matched the names of data assignments given to each lore in the games data. This meant the game knew when a spell caster of lore of shadows (for example) was going to cast a spell, our switch group would be triggered and assign the right spell switch, in this case shadows. All casting animations play off the same meta data tags with the same event assignments attached, the switching of the sounds is done purely by data.

To undertake a project that required all 27 lores get bespoke sounds required detailed planning and asset requirements. I settled on a system that required 18 assets per lore. These were:

• Starts x 3

• Stops x 3

• Loop x 3

• Launch x 3

• Whoosh Long x 3

• Whoosh Short x 3

This was big task to do by myself so I divided the sound design tasks between the team. I created the first set so the rest of the team could see the necessary timings. As it was vital that all 27 lores match I designed 6 lores myself while reviewing/ ensuring the other 21 lores matched the creative and technical needs.

To get this done required planning, communication and dedication. This is one of the systems I am most proud of that I created during my time at Total War.

My 6 sound designed lores

An interview I did for Total War: WARHAMMER III Champions of Chaos where I discussed magic casting