PreCambria - Dynamic Audio System [Unreal Engine]

Precambia is an audio experience narrating a myth of the Dogon people of Burkina Faso. It is a proof of concept video for implementing a dynamic music system in Unreal Engine. The story and environment are inspired by the Precambrian Massive, a geological feature with distinct cliff faces and caves in present-day Burkina Faso.

This gameplay highlights one possible exploratory outcome of this variable experience.

The experience is inspired by a desire to embed audio at a compositional level into the architecture and design of game mechanics. The system features various stacks of audio that are interpolated based on the player's position within the level. The arrangement and triggering of these stacks are conditional, allowing the player's intuitive exploration to unfold the sonic compositions.

The system was achieved using Quartz, Unreal Engine 5’s music scheduling system that allows me to program sample accurate interpolation of different audio tracks, based on gameplay events. This allows for a degree of emergence to occur within the experience, offering the player a slightly different audio composition with each path they decide to take.

The visual design and art direction of the experience are inspired by the geological features of the Precambrian massive, Saharan building styles and Akan iconography. The sound is synthesised and processed in Ableton Live with Unreal Engine Blueprints managing the playback systems. All meshes were modelled with the engine's modelling mode and texturing was done with Quixel Mixer. Reference images for the Akan and Dogon art pieces featured in the work come from the British Museum online collection.

Hakeem Adam
https://hakeemadam.info/