Musical Game Design Coding Program

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Musical Game Design: Creating Interactive Experiences in Unity and SuperCollider

Ever wonder how music, games, and computer science intersect? Ever want to make your own games in Unity and learn sound design fundamentals in a coding environment? This pod will introduce you to game and interaction design as it relates to producing music through audiovisual interaction. Think shooting cubes to play notes, fireworks that play chords, and anything you can see and hear in your brain! You’ll become comfortable coding in C# (Unity scripting) and SuperCollider (C++-like music language) and come away with a better understanding of sound synthesis, software communication, and game engines. By the end, you’ll have your very own interactive musical toy! (Some coding experience strongly recommended.)

Week by week curriculum

Week 1

Introduction to both softwares: We will take a quick tour of Unity and SuperCollider, testing starter code on student machines and getting everyone situated in these new environments. Conceptually, we will define musical toys and analyze examples through playtesting. We’ll also discuss what makes a musical toy fun and engaging (and what doesn’t).

Week 2

Our first toy project: Through the previous week’s homework, we will have made our first small project in both Unity and SuperCollider. We will discuss ways to build on and add nuance to this small project, as well as get our first taste of combining the two softwares for toy design.

Week 3

Game design fundamentals: This session will serve as a primer for the course project, which will feature each student making their own interactive musical toy. We will discuss interaction design theory and concepts of play through working with Unity.

Week 4

Computer music fundamentals: We’ll cover the basics of sine, square, saw, and triangle waves and dive deeper into SuperCollider for sound synthesis. We’ll learn examples of sound effect design and ambient music generation through additive and subtractive synthesis. We’ll also talk about best practices for robust live sound control.

Week 5

Polishing sound and visuals: We’ll talk about ways to make your toy polished using various post-processing in Unity (bloom, camera filters, etc.) and filters and effects in SuperCollider (low-pass filters, reverb, delay, etc.). Students will be able to refine the aesthetic quality of their toy project using these more advanced concepts.

Week 6

The homestretch: Students will present their toys and engage with each other’s work by distributing the executables and music generation scripts. Students will be encouraged to give compliments and constructive criticism on each other’s work, stimulating discussion around design choices and revision for a final, polished product (with video documentation).