Game Audio Design and Implementation

Design -

For this project of the module we were tasked with creating the audio accompaniment for a game scene which consisted of rooms of a spaceship which the character could explore, making their way from the rear of the ship to the command console.

For this there were various aspects to the production to carry out, for the audio in this scene I have created ambience tracks and a vertically layered composition which was carried out using sound design software instruments within Logic Pro and recorded using midi signaling, the aim for this was to achieve a sound with tension and an emphasis on the loneliness of the character, this I conveyed through the composition layers utilizing mostly synth string washes and a melancholic chord sequence to subtly pierce through the thick ambience.

This was to fit the set-out plan in the ADD we were provided, as this eerie atmosphere was what was stated there for the final production. With reference in this piece being to a similar setting game called Outer Wilds, I have filled the spaceship heavily with ambience of movement of mechanics and functions going on within the ship itself, this is something featured in the soundscape of various other video game spaceships along with that one stated to really create the imaginative image of movement going on with the level.

When it came to the design of the ambience itself, I used similarly to the ambience found in my animation project, many instances of white noise in various formats to build together a wash of backing which would subtly transform and imply movement through the level, the use of white noise generators was used to create the gas pipe air fx stated in the ADD, there were also backing noise washes with various audio artifacts like bumps and knocks which implied more movement in the spaceships systems, this was also then echoed to imply the room which all this sounds were being placed into.

With the unreal engine using a reflective sphere object to redraw ray-traced light within the level, I saw the echo delays as doing this similarly and therefore it was set to a subtle level in comparison to the dry signals but was utilized subtly for many of the sounds, with the footsteps receiving the most to emphasis their nearness to the character camera as this would be important to create the psychoacoustic effect of distance within the scene and it’s sound sources.

During the level there are a number of transitions which occur during the changes from one segment of audio to the next. For this project I designed the audio using Logic Pro primarily, and then bounced and imported the stems across to middleware software FMOD to arrange and add placement reverb, echo, final eq and leveling.

With audio implementation to game scenes, middleware such as FMOD is often used in professional and commercial settings as the production of audio then needs to be integrated into the level itself while still being contained in a workable DAW for further editing and processing, due to typical DAWs not having there own link capability to software such as Unreal, middleware is required to bridge this gap. The FMOD software provided numerous methods to the arrangement elements of this piece, with the unusual horizontal playhead movement (resequencing) allowing for numerous starting varying across individual tracks, I utilized this within the composition to have an evolving composition that wasn’t necessarily fixed and heavily randomized using the multi-track instruments, this meant for a wide variety of possible combinations of layers of the composition, and with some played back detuned also leading to slip in timing to create a volatile swing and emphasis on the aimed for unsettled nature to the level.

Using these multi-instruments allowed for looping within each to occur, so with some audio tracks alongside those multi’s I could set each room to have it’s own individual loop which each layer of the composition recurring until the next room is reached. During the transition there would be a change in the audio files being played back and therefore fades were required to smooth over and push the synth and reverb washes I wanted between segments. For this I used some transition marker sections in the 2d timeline for the audio which branched regions between two of the back rooms of the ship to create a continuing motif layer under the randomizing multi-tracks, the fades here allowed the audio to fade back and forth between the two tracks when the player triggered entry into each.

For the multi-tracks this method could not be employed as it required loop regions which I had not been utilizing in the same way, as it also didn't provide the dynamic control I was after with the audio tracks, therefore when it came to many of these multi-track loops I used AHDR modulation to draw the sustain and decay times out so that they'd fade nicely between each on the loop, with some timed to keep the sound at continuous level whereas some done to fade out to silence first before the sound re-emerges, to add space back into the mix. All these aspects where both applied to the music and backing ambiences.

With this piece I wanted to heavily blur the line between musical composition and backing ambience, as I saw the whole as a soundscape for the player to explore and I wanted that exploration to convey within the tracks layers to encourage the listener to listen out for the harmonic details and lines going on within the misty and noisy backing.

Mixing them together as a whole I kept this in mind and have built up the audio as a soundscape very much with the approach of it as more of a painting with layering which included more than just none focal (musical) elements. I do like to incorporate this approach to my work outside of this project. As this is an approach I’ve learn from listening to the approaches of professionals in this field of audio implementation with games and films, as well as from my own time playing games and working with the auditory clues which occur which are not specifically obvious but add to the overall immersion of the game level greatly.

With this in mind there was also capabilities with the FMOD and Unreal combination to create spot imaging audio sources within the level, where sound could emanate from points within the 3D level environment with sound direction dynamically adapting with the camera angle to imply the sound sources location. I used this process for two audio sources within the level to subtly imply the direction within the level, with there being the spaceship thrusters at the rear behind the back wall which would then fade out dependant of the player distance from the source, this low rocket rumble would then fade into the backing ambience layers which further echoed it out throughout the ship at a low level to imply it’s position.

There was also the sounds of the console at the front of the ship which had this effect flipped, so that as the player progresses up the spaceship they hear more of the distant scattered console sound and are drawn towards it up to the front of the ship. This locational imagining was very important for the integration to create that directional hint within the level for the player, and allowed for a nice variation to surround when it came to the other elements of ambience.

With each of the rooms I wanted to create multiple soundscape settings which all equally fit the atmosphere and aesthetic. For the first room I wanted to focus on the space with it being the largest room, this required more delays and distance sounding FX sources with more airy qualities than what was found in the second room, with the wash transition into it finishing with a somewhat more cramped audio image with the heavier and low turbine ambience kicking in here to emphasis further some inner workings to the ship engine going on within the vicinity to match the smaller dimensions of the middle room.

This was then changed once the console room was reach once again with a focus on sound design being more towards digital audio samples and slightly more chaotic sequencing to emphasize the tension and duress that may be following on from this scene. There was lastly within these audio sections two more which the player switches through, once at the console itself the segment specifically for this smaller region is triggered which contains mostly high-register synth string waves and less of the noisy backing to imply a resolve at the end of the level as all the other backing ambience fades out to leave the player in a quieter atmosphere right at the front of the ship.

The second change was once the player went back into the first room when the audio would change to a secondary first room loop which differed from the first introductory segment when the game started. This was done to add further variety for the player when they returned, with changes to both the compositional elements and the backing ambience taking on a different tonality.

Implementation -

When it came to the integration of this audio project, the FMOD session cleanly registered with the Unreal software making the integration a smooth process.

With the audio assets compiled for the project I went forward with first integrating the footsteps to trigger while the player ran / walked / jumped. To do this I went into the blueprints within Unreal for the player animations and added notify events on the steps where contact was made with the floor, these notifies then triggered a line trace function to ping the floor position below the player to localize the soundsource onto, which was done via getting that position at the foot of the player actor and using the play sound at location function, calling the sound source from the assets integrated through the footsteps event within the FMOD build.

For variance here I had to specify some other surface materials which the player would encounter, this was done wit the grids so that when one was walked atop the tone of the step changed to reflect the hollow space below the grate which required echoes and increase in volume. This was done by specifying the grate meshes within the level as physical surfaces set within the level blueprint, this would then tell the engine the surface material when pinged and could be used to trigger the corresponding audio. Variance here was further gained from using multiple samples within the footsteps event track in FMOD where variations on the footsteps were randomly triggered from source.

Within FMOD for the music and ambience tracks I had to specify the music event timeline as 2D so that it would appear without locational information on the sound source when played back in the level. For the ambience it required a 3D timeline due to the locational objects within it that would be triggered such as with the console. Once all the audio tracks were composed and compiled into FMOD on their respective tracks and within the corresponding event containers, implementation was fairly straightforward, with the code layed out from the level blueprint, triggering the audio dependant on the room entered and specified by the Current Room parameters conducting both the ambience and music into its current segment.