In 2019/2020 one of my assignments was to take a finished game, add my own sound design through UE4 and then also recreate the project in an FMOD project. The game I chose was Horror Engine. It is a game that involves the player solving puzzles and encountering jumpscares in a seemingly abandoned apartment that leads to some bizarre moments.
When starting this project I created an audio design document that stated the goals I wanted to have achieved by the end. Some audio pillars I decided upon included eerie, unsettling, sinister, unnerving and ominous. These represent the overall theme I was aiming for and I believe the finish product reflects that. I knew I wanted to find unique and interesting ways to make the sound design more interactive for the player. In this post I will explain some of the most standout aspects of the sound design in the project.
The Unreal Engine Assignment
Below is the video I created to showcase the sound design in this game. Whilst I am aware that this is certainly not my best work, the project does still showcase my understanding of implementing audio into Unreal Engine. Also, I apologise that the visual quality of the project is not great, I was working on my old laptop at the time.
As can be seen in the video, there are some systems involved in the project that I believe are worth mentioning. Firstly would be the puzzle that requires you to look at a painting. Originally this puzzle was meant to be stumbled upon by the player clicking on random objects to trigger the door to move. In order to aid the player and to add to the mystery of the game, a looping track was added that would play once the player looks at the painting for a certain amount of time. If they would look away, the sound stops and then restarts once looked at again, drawing the player's attention to the painting they need to interact with.
Another notable part of the sound design would be the use of ambient tracks in certain areas. Having been inspired by some of the horror genre's biggest titles such as Outlast and PT, I knew that one of the key elements to making a game feel eerie and unsettling for the player would be the ambience. If the player stands still in one area for a long time and just hears the same ambient track looping forever, they might experience listener fatigue. To rectify this issue, some scratching sounds were added to play at random locations around the player and at long intervals, long enough to not be too distracting, but close enough together to avoid fatigue.
Ambiences also can help a certain area stand out from the others in a subtle way. By also utilising the occlusion settings in Unreal, one room's ambience can slightly be heard when near the adjacent wall. Rain also can be heard form outside but this was done by filtering a rain track in a DAW and then using the Falloff distance settings. These are features that I believe add to the overall feeling of the game and are a starting point for my interest in creating ambiences that feel alive and benefit the player's experience of an environment.
Recreating the project in FMOD
The second part of this assignment including us learning how to use middleware and become aware of it's capabilities. In this instance we used FMOD, a rather intuitive middleware program that really allowed for complex audio systems without the need for complex blueprints. The assignment only required us to show the audio in the FMOD project and did not actually have to show the audio linked to the Unreal Engine project.
The video shows that I was able to recreate all elements of the sound design from the Unreal Engine project within Unreal and I replicated the systems using parameters. For example, the previously mentioned painting puzzle, where the player looks at it and a sound is played, is easily replicated using a direction and distance parameter in FMOD.
Ambiences are also well replicated in the FMOD project through the use of a scatter track. This gave greater control over where the scratching sound was emitted from around the player and could be more random in choosing where to play it from. It also meant that the time it took for the scratching sound to play again could also be easily randomised. This further use of randomisation for playback, in my opinion, supports the intended purpose of the track as the player doesn't know when it will play or where it is coming from.
Overall thoughts on the project
I am aware that not all of the sound design in this project is my best work but I believe that it therefore shows how I have since further developed my sound design abilities. I still also believe that the overall sound design in the project does reflect precisely what I was aiming for at the beginning with the audio pillars in the design document. I am proud of the technical aspects of the sound design and I believe it helped my understanding of FMOD. Since this project, I have gone on to use FMOD for other projects and I now feel comfortable using it for any project and am aware of how best to use it's abilities.
There are definitely areas for improvement in the sound design that I would spend more time on when if I were to do it again. You might not be surprised that the dialogue is my own in this project and my voice acting skills definitely leave a lot to be desired, but this was only a placeholder. I had planned to get other people who are more skilled voice actors into the dialogue studio but issues in 2020 led that to be cancelled. Further issues did arise from my access to studios and capable PCs but those issues were mostly overcome.
Thanks for having a read through of this project. If there are any things in the videos you would like me to explain further then do not hesitate to ask away!