The purpose of this project was to create a playable game in unreal engine 5 will full audio integration to showcase on my demo reel.
Visuals
As my focus was on the audio for this project, I wanted to create an interesting environment that could feature creative sound effects and ambience without spending too long creating it. As it happens, there was a perfect asset pack temporarily free to claim on FABs biweekly limited time free selection: Asset
I took a section of this map and made adjustments to the props, moving them around to create an easy to navigate path for the player and adding particle system emitters around the map. I also reworked the lighting, focusing the light on certain areas and adding the red alarm lights to create a sense of danger and urgency.
For the player character, I wanted something in theme with the environment, but with a certain level of bulk to them so I could design some interesting heavy footsteps. I found the perfect solution in the Paragon assets that were released for free by Epic after the games closure. As someone who played this game when it was active, I knew this character would be perfect.
From Paragon, I also used their minion character for the enemies in the game. I scaled these up and assigned them an idle animation, placing them around as targets for the player to eliminate.
Ambience
The ambience for the level consists of multiple layers. These layers were all created to be loop able but all given different lengths, meaning that when all layers play and loop, they loop at different times, creating an ambience which sounds different every time it loops.
The ambience consists of:
- A base layer of drones and subtle wind
- An alarm
- Distant combat sounds
- Spaceship combat sounds
- A tannoy announment countdown
- Scatter sounds of creaking metal
These layers were all mixed in a MetaSound using a mixer and combine to produce an immersive ambience that suits the visuals.
Gunshots, Impacts and Footsteps
The triggered audio such as footsteps, gunshots and impacts were all managed in a similar way. MetaSounds were created for each event and the sounds were used in an array and called with a 'Random Get' node. These were then played through a 'Wave Player' linked to a random pitch shift. This gave each event a small variation in pitch to keep the sounds fresh and different every time.
The gunshots are triggered by the player character when the fire button is pressed. This then plays the initial gunshot and a short audio tail. The bullets in this project are simple Line Traces, firing an beam of light that instantly reaches its target. The object hit is then noted, if this object has no 'Tag' then a metallic impact is played. If the object has the tag of 'Enemy' it triggers a branch node and plays an more fleshy impact sound.
Before these impact sounds are played, a calculation is made. When the line trace is fired it calculates its length from source to impact. Using this information, I divide the number received by 25,000. The result is a number typically in the range of 0.1-0.5. This is then used in a delay node before the impact is played. This results in a satisfying recreating of bullet travel time while using a simple and reliable system.
If the impact was made on the environment, there is a chance to play a follow up ricochet sound. After the 'Impact_Metal' sound is played, a branch is used with a random integer and less than node. This allows me to input a value which represents the percentage chance of a ricochet. This was tweaked to sound satisfying when heard but not overused.
Emmitters
I created sounds for the emitters around the map, with a gas leaking sound, sparking electricity sound and a radio chatter sound used for the group of downed soldiers. These were given appropriate attenuation spheres so that they are audible from a reasonable distance and finely positioned so that as the player walks past, they hear the audio pan around them.
This project, once complete, was built into a playable game. I then screen recorded gameplay and it now features in my demo reel!
