AIA Final Red Square Blog

Let me start off by saying, hello and thank you for visiting my blog. The purpose of this post is to talk about a recent final project I had to do for my Advanced Interactive Audio class. This final project involved designing background and gameplay sounds, and then implementing them in the UDK map. For the ambience and background stingers I wanted to give off a very eerie and creepy vibe. The map looks dark and cold, and I felt the only way to successfully portray the map was to make it spooky. Now for the gameplay I wanted to make everything that looks high-tech to sound futuristic, and together with the background sounds I fell the map had the right level of action and suspense.

As for the individual sounds, I either layered samples found on West Star Music or used synthesis and processing. For the Outside Ambience I used a spooky sounding drone sample and a wind sample then layered and mixed the two. The Inside Ambience consisted of the same spooky drone sound but instead the wind sample I used a cave sample, then layered and mixed the two. I decided to use the same drone sound because I wanted the two ambiences to feel similar but still be distinguishably different. As for the Stingers I used Absynth 4 and added a lot of reverb to add a certain level of eeriness, and because when I left the stingers dry they just sounded awkward. The video below showcases the ambient qualities of the map.

Now on to the gameplay sounds, for the Small Health pick up I wanted to portray a first aid kit being ripped open. To accomplish my goal for the first aid kit I layered two types of tears, one low and sounding like cloth and one high sounding more like tape. I chose to go with a simple solution for the Door Open and Close and use samples of doors being opened and closed. For the Door Open sound I used a big vault door open sound coupled with a metal safe door squeak, and the Door Close sound consist of the closing of a big vault door. I created the Portal Hum and Use sounds using Laserbass and tweaked parameters until I got the sound I wanted. Then I added a Flanger to the Portal Use sound to sound like you just got sucked through a portal. I also used Laserbass to create the Jump Pad Hum, but I used Massive to create the Jump Pad Use and then added a Flanger. The video below shows gameplay in the map and showcases all gameplay sounds described above.

With all the sounds created next I had to create ambient sound actors and soundcues to implement all the sounds I just created (a majority of all the sound cues were all ready created so all I had to do was swap out the sounds). Now with all the sounds in the map the next set was to get the sounds to react the way I wanted them to in the map. Last thing I want to hear when I’m inside is the outside ambience; to prevent this I used Occlusion. For Occlusion to work I had to create a Reverb Volume, and then tweak the Ambient Zone settings until the amount of occlusion sounded right. And for the final touch I added Reverb Volumes in areas with different acoustic properties around the map and then added the appropriate kind and amount of reverb. If you listen to the second video you can hear the differences between the alleys, the stone room, the hallways, the courtyard, and the open areas of the map.

            I really enjoyed working on this final project and before this class I never thought I’d be able to accomplish what I did. The only thing I didn’t like about the map was the fact that I couldn’t figure out how to make the stingers heard inside too, without creating new ambient sound actors inside the building. Once I added Occlusion The Stingers couldn’t be heard inside, and the only solution I could thing of would be to create soundcues for the stingers. But I decided to stick to the asset list and create ambient sound non loops instead. Thank you for taking time to read my blog, I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope you have a great day.