This blog examines my journey of sound design for a UDK sample game. I will discuss the audio aesthetic and creation of my sounds and how I perceived the game in the map, when creating each sound. I will also be discussing how I implemented the sounds into the UDK game, what kind of tools I used and the thought process of my implementation.
Aesthetic Design
As a student at Full Sail
University, this game was given to me with out a story line and with out many
sounds. The only bit of information I was given about the map was that the
story was located in Russia. It was just
a cold place in Russia that my character, who happened to be holding a gun,
could run around in. So, I created a
character and a story. The character
that is being played is somewhat of a super soldier. He carries a massive gun, a lot like the ones
in “Gears of War.” There is a slave camp
in Russia that he has snuck into to rescue as many people as he can and get
them out safely. When creating the
sounds for this game I pictured that story line. I pictured a freezing, depressing, horrifying
place…Russia. So, to emulate a freezing
cold place, the ambience I created was a room tone type of wind sound. To create a sense of loneliness and coldness
I added an eerie whistling wind in the background to all the rooms.
Implementation
I also added quite a bit of stingers
in the game to reemphasize the horrifying, cold camp the Protagonist is
in. There is a man scream and a woman
scream heard in the courtyard. I wanted to
place screams in the courtyard to create a sense of urgency because the
character is hearing people in danger. I
added reverb and EQ’ed the screams to make them sound like they were coming
from another courtyard. I also placed an alarm sound in the courtyard
as if the camp noticed that someone had snuck in, creating more urgency and
tension.
There are some short High pitched
and Low frequency horror movie-type sounds in the game that create more nervousness
and suspense. The sounds would give the
user chills as they trekked around the grounds. The character, however cannot
hear these, they are just for the audience.
To create some of these stingers I used an Ambientsoundsimple actor for
each stinger and created a large Max distance for each stinger, because if the
character is running I don’t want the stingers that I placed in the game to
just noticeably stop right away I want it to fade out as if you are walking
away from it.
To create the sound of the door
opening to the portal room, I found an elevator sound online and layered it
with another stronger closing elevator to create the sound of the door slamming
open and shut. To create the sound for
the portal I wanted to create an electric, moving light sound. The sound I created for the portal was really
cool. I wanted to create a traveling
through space kind of sound. I tried to put layers upon layers to create the
portal sound. It was literally just one
sound I found online that happened to be perfect! I found the perfect sound effect on a sound
sharing website called, freesound.org.
I hope you enjoyed my portfolio for
game sound design.
