Game Audio – UDK Sound Design Demo

 

As a game audio pro­fes­sional I needed to show off some sound design, so I decided to cre­ate this level in UDK with the help of 3DBuzz.com tuto­ri­als. This gave me the oppor­tu­nity to not only cre­ate a playable game audio demo, but it dou­bled as a way for me to learn the UDK soft­ware. All of my prior expe­ri­ence with game audio had been with 3rd party API’s, such as Wwise, FMOD, and XACT, so this was a fresh expe­ri­ence for me and I learned a lot.

Weapon Sounds

I started by replac­ing all of the sound effects for the Rocket Launcher, Link Gun, and Shock Rifle. I used the exist­ing sound cues for these weapons and had them ref­er­ence the new sounds I had cre­ated and imported into the project. Open­ing the exist­ing sound cues in UDK’s sound cue edi­tor let me see exactly how the sounds were worked into the UDK game.

The Link Gun was the first gun I worked on, as it is the default gun you spawn with in the level. I mixed and matched a ton of dif­fer­ent library elec­tri­cal sounds, some syn­the­sized white noise, and a small explo­sion to get the final sound for the pri­mary fire. The sound is mostly char­ac­ter­ized by the white noise I syn­the­sized to sound like a clas­sic “laser gun.” The sec­ondary fire was made from sev­eral loop­ing elec­tri­cal files as well as some small servo sounds to accom­pany the ani­ma­tion of the gun open­ing up and closing.

The Rocket launcher is made with a ton of servo and gun foley sounds edited and mixed together to sell the com­plex ani­ma­tions that make up this awe­some gun. I used sev­eral explo­sion sounds and steam bursts to make up the fir­ing and rocket explosions.

The Shock Rifle was made with thun­der cracks, elec­tri­cal sta­tic, and more servo sounds with a lot of pitch bend­ing. The pri­mary fire is made from thun­der and elec­tri­cal explo­sion sounds. The sec­ondary fire was char­ac­ter­ized by servo sounds being pitched up over time while the combo explo­sion had a large explo­sion sound mixed with some decay­ing elec­tri­cal sta­tic to match the par­ti­cle effect that lingers after the explosion.

Ambi­ences

A mix­ture of drone loops, indus­trial fan noise, and light hums make up the over­all ambi­ence you hear through­out the level no mat­ter where you are. Ambi­ences that are attached to objects in 3D space include some steam and water pipe loops attached to the water heater-looking sta­tic mesh in the first room imme­di­ately to the left of where the player spawns and some dish­washer sound loops attached to the cou­ple bio­haz­ard look­ing tanks with a con­trol panel con­nected directly across from the water heaters. The back room has two large gen­er­a­tors that have some indus­trial machine loops and elec­tri­cal buzzing sounds attached and the two water tanks to the left of the door have some low pass fil­tered bub­bling water loops.

 

Player Move­ment

The foot­step cue asso­ci­ated with the player has 20 ran­dom­ized con­crete boot foot­steps, 10 gear/cloth foley whooshes, and two low end boom-y foot­steps. The cue plays one sound from each cat­e­gory ran­domly to make up the entire foot­step cue. The jump and land sounds have con­crete boot jump scuffs and land impacts as well as gear rus­tle foley. I used my own voice for all of the player grunts accom­pa­nied with the dou­ble jump, dodge, and land (only plays when land­ing from higher level fall).

 

Mechan­i­cal Gate, Reverb Zone, and Front End Sounds

The mechan­i­cal gate uses a kismet trig­ger to play a mati­nee ani­ma­tion as well as some chain link fence and mechan­i­cal switch sounds. The fence has four sep­a­rate sounds made up of clos­ing, open­ing, fully closed, and fully opened. I cre­ated a reverb zone for the back room with the vaulted ceil­ing that includes a large delay to make the room feel large. I also put in some cool sci-fi-ish inter­face sounds I designed into the game menus.