Footstep Sounds Update_04

I have came to the conclusion that the problem with UDK calling the defualt footstep sounds at certain points in the level. Each of these points has more than one physical material present on the floor, for example the water room is made up of the stone floor, dirt layer and water. In the start room I have worked around this issue (where there was stone and dirt meshes interlocked on the floor) by simply deleting the dirt layer. This leaves only one possible material for UDK to reference a footstep to and appears to have worked.

I have tried this method with the water room also but still have default footsteps being called back, there must be a way to prioritise which material takes the lead in these types of situation. I have asked the forum members at Epic Games but have yet to find a solution to the problem. So the entire level is fine apart from the wet floor and the cave floor where defaults are still being called.

This option is found within the properties of each static mesh, however the physical material override did not help the problem at all. I will need to revisit this issue in the future and hopefully with some advise from the post created on the Epic Games forum will be able to resolve it. 

Fire & Lava - Cues/Kismet

Burning Straw

Aside from the burning torches in the level there are other fire sources within the level which needed addressed. In the opening room there is a pile of straw in one corner that is set up to go on fire if the player triggers a predefined kismet sequence. A burning torch mounted on the wall next to the straw is attached to a 'Matinee' sequence in the kismet which triggers it to fall and set the straw alight when the player touches a trigger point.

Triggered Burning Straw

Supporting Kismet sequence

The Mono File Issue

1st of all there was a fire sound cue created for the burning action using a mono wavs of individual fire sounds that make up the cue. However once placed within the level (attached to a note like the dripping sounds) there was a drastic shift in sound perception from left to right as the player rotates within the room. This problem within UDK as mentioned in earlier posts could prove to be a major issue for this project as any unnatural distraction like this could potentially put up a barrier for immersion to take place, especially so early in the game. When the player has a sound source at 90 degrees off to the left for example the audio signal will be completely cut from the right (quite abruptly too). Further reading up on this is required to try and establish a work around or fix.

The sound cue for the burning straw is made up of two base burning loops as well as a looping, delayed, modulated and randomised fire cracking sound as used for the burning torches cue.

Right Channel of Burning Straw Sound Cue

As these base sounds were originally stereo wavs the idea was to bounce them off as left and right mono channels and create two separate sound cues for each left and right. Then to place them within the level in a stereo position much like a set of speakers. This allowed for a stereo feel but with the spatialisation function which is only applicable to mono sound cues. These cues were attached to notes and placed in the level at various locations and distances apart until a suitable sound was achieved. These was some phasing issues to contend with whilst figuring out placements of these cues, more s when they were too far apart.

Final placement Of Left and Right Burning Straw Cues (attached to notes via Kismet)

Kismet sequence for triggering burning sounds

A very simple Sound cue was also created for the sound of the torch falling, this was basically a portion of the original fire recordings I was working with with a volume envelope applied to make it appear to swoosh. This cue also doubled up as the sound for when the player picks up the buring torch as a vital light source.

Torchfall Cue doubled up as the take this torch sound

Lava Sounds

Another fire source within the level was the lava which is present in three locations, two of which were identical (located under a metal grid underfoot) and the last one being behind metal bars which is basically a whole burning room full of lava.

Lava room cue

Lava under foot cues

The two sound cues created for each of the lava sounds were very similar apart from a different base burning sound which was heavier for the big lava room and lighter for the lava under foot cues. Both utilised bubbling loops which are a pitch shifted recording of bubbles being blown through a metal tube into a beer keg full of water. 

Footstep Sounds Update_03

More footstep sound cues were created along side physical materials that could be referenced to call them. These also included heavier 'Run' versions of each footstep sound to be called when the player runs. Although adding this function is still to be worked out.

The same procedure for introducing the 1st set of footsteps was followed to add the rest. The original wooden floor footsteps were also changed a bit to match up with the others created. The same creaking sounds were used but the base sound of the actual steps was changed. This was after play testing the new footstep sounds and realising that there was a clear mismatch between the wooden floor footsteps and all the others. Getting the footsteps to blend in when materials underfoot are changing is paramount to keeping the player from being drawn out of the game world, especially with things as trivial as footstep sounds.

Again as before there also had to be physical materials created that were attached to these cues as well as code added to the Unreal Script.

For some reason however I cannot get the wet footstep sounds to play back on the water room as well as a few other confined areas within the level. All that plays back is the default UDK footsteps that come preloaded with the engine. This along side getting the footstep frequency tied to a run function is key to further developing a coherent footstep system. Both topics are to be the next line of research.

Water Sounds - Kismet

The main source of water in the level is found within the cave area where there are various sized waterfalls and flowing surface water all leading into a pool in a deep pool.
However there are also areas where water is dripping through openings throughout the dungeon.

The Cave

The Tower Room

Dripping Sounds

To handle the dripping I used a base layer of water trickling which was looped within the sound-cue editor. To introduce some variation into the sound and make it less repetitive there was also some randomised single water droplet sounds mixed in which were played back on a randomised delay loop. These were also modulated to further increase variability. 

The notepads shown here are the objects that were used as a source for the dripping sound cue to emit from and are hidden during gameplay. Placing one in each corner of this tower room has proven to be the most effective method of creating a convincing spatialisation of the area. Almost mimicking a quad surround sound set up. To mitigate the effects of phasing by having four instances of the same sound trigger off at once a small delay was set between each cue as seen below in the Kismet window. 

A Trigger Volume was also placed around this area which was used to turn ON/OFF these sounds as the player moved in or out of the area. This is to try and limit the amount of voices used by the system at any one time.

Cave Water

For the cave section two sound cues were created to populate the space, one of which for the water flowing down the cave wall and across the path of the player and another for the pool in the middle of the cave where all the water eventually falls into.

Water_Flow_Cue

Waterfall_cue

Both are fairly basic but the nature of running water didn't require much variation to be included. The three core audio samples were made up of various water sounds of different durations, this helps the sounds loop round at different points thus creating some variation.

Again as with the dipping sounds multiple versions of the waterfall cue was used in cave's central pool. This is to minimise the mono feel of a single cue which is something that can be an issue within UDK where the system pans hard left or right depending on player position. Two waterfall cues allow for stereo width to be retained whilst the player turns 360 degrees.  

Music - Threat Music Development

I began to compose some threat based music for the level in order to convey the message to the player that they were in danger. The metallic recordings from the grain bin session proved to be very useful and have managed to provide all of the content for the rough tracks created so far. These sounds have been used throughout the level in various forms already and are beginning to give the game a sonic signature. The two examples below was composed entirely of sounds recorded from the farm grain bin with a double hum-bucker style guitar pick up. Use of pitch shift, delay and reverb were the main tools used in these sessions.

The next task will be to develop these further into sections for different levels of intensity in the game, these different levels will be triggered by the state of threat during the game.

Dungeon Torches

Throughout the dungeon there are a quite a lot of burning torches which illuminate the level. A solution was created to avoid having all of these producing a sound at the same time and potentially stealing valuable audio channels. 

The solution was to activate the torch sound cues via a trigger (on or off) depending on where the player is within the level. This was completed by using 'Trigger Volumes' which defined areas of the level, these volumes were then added to the kismet sequence as a 'Trigger Touch' mechanism which either tuned on the sounds of the torches within the volume if the player touched  (inside the volume) 
or turned off the sound of the torches if the player stepped outside of the trigger volume. 

Where there were multiple torches within a close distance a small delay was introduced to individual 'PlaySound' nodes as to avoid any phasing issues. Again the 'PlaySound' nodes were targeted to specific torches within each zone set out by the 'Trigger Volume'.

Screen shot of a section of the kismet controlling the sound emitted from the torches in different zones of the level.

Gate Lever - Kismet Sequence

I have now attached a sound to the movement of the levers which open the gates throughout the level.

This was a simple addition of a 'PlaySound' node which was attached to the trigger (linked to the lever Matinee) to play back when interacted with. The 'Target' was set to the lever itself so that the sound appeared to be emanating from the lever within the 3D space of the game world.

It is also worth noting that the lever sound was manipulated to last the duration of the animated sequence within the lever matinee.

Iron Gates Kismet Sequence

After creating the sound cues for the Iron Gates the next step was to attach these sounds to the gates within the UDK Kismet.

As all the code was already in place for the gate actions it was a simple step to attach the sound cues to each gate.

The screen grab shows the extra nodes that were added to the Kismet sequence. The gate movement is controlled by the 'Jail_Bars' Matinee and the other  Matinee shown controls the lever that needs to be pulled in order to open the gate. As the animation of the lever moving lasts 1 second, a delay of the same value was added to offset the gate opening and sound playing. This gave a more natural feel to the action as well as freeing some space to insert a sound for the lever itself. This same setup was also copied over to all the other gate sequences within the Kismet.

Sound Design - Iron Gates

The target of the session was to create sounds to be attached to the moving iron gates within the level.

The main actions of the gate were broken up into the following components 

• Sliding up/open (3.8 seconds)
• Fast close (3.8/4 seconds)
• Fully opened
• Fully closed

These actions were then synthesised by combining my pre-recorded audio samples. Combinations of a mechanical cog driven lifting device and metallic scrapings were used to mimic the doors movement grinding the stone. For the faster close motion this was edited to play back faster without damaging the pitch. For the impact sound of the door coming to a stop (open and closed) a number of layers were added together including metal and stone impacts on various objects.

For each movement sound different variants were created to minimise repetitive sounds during gameplay, such as separating some of the components that make up each full sound. These were then imported and tested in UDK using the 'Sound Cue' editor.

The next step will to attach these sound cues to the moving gates for further testing.

Dungeon level editing - Hidden switch

At the start of the level the player must find their way out of a room, to do this they must press a hidden switch on the wall in order to open a gate. Having found this a frustrating task which took some time to complete I decided to add a clue which serves to hold the players engagement.

Faint arrow drawn in blood highlights the switch

Even with the faint blood arrow most test subjects failed to find the switch and became frustrated. 
Using the kismet I decided to add camera cut sequence with musical sting which kicked in if the player had not already found the switch after a specified timeframe. The sequence cuts from the player view to the area where the switch is located, indicating them to investigate this area further.

Here is a screenshot of the kismet set up which shows how the system functions.When the trigger (area within the starting room) is touched it starts a delay, when this delay is finished the cut scene is shown via the matinee sequence. If the hidden switch is used before the end of the delay however the cut scene is cancelled (hidden switch trigger connects to the delay stop input).

Further playtesting with this system will be carried out to asses its effectiveness.