Beast Camera Sequence

The main threat throughout the level is to come from the suggestion of a beast lurking within the dungeon. To achieve this a camera cut scene was created using the Matinee sequence in Kismet. This was as simple as adding a camera actor to the level and attaching it to a Matinee in the kismet. From within the Kismet key-frames can be added at intervals along a timeline, these key-frames tell the Matinee where the camera should be at a given time. The camera route was laid out on the level map and fine tuned for timing and positions until the desired effect was achieved.

The cut scene was then linked to one of the relics being picked up, the position of this relic (and character at this point) is ultimately where the beast appears to be heading to. This sequence is designed to panic the player and in doing so should grab more of their attention and result in a greater chance of game immersion.

Matinee Sequence for the Beast camera

Camera in action moving along the path defined by the information recorded in the Matinee

A custom sound design was created for the cut scene by exporting the Matinee sequence as a video and importing it to Pro Tools to work with. There was some back and forth editing between sound and video before a final mix was achieved. Once the cut scene sound was imported to UDK it was a case of creating a simple sound cue with it and placing it directly into the matinee sequence on a sound track.

The Kismet sequence above shows how the beast camera scene is triggered (when the square relic is picked up). This also cuts off the original underlying music and atmospheric loops to make way for the 'On_Edge_Loop' which provides a slightly more active background layer. This also lets the player know that the mood has changed after the Hunted music sequence tails off. So the 'Hunted_Main_Alert' music is also called as soon as the cut scene is finished, forcing a sense of urgency on the player.

Once the player leaves the area which is defined by a trigger point the intensity of the 'Hunted' music sequence will begin to tail off and eventually fade out.
Also connected to the beast camera completed output is the 'beast movement' sound cue which has been set up to make it sound like the threat is moving around close to the player position.

Beast movement was created in the same way as the cut scene only this time instead of a camera being moved around it was a note actor which has the beast sound cue attached to it.

'Beast_Sound' cue calls on pitch shifted vocal recordings of roars.

As well as this the end of the cut scene also triggers the 'Random_Beast_Sound' cue, which triggers on on a delayed loop. This sound is different from the 'Beast_Sound' cue in that it contains pitch shifted sounds which were recorded from the Grain bin location recordings. These sounds are low end metallic sounds which work well once the action has died down a bit to keep the tension going.

Random Beast sound cue triggers on a looped delay between 15 and 60 seconds adding to the atmosphere after the beast camera cut scene action.

As the player is quite close to the relic alter at the time of the cut scene they are able to get to the alter and place relics before the music fades. With this in mind, the placing of any relics during the Hunted Music sequence will override the music and fade it out quickly. This avoids any clash between the Hunted music and the relic placement cues, which after testing without this cancellation in place sounded terrible. To break the sudden silence after such a relic placement the trigger for placing the relic was used to re-trigger the beast movement cue which is still within the hearing range of the player. This functions as a nice reminder that they are still being hunted and the beast has gone no where.