♪ [MUSIC] ♪
[WLAD] Hi, my name is Wlad, and welcome to my session:
Deep Dive into the Atmospheric Sound Design and Music
of the award-winning game
I'm the developer of
Even though it's my first video game,
it ended up doing really well and it won a bunch of awards,
especially for its sound design and music.
Although I'm a first-time developer, I have a background
in audio and music composition.
I was fortunate to write additional music
for such films as The Giver, November Man,
Hitman: Agent 47, and a few others, too.
At the time, I thought I'd really found
what I wanted to do with my life.
But then I discovered Unity, and it changed everything.
Although I didn't know anything about video game development,
and I didn't have a lot of savings,
I dropped everything I was doing and started working on
I was excited to make a game in which
sound would play an important role.
Apart from helping to make the world feel alive,
I wanted sound design to become an important
storytelling element as well.
To handle everything I wanted to do with sound,
I needed an audio middleware.
After a bunch of research, I chose FMOD
since its user interface is very intuitive and simple.
I also liked how well it integrates with Unity.
FMOD has a lot of features that makes
audio implementation quite easy,
even for a first-time developer like myself.
I'll show you some examples of that in a little bit.
While most of the game was done by me,
I knew I needed a really good sound designer for this project.
One day, I received an email from Bjørn Jacobsen.
He's a sound designer who was working
on
He said he had just watched
and was curious to learn more about the game.
We connected on Skype, and soon enough,
I realized that Bjørn was actually the sound designer
I had been looking for all along.
Our creative visions aligned since the get-go,
and as a result, working together was always easy and fun.
Bjørn had nearly infinite creative control
when it comes to the sound design on
All credit for the sound design awards
that we were nominated for and won goes to him.
Honestly, he's a true genius, and I really mean when I say that.
When we started working together, we decided it would be best
to separate the creative part of sound design
from the implementation.
In other words, Bjørn was the one creating sounds,
while I was making sure they were used
accordingly in the engine.
When it comes to the creative side of things,
Bjørn approached the creation of sounds very methodically.
He created a set of rules that would influence
the soundscape of the entire game.
Since the game is set in this dream world,
he came up with this idea that when the player isn't doing anything,
the world is quiet or almost silent.
But as soon as the player interacts with the world,
we hear a significant increase in volume.
Here is an example of what it sounds like.
[FOOTSTEPS]
[DISTANT THUMP]
[CRASH] [FOOTSTEPS]
Needless to say, this is an experimental way
to approach the mix, but it helps establish the world
as surreal and dreamlike.
When making sounds, Bjørn often took advantage
of the low-end frequencies, heavy compression,
and various effects which help further enhance
the abstract quality of the game.
Here are a few more examples.
[LOW VIBRATION]
[EXPLOSIONS]
As you can see, sound designing the game is pretty detailed.
For example, when we were working on the city level,
which takes place during rainy weather,
Bjørn created a lot of so-called "sweeteners".
If you're not familiar with the concept,
a sweetener is an additional piece of audio
that is used to enhance what's already been recorded.
Sweeteners add variety and make the world feel more alive.
In other words, in addition to the general rain sound loop,
we have quite a lot of sound emitters
that play the loops of droplets of water
hitting various surfaces in the level.
Here are the examples of such sweeteners.
We have wooden surfaces.
[RAIN DROPLETS ON WOOD]
Metal surfaces.
[RAIN DROPLETS ON METAL]
Trees.
[RAIN DROPLETS ON TREES]
Here is what the general rain loop sounds like.
[PATTERING RAIN]
Here's what it sounds like when all of it is combined
and implemented in the game.
[PATTERING RAIN]
[FOOTSTEPS]
[RAINDROPS ON WOOD]
[FOOTSTEPS]
[CREAKING]
RAINDROPS ON METAL]
We used the concept of sweeteners
in other aspects of the game as well.
For now, let me share with you how we approached the implementation
of some of the ambiences in
Here is an event that handles
all the ambience in the train level.
In this level, the player can transition
between the train cars, be inside or outside
of the moving train, get closer to certain elements
that are more noisy or windy.
We needed a lot of flexibility to respond
to what the player was doing.
By the way, in
is always attached to the player's GameObject,
which results in the most realistic perception
of the sound attenuation.
In this level though, the ambience
needed to respond to the movement of the camera,
not the player. For example,
when the player is inside of the train car
and the camera is positioned slightly outside,
it's more natural to hear the outside noise
than the muffled sounds of the train interior.
That's why this event is 2D,
and it's controlled by a number of FMOD parameters.
Here is what this event sounds like in the game.
[TRAIN RUMBLING PAST]
[MUFFLED TRAIN RUMBLING]
When you look at the parameters, you'll see things like
train_inside, train_outside,
train_wind, train_between, and others.
All of those control not only the volume of individual layers
but also an equalizer that comes with FMOD.
If you're not aware, equalizer, or simply EQ,
is used to alter the frequency response
using a number of linear filters.
It sounds a lot more complicated than it actually is.
To give you an idea, being inside of a train car
not only lowers the volume of the outside noise
but also filters out the high and the middle frequencies.
This use of EQ creates an illusion of a muffled sound.
Let me show you what it sounds like in FMOD,
and I'm sure you'll see what I'm talking about.
[LOW RUMBLING]
[TRAIN RUMBLING INCREASES]
I used a similar approach in the subway level
where we have vertical trains passing by
in a continuous sequence.
In this case, it's a 3D event
that features two multi-instruments.
It has only one parameter: TrainDistance.
It controls EQ, volume, and reverb.
The further the player is from the sound source,
the more muffled the sound gets.
Let me show you how it works in FMOD first.
[MUFFLED RUMBLING]
[SUCCESSION OF INCREASINGLY LOUDER AND CLEARER RUMBLES]
As you can hear, the closer the player gets to the train,
the clearer the sound becomes.
There is less reverb, more volume, and more high frequencies.
Obviously, it works the other way around too.
[RUMBLING DECREASING]
Let's see how it works in the game now.
[SEQUENCE OF GAMEPLAY SOUND EFFECTS]
The implementation of it is actually pretty simple.
When the player is close to the sound emitter,
the distance between the player and the train
gets calculated inside of Unity and sent to FMOD.
Since calculating distance between two vectors is quite costly,
it's only done once a second in a coroutine.
To ensure that the FMOD parameter moves smoothly,
I utilized the feature called Seek Speed.
Even though FMOD receives an update on the distance only once a second,
thanks to the Seek Speed feature, the parameter
gets updated every frame using simple interpolation
and the end result is quite seamless.
Here is what it looks like in practice.
[SUCCESSION OF RUMBLES]
[FEET LANDING]
When creating sounds for
Bjørn wanted to ensure that there is always enough variety
to the sounds that are heard often.
Here is an example of an event that illustrates
how much attention went into creating sounds
that could be triggered by the player repeatedly.
[THUD]
This event corresponds to a lever located in the hospital level
that moves the player on the Z-axis.
It's quite an abstract and dreamlike concept
when you see it in action.
There are four layers here:
three multi-instruments and one single instrument.
Let's hear them all individually first.
[SEQUENCE OF SOUND EFFECTS]
Sound Design 101 rule
is that you really don't want to overwhelm the listener
by having them hear the same sound over and over again.
The multi-instruments here have a number of sounds
that are always played randomly
to create as much variety as possible.
In the end, with all the layers combined,
we end up with an event that at least appears
to sound unique every single time.
Let's hear the whole thing together but this time in the game.
[SUCCESSION OF THUDS]
Now, I'd like to show you how we handle the footsteps system.
This event has quite a few parameters,
which could be divided into four categories:
speed, reverb, sweeteners, and surface.
For the player's movement, Bjørn recorded a lot of sounds.
We have separate sounds for sneaking, walking, and running.
Also, this is the only event in the game
that uses a custom reverb,
so each footstep sound comes with four different
reverb tails baked in.
Additionally, we have eight different surfaces
and multiple variations for each surface.
All of that adds up to a lot of footstep sounds.
Let's hear all that in action.
[DIFFERENT FOOTSTEP SOUNDS]
This event gets triggered in the appropriate time
of the walk cycle animation.
Using a single raycast that shoots
from above the character's shoe towards the ground,
we're able to read a lot of information,
like the kind of surface, which could be a mix of more than one;
the size of the room, which affects reverb;
and the probability of triggering a sweetener sound,
like a wood squeak or a water splash.
All of that, along with the speed of movement,
gets sent to FMOD where all the magic happens.
The sound parameter affects not only the selection of the right sample
but also controls the volume and the pitch of the event.
That's what makes transitioning from walking
to running sound seamless.
The reverb and surface parameters
naturally affect what sounds get selected,
while the sweetener sounds get triggered on the probability basis.
In other words, each surface in the game can be assigned a value
that describes how likely it is to trigger a sweetener.
For example, as a game designer, I can assign a 20% probability
that a water splash sweetener will be triggered
when walking in the puddle.
Here is an example of how that works in the game.
[SPLASHING FOOTSTEPS]
Last but not least, I'd like to say a few words about the soundtrack.
Writing a score for
I even started on this journey.
When the game was getting close to the finish line,
I finally had the chance to focus on music.
To my surprise, I realized that the game didn't need a lot of it.
It needed almost none, I thought. And there was...
I had to make a decision between my composer's ego
and what was best for the game.
I'm very glad that I chose the latter.
I ended up writing just a little bit of music,
which I used mainly in the credit roll
and some of the marketing materials.
Winning an award for the
given how little music there was in the game.
The score was recorded with the Budapest Scoring Orchestra
and was mixed by Adam Schmidt,
who is known for his work on Inception,
the Pirates of the Caribbean, The Dark Knight Rises,
and a lot of other awesome films.
He has been mixing my music since I became a film composer,
and he deserves a lot of credit when it comes
to the sound of the score for
I think both Bjørn and Adam are absolute geniuses,
and the sound of
been the same without their contribution.
I'm really thankful to both of them for being a part of this project.
If I were to offer any advice to those who are interested
in working with sound designers or music composers,
it would be this: make sure you work with people
who share your creative vision.
Highly creative people don't like to be micromanaged,
so they don't do their best work
unless they're given a lot of creative freedom.
That's why it's important to work with like-minded people
whom you can trust and just let them do their thing.
Ultimately, they know how to do their job,
and that's why you need them.
If they're on the same page with you, creatively,
you'll likely have an easy time working together.
If you're interested in my journey
of going from knowing nothing about video game development
to releasing my first game to commercial success
and critical acclaim, I invite you to check out my book.
It's called GAMEDEV: 10 Steps to Making Your First Game Successful.
It features a foreword by Oscar, Pulitzer Prize,
and five-time Grammy Award-winning composer, John Corigliano.
You can also follow me on Twitter @UnfoldGames,
where I often share behind the scenes of my work
and feature the work of fellow developers, artists,
musicians, and creators alike.
Thank you so much to Unity for having me,
and a big shout-out to FMOD, which, honestly,
is a remarkable piece of software.
I encourage you to give it a try.
I'm sure you'll enjoy it as much as I did.
Thank you for watching, everybody, and I hope you enjoyed the talk.
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♪ [MUSIC] ♪