Here's a few of the Evil Spit Plant sounds I've been making over the previous two blog entries set to gameplay footage to show how the sounds work within the context of gameplay.
School of Video Game Audio - Weapon Sounds + Project Asset List
Designed the initial projectile shoot sound for the enemy spit plant in the Wwise Adventure Game this week.
To create this sound, I used a combination of monster and gun samples (SoundMoprh's Monster Within, Watson Wu's Battle Rifles and Pistols and Airborne Sound's Free Firearm Library) plus my own vocal recordings to create a punchy yet still organic projectile launch sound.
Inspired by a really cool talk on gun sound design by Barney Oram at last month's Game Audio North meetup, I split my sound design for the spit sound into several layers. These were:
- Punch Layer - This initial layer contained a combination of bassy sounds to give the spit event a meaty kick. This layer includes a kick drum sample and the first transient from some shotgun blasts to suggest the poison projectiles are exploding out of the plant's mouth after a build-up of pressure.
- Slime Layer - As a substitute for the traditional mechanical layer of a gun sound, I used several groups of slime/gore samples to emphasise the organic nature of the plant, and to suggest that the enemy generates the spit projectiles is a very messy process!
- Vocal/Character Layer - To further add to the disgusting/revolting feeling I wanted to achieve with the slime layer, I also included processed monster vocal sounds to suggest that the poison projectiles the spit plant launches at the player are being regurgitated up from the plant's innards before being projectile vomited at the player. Gross!
- Tail Layer - This layer contained hissing vocal sounds I recorded to give a natural decrescendo effect to the end of the sound as it decays away.
I then imported these layers into Wwise and arranged them into various SFX objects and random containers within the play actions of the Enemy_EvilSpitPlant_ShootBullet event.
The Enemy_EvilSpitPlant_ShootBullet event in my Wwise project. Randomised pitch and volume offsets were applied to certain layers, and randomised delay offsets to the vocal and tail layers were used to vary the playback speed of the latter sections of the sound.
School of Video Game Audio - Monster Sounds
Made some fun monster sounds this week on the School of Video Game Audio's Wwise course. I had to design and implement the sound for the enemy Evil Spit Plant in the Wwise Adventure game.
Sound Design
I approached my design for the enemy plant death sound by first recording gameplay footage of the plant death animation. After watching this animation numerous times, I decided to break the plant death sound down into four constituent parts that matched the character's death animation. These parts were screams, gurgles, rustles and impacts;
Screams
For the scream sounds, I used samples from the Monster Within sound pack by Soundmorph. I wanted to get a short, punchy pain sound that would immediately indicate to the player that they had successfully killed the spit plant. I found a collection of small monster shrieks in this pack that fit my needs perfectly.
Gurgles
Directly following the scream, I wanted a longer, drawn-out death gurgle to go with the enemy plant's writhing death animation, to suggest that it's still in considerable pain as it thrashes around in its death throes. I recorded these sounds myself by making some croaky, gurgling noises in my throat - disgusting, I know, but hey, they sounded pretty good and that's what matters!
Recording comedic death gurgles in the VO booth at Futureworks. The dark environment really helped me get into character!
Having recorded my gurgles at 192kHz, I had considerable flexibility with regard to pitch shifting at the edit stage. I processed the gurgles by pitching them +1 semitone up and applying a generous amount of distortion before then running them through Krotos Audio's Simple Monsters plug-in. This made the gurgle sounds I recorded feel considerably more alien, gross and wet sounding.
Rustles
As the Evil Spit Plant is an organic creature, I wanted to include some natural, organic sounds in with the highly-processed and alien-sounding vocal layers to balance them out. The plant's death animation involves a lot of shaking and writhing around, so I thought including a rustling grassy layer to the death sound would help make the enemy feel more believable and grounded in the reality of the game world. I used some grass rustle samples from the Sonniss Game Audio GDC 2018 bundle as the sounds for this layer.
Impacts
Finally, the impact layer was to act as the sound for plant's body hitting the ground as it dies. I used some recordings I had made during a recent trip to a nature reserve of hitting grass and other bits of foliage with my hands (yep, it looked really stupid but once again it sounded pretty good) as the sounds for this layer.
Wwise Implementation
The screams, gurgles, rustles and impacts were then imported into Wwise as separate layers, with each layer having its own dedicated random container. These random containers were then inserted into the Event_EvilSpitPlant_Death event as separate play actions.
The Enemy_EvilSpitPlant_Death event in my Wwise session. Each layer of the sound has its own random container, with voice volume and pitch offset randomisation applied. Independent delay settings on the play actions were set so as to give the collective death sound a nice unified rhythm.
With all the sounds integrated into Wwise at this point, I then applied a flanger effect to the scream and gurgle layers via the sound's Enemy_EvilSpitPlant actor mixer to accentuate the creepy, poison-filled nature of the creature even more.
I didn't want the flanger effect applied to the organic rustle and impact sounds, so I bypassed the effect on these layers. So, without further ado, here's the final Evil Spit Plant Death sound - voilà!
Wwise 101 Certification
Passed the Wwise 101 Fundamentals certification today! Wahey!
School of Video Game Audio - Wwise Effects Processing
My second assignment on the School of Video Game Audio's Wwise course was to record a selection of dry footstep sounds, and then use effects processing in Wwise to simulate how they would sound when played back in a set of different acoustic environments.
I recorded my concrete and grass footsteps using the Foley pits of the Avid S6 studio in Futureworks. I also recorded some gravel surface steps in my backyard at night, but didn't grab any pictures of that session as it was pretty dark!
Using auxiliary buses in the Master/Mixer hierarchy, I routed a collection of footstep recordings to a variety of effect chains that modeled a corridor/passageway, an open exterior environment and a forest area. Specifically, these environments were a passageway and an outdoor section from the AkCube FPS game, and the opening forest environment from Playdead's Limbo.
Here's how my Wwise footstep events sounded with effects processing:
On reflection, the reverb I chose for the corridor sounds way too extreme, and the forest reverb has a high-end ringing element to it which doesn't sound right for the environment. I also should have tried to get the correct reverb sound using just a single reverb, but at the time using a pair of reverbs seemed to create a less boxy reverberation sound that I quite liked. Still, I'm pleased that I now know how to hook up my sounds to effects using aux sends in Wwise.