Zhelter's sounds are made up pretty unique even more then my original thoughts. We have Pixel-art styles, and pretty retro play styles. Therefore, most of people thinks about sounds should be retro as well.

Thing is, I am highly disagree with that. Regardless those thinks, Why not if sounds are more modern, why not it has more realistic, more powerful.

And that's where my thoughts start.

Before we start, We are currently using Unity Audio Engine.

We all knows about Unity Audio is crap but actually, It has everything for designing of sounds.

Most of people think about 'Games should remains games, not the real' but they forgot 'games are inspired by reality'

Might this is a little bit hard to understand, but you'll know after all.

Let's pretend this is player.

And this is a monster.

And in Unity will be like this

I put player in center and monster to right within range 10 meters. The player keep firing bullets to monster and monster is playing hurt sound.

In reality, 10 meters is might enough to cancel voice of monster. But the image currently we're looking is feels like not that far enough to cancel.

How so?

Because in-game distance is relative. Which means in real life it is 30 meters but in-game it could be less then 10 meters. This factor can be adapted by any various like depends on in-game character size, view of camera, even room of size.

Then, how the sound should play the monster voice?

Let's pretend Audio Listener is attached to center of camera. And now we know monster sound shouldn't be cancel by firing sound. How about audio panning? If we do nothing about it, sound will remains only right side of speakers which is terrible.

For the 3rd party middle-wares can fix this easily by adjusting radius of sound field, but in Unity audio engine, we have to fix one by one. However middle-wares aren't always correct because distance is relative.

Before to do, we need to define our own sound field in-game like this.

This is my whiteboard for Zhelter project. The circle at the middle one is player and radius meters are arounds it, player is on the road and sidewalk is right above the player, left bottom, right bottom.

I marked 2m, 5m radius for closes to enough to player, and 10m radius for close range. and the rectangle arounds outside is camera size, width is 26 meters, height is 15 meters.

I draw this for implement exact correct sound design which I want to. We don't need to specifically draw of it, if we can easily recognizable, It's totally fine.

So, we defined our own sound field. It's time to design.

If the sounds play within 2-3 meters radius, I think it is close to enough to play almost 2 dimensional sound which is stereo sound. In reality, if sound is playing right side of head, sound is literally "spread" to left side between 90 to almost 240 degrees depends on how the sound is far from ears.

To fix this, we need to use spread, and 3D/2D blend options in Spatializer if it is stereo sound.

Now, we fixed panning problem. But there is more, like expression of distance.

If you are near the harbor, or train station, you suddenly realize lower frequencies are much louder then high frequencies. Because lower frequencies are travels more then high frequencies. Therefore, we can easily think about if sound travels far enough, the sound left almost lower frequencies.

This is my basic concept of low-pass filter.

So if sounds play beyond close range, should be filtered because it is far enough to reduce high frequencies.

It is not end, we need to fix when the sounds play over the player's head, when the player is inside, how about outside, etc.

Those are remains for next article if I have another chance to write about.

Just one more.

I want to put really loud and scary gunshots when the player start to shoot Zombie or something. Maybe some people could say, "Isn't it bit much?" and yes it should be. Because very basic concept of this game, gunshots can pulling the Zombies, and horde as well.

Even I want to separate gunshots between indoor-outdoor. This was a tricky part.

Thank you, See you in next article!

-Syadeu, Sound designer.

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