SPACE LEEK - An Onion Odyssey

Unreal Engine 5

6 weeks

Group project (9)

Spring 2023

ASSIGNMENT

The assignment was to make a 3D game using Unreal Engine 5. There were some limitations on what was allowed to do, e.g. no online play, map sizes, resources, AI characters, etc., yet still quite open. The course was divided in to different parts, but roughly 5-6 weeks were solely focused on the project. Our group consisted of a game/level designer, tech artist, 3D artist, animator, four programmers and then me as a sound designer for a total of nine people.

CONCEPT

The group brainstormed different ideas and landed on making a 3D platformer, as we felt it suited the assignment best and gave everyone space to shine in their respective roles. You could summarize our final idea as "Spyro the Dragon with the movement from Hammond in Overwatch". The direction was set, and despite the short deadline the game went through many iterations before landing in the final product.

"Can we make Spyro the Dragon with the movement from Hammond in Overwatch?"

THE SHORTCUT

Maybe you're short on time? Here's a quick audio demo to get an idea of how the game sounds without having to hear the story behind it all (the game is played on low graphics):

THE BEGINNING

At first we were uncertain of the games design. What age group were we catering to? Should it be vibrant or minimalistic? During this process we also didn't have a functional prototype with any character or map. So the question emerged; how can I contribute value without anything to add sound to, and no mood to set music to?

What did we have to work with? Well, we had established that an astronaut onion (Astronion, of course) would crash land on an alien planet. I decided to be part of the concept art-process and create a sonic storyboard for the crash event and an ambience for the alien planet.

The crash was quite straight forward. A space vessel is damaged, perhaps by an asteroid, fires its alarm and crashes, and the surviving Astronion rolls out. Listen to it here:

For the alien planets ambience I tried to emulate the feeling of being small in an unfamiliar territory. Our moodboard had quite a mysterious mood at this point, reminiscent of for example Zangarmarsh from World of Warcraft, which I tried to capture. The carpet is quite thick, with heavy and bassy elements, with reverb to enhance this. To create the alien feeling I wanted "animal sounds" that was a bit difficult to place, yet not completely unrecognizable. I used sounds from foxes, insects, woodpeckers and other birds with effects such as reversing, delay, pitch shifting and vocoders to make them slightly strange. Listen to it here:

With the help of these we managed to steer our artistic vision more easily. The crash gave us all an idea of the start of the game, which helped spur further development. However, most value came out of the ambience. We decided its tone was too dark and heavy for what we wanted our game to be. A lighter tone was set for the game from this point forward.

Another important part of this process was the preparation. To keep things in order from the beginning, I decided on a naming convention based on an audio guide from Richard Stevens and Dave Raybould on Dynamic Audio. Then I did my best to list all sounds needed, in which forms, and my progress of them. I called this my Sound Sheet:

The naming convention helped me keep all files in order, and also allowed me to single out certain elements grouped together by using the console. I.e. I could listen to only npc sounds, or remove just the ambience, if I so wanted:

These methods and preparation would later allow me to work really quickly, since much of the thinking process was already done and I could basically follow a checklist when creating the sounds.

SOUND CUES

One of the most used tools for creating more varied sounds without bloating the content folder with endless .wav-files was Unreal Engines Sound Cues. These allowed me to mix and alter smaller clips together, resulting in granular sounds.

An example of this the footsteps of the Horned Beetles. These were a tougher opponent, with an extra health point, an armored back and the ability to charge. I tried to convey this with a heavier boot sound, metallic armor and thud. But a beetle has six legs. The risk of listening fatigue is high if the sound for each leg hitting the ground is repetitive. I managed to avoid this with the help of randomizing between four elements, resulting in 448 possible step variations using only 19 short clips.

Another great usage of this was combining the Enveloper and Looping effect to create loops that could go on forever without ever sounding the same. Offsetting clip lengths with varied volume or pitch made sure that every second was unique:

DYNAMIC MUSIC

Since our game had a lot of focus on momentum my ambition was to tie this to the music, increasing the excitement level based on the players speed and whether or not they were airborn. To achieve this I began working in Elias Software. I managed to set it up well enough to match a variable that could be connected to the players speed, resulting in something that would sound similar to this (the actual transitions would be smoother in game):

It later turned out that the actual implementation with Unreal Engine was unsupported with the version that was assigned to me, and the company was undergoing reorganization and was unable to help in the short timespan I had available to me. Therefore I had to rethink, no Elias could be used, and instead decided to connect the level of excitement with the Seeds in the level (basically keys that allowed you to unlock the next area) directly in Unreal Engine with some simple coding.

I wanted the music itself to be able to loop quite well, yet still have a catchy melody, with a pleasant and uplifting feeling to it. Inspired by the likes of Nintendo I divided the track in to three parts, with an intro and transition between each. Each part played the melody repetitively to hammer it home, but with a slight variation to one of the repetitions to avoid fatigue. Below are three levels of the track (out of seven).

The first is quite barebones, with the melody intact but the backing stripped down to basic chords and few embellishments:

The third level has a busier bass line, added texture with the piano chords doubled by a breathy organ and more rhythmic instruments added:

At the final stage, when the player is close to reaching their goal, a floaty arpeggio emerges, an even more busier bass line, exciting chords and a more dynamic kick drum is added:

The track itself was created using Logic Pro X, here is a basic overview of the project, even though it would vary between different versions of the track:

BLUEPRINTING

Several methods were used for actual implementation of the sound in to the game. For the character, a combination of animation and Blueprints were primarily used. One example of Blueprint-implementation can be found below, were both the whooshing sound that can be heard while in the air and the rolling sound were implemented similarily, where the pitch and volume shifted depending on the players speed.

A bit more involved was the Blueprint managing the music. To make sure of seemless transitions when switching between levels in the track, all tracks were played simultaneously and then simply had their volume adjusted accordingly. However, some complications appeared when dealing with pausing, and making sure the intro played correctly (only when the game started). One of the three Blueprints taking care of this business can be inspected below:

SUMMARY

This project was at the time the biggest I had been a part of. It was also the first time I was assigned a single role, here as sound designer. Because I am still interested in many fields I still involved myself in the process of almost every other role (we had a good group dynamic so this was well-received), and loved being part of the creative process and designing the game on more of a macro level. I am proud of the work I produced and even though I would have done things differently today, I know I did what I could with the knowledge I had at the time. It was a great experience, and I hope you will enjoy the game if you play it!

You can read more about Space Leek and download it here: