Alexander Zaparniuk
Game Audio Designer
Designing a new IP
I recently finished an 8-month contract with Counterplay Games, working on an unannounced AAA title. While working with Counterplay games I got to experience my first real dip into what It’s like to be apart of a AAA team. From milestone deadlines to bi-weekly sprints I got to see a lot during my time there. One of my biggest takeaways from the project is the necessity of time management. While being assigned Jira tasks I learned just how important and necessary it is to work in a fast and efficient manner that is essential for large scale projects.
Unfortunately, at this current time the project has been shelved and I’m unable to publicly show any systems that the audio team / myself created. I can loosely speak about the work we did. So, at some points in this break down I’ll be intentionally vague. I'll be going into more of my design process of what we did and my reasoning behind. I've also created some new sounds that are not associated with the project so you can get an auditory understanding of what I'm talking about. I do promises the IP is insanely cool and I hope you get to see it soon!
Designing Enemies
The Process of Designing a Enemy
Enemy vocalizations are some of my favorite things to design. Typically, what I like to do when first viewing a new enemy is to make a list and break down its characteristic and personality:
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What’s the context of this enemy? Has it been warped by demonic forces, is it a natural creature to this earth, is it robotic, aquatic, land based, does it fly?
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What is the size of this enemy? Is it large and slow / cumbersome or is it a quick agile creature?
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What would the vocal cords look like?
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What emotions will this creature be feeling?
After going through the steps above I then view each animation for the character within the Unreal animation sequence and note out the necessary sounds needed for each animation. For example: VOX Attack, VOX Taunt, VOX Hit Med, VOX Death, SFX Attack, SFX Taunt, SFX FT Walk, SFX FT Sprint, SFX FT Jog, SFX FT Land, SFX FT Gak + Movement.
After running through the process of the steps listed above, I start the process of recording and manipulating source material. A great rule of thumb is to start a sound by vocally saying it out loud. If you can make it interesting and cool by getting your thoughts out loud it will make the design a ton easier from the get-go.
Animal recordings are always great to use too. Some of my favorite animals are Elephant Seals, Hyenas, Owls screeches, Camels, Lion chuffs, and Badgers.
Plugins & Gear Used
As cool as Dehumaniser is, it can often give a bit too much of a distorted granular sound to the whole mix, so creating smaller subgroups I’ve found can help. And nothing really beats a bit of simple pitch shifting and saturation. I’ve bound pitch shifting to my scroll wheel.
Microphones: Sennheiser MKH 416, Diety S Mic2, and the Geophone
Recorder: Sound Devices MixPre 10ii (192khz, 32bit) & Zoom H8
Quick Sonic Montage:
A quick audio design showcasing my process listed above. (Note: These are not sounds that were used in the IP).
Designing Weapons & Player Special Abilities
Weapons and player special abilities were really fun to work on. Without getting to specific I got to work on some explosive player abilities that were connected to the guns used.
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What’s the context of this enemy? Has it been warped by demonic forces, is it a natural creature to this earth, is it robotic, aquatic, land based, does it fly?
-
What is the size of this enemy? Is it large and slow / cumbersome or is it a quick agile creature?
-
What would the vocal cords look like?
-
What emotions will this creature be feeling?
After going through the steps above I then view each animation for the character within the Unreal animation sequence and note out the necessary sounds needed for each animation. For example: VOX Attack, VOX Taunt, VOX Hit Med, VOX Death, SFX Attack, SFX Taunt, SFX FT Walk, SFX FT Sprint, SFX FT Jog, SFX FT Land, SFX FT Gak + Movement.
A quick audio design showcasing my process listed above. (Note: These are not sounds that were used in the IP).
Quick Sonic Montage:
Destructibles & Unreal Niagara System
One of the super cool things I got to do was help create the documentation and break down what was needed for our interactive environmental system. I worked closely with one of the Senior Tech Designers alongside my Audio Director.
We came up with an audio system that connects to the Nagara system within the Unreal Engine and Wwise, and I manually assigned different intensities to BPC physics objects that were destructible, including levels of intensity.
Some interesting things I learned along the way while helping make this system are:
As you shoot an object piece breaks off, 2 – 3 shots before exploding into confetti ex. Wood Boards, this is apart of the VAT (Vertex Animated Textures).
Physics get impulse from shots and are moveable around the world but are unable to detect collisions from GPU particles. Hit collision will bounce around and will respond to player hitting it or walking into it, this does not trigger a sound as anything “physics” related is not technically destructible.
Designing Destructibles for Niagara
After discussing the necessary sounds need for recording and designing for material types we landed on 10 different surface types needed with three varieties of intensity. Light, Medium, and Heavy. I broke it down further to have an Impact and debris sounds which could be delayed to better time the particle system.
A quick audio design showcasing my process listed above. (Note: These are not sounds that were used in the IP).