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Luis Zeno Jr
Rotten Apples
The next step is to provide audio feedback to several mechanics in the game. The first challenge I took was fairly an simple one after doing a small research on it, footstep audio. I notice the audio cuts off after a few steps was taken by the player. The audio resets when player stops and walk again, but the issue is, the audio is consistent enough to sound like the player is walking.
I found a reference video that would assist me with a simple task of making walking audio possible, plus being able to walk on different materials in the game, concrete, grass, dirt, etc. It was something quick and a small bug that has been fixed for the project.
The next audio task I done is implementing the whistle noise to capture the guards attention.
I was influenced by the rock throwing mechanic to do this task to capture the AI attention which basically means I needed to put an input action and the noise and follow along what the rock throw mechanic does. By added in a node that returns if true between A and B, players would have two ways of distracting the AI and avoid being detected, allowing players to manipulate the AI.
After a few easy work on some of the audio, the last two took me extra days to work on, especially the last task. First, I needed to add in audio for the vehicles, both the helicopter and SWAT truck. This was the first time I learned about a new audio blueprint called Attenuation.
At first, I input an audio to the helicopter, however, the noise would be louder than the other audios in the game, overtaking the crowd and guard noise. After a few research, I learn about Audio Attenuation and how noises can be made from a distance, making it feel as if the helicopter is circling around the city, muffling the noise as it leaves and growing louder as it arrives. It was something new to me, something I never known about the capabilities from Unreal and something that I am proud of. I added the same blueprint to the SWAT Truck as well, as I even work on making it sound like the truck is moving.
The last audio implementation is the breathing audio. This task took me several days to complete due to the audio overlapping while it is playing.
The first question I had in my mind is, how can I play an audio that simulate stress, anxiety, and panic to the player if the player is near the guard? I opted to place the audio on the guard itself as a way to avoid the audio playing unnecessarily wherever the player goes. This is intended to make sure that if the player is not breathing, the player is in a safe spot to move around, however, if the player is near the guard, the breathing would increase, sensing danger is approaching closely. I use attenuation for this task, and it had worked properly until the one issue arise, the audio would play a second time if there are two guards, making it overlap on the other. I struggled to find a solution for this at first, however, I learn a new audio blueprint called Concurrency.
Over the next set of hours and days, I worked on making sure the audio does not overlapped, finding failure after failure of either not getting the blueprint or nodes to work properly, audio scratching, or no noise at all. Despite this, I have look over through some guides and forums to get a better understanding on how this blueprint work, since we didn't use a score to implement audio and may not have anyone skilled enough to work on this. I soon learn that there are multiple ways of implementing concurrency and that I needed to place it in the right location, which was in the details panel on the guard. Afterwards, I decided to tinker around with the audio blueprint, and see what best works with the atmosphere of the game
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