Degree Show 2025

Through the environment there are soundscapes emitting from various object. Some of these are leaning on the side of realistic whereas others fall into supernatural. For example, the radio masts and boats have a generally representational sound, but the audio source is slightly warped and distorted. They also resonate in an unnatural way. The dark ambience from other objects, like the windows in the first cabin and the wardrobe in the next are completely nonrepresentational. They emit a loop of a warped underworld. Processed samples of wind, contact mic recordings, piano, and waves are some of the textures used to create these loops. The technical intention was to experiment with Google Resonance emitters as they have the ability to create a very focused field of audio. You can tune these to the point where they emit a spatialised field of only a few inches wide and a few feet forward when in the shotgun configuration. My aesthetic intention was to create sounds inspired by the likes of games known for their dark ambiences. Notably, Bloodborne, for its use of audio in the sequences of talking to characters behind locked doors. It’s a cheap but effective trick to use when adding depth to a game space – the acousmatic sound your only option to comprehend an unknowable sequence. Moreover, I looked at games like Alien Isolation, Inside and the Stalker series. They all rely heavily on environmental audio to inject horror and tension to their respective style of game. Alien Isolation for example consistently keeps you on your toes with the constant rumbling and whirring of the space station. This distorts the players experience into one where no environment feels fully safe. A similar approach was used in Inside but in this case the story is told almost entirely through the mood of the environmental audio with each section introducing new layers of cosmic industrial horror. I found the bridge sequence and underwater sequences to be particularly effective in conveying this and tried to replicate some of the distorted, subdued, and brutal textures Martin Andersen created for the game.

The design of the footsteps was partly inspired by Escape from Tarkov, it being a hyper realistic game based in unity. The visual style prompted me to revisit the game where I drew inspiration from the sparkly and crunchy player SFX. I opted for a spline system that would run the audio around the coastline relative to the player. This is a much more efficient implementation with regards to performance, but it also negated the risk of having any phasing or dead spots where the water could not be heard – factors that could break the immersion. I also implemented an interior audio system based on FMOD snapshots. This is a simple but effective method to differentiate between the various game spaces. When the player walks into a building a snapshot event is triggered which smoothly brings down the outside ambience, brings up a room tone wind, and sends the player SFX to a reverb. There are two sizes of reverbs available to better match the different buildings in the level. The outside ambience becomes uncannily quiet to better accentuate the presence of the dark ambience.