Envision
Cyberpunk, dystopian VR
Skills: Sound Design, Dialogue, Foley
Team: CMU Entertainment Technology Center
Prompt: The game is a walk-through experience of a Dystopian, Cyberpunk society. Under the theme of “surveillance,” there are multiple rooms and characters that represents how commodified people’ life become.
Engine: Unreal 5
Sound Design
There are 78 sound sources in total. I worked closely with our programmer/project manager to implement audio and finesse audio parameters in Unreal 5, such as spatialization, audio level, equalization.
Since the moving mechanism we took on is teleporting by certain increments, we worked on smoothing out the inevitable drop in sound attenuation by adjusting the audio parameters mentioned.
Cityscape
The soundscape of a crime-ridden, grody city helps solidify the world building of a Dystopian, run down society. The city background contains occasional police car chase, dog barking, crowd noises, factory sounds, etc. The soundscape is a 6 minute loop.
While the player doesn’t get to leave the designed area, the soundscape is an efficient way to establish the location and atmosphere of the world.
E-Pet Shop
The soundscape of this damp, poorly maintained pet shop contains of a variety of frog/reptile noises, fans, AC, water drip. Many of the frog sounds are processed recording of our team members, and some sound more mechanical than others to underline the products are E-pets.
For fun, we add “the voice of the shop owner” that’s only audible when the player is extremely close to the windows.
Aural Indirect Control
Sound helps director the players to
- travel through space accordingly
- notice specific themes. For example, the camera shutter sounds help draw the players' attention to the theme of “surveilence”