Simon'n'Dodge

Simon'n'Dodge

"Simon'n'Dodge" was initially an exam project for a course teaching us how to implement audio in Unreal Engine.

Mechanics:

1. Simon says.

The AI generates a musical sequence the player must copy. Playing an error forces a reset and the player is teleported to the starting position.  

2. Patrolling drones are roaming in the level.

They can see and can hear, if they spot you a detection meter will fill up, once filled they will chase you down and end the game. The patrollers can be seen through walls holding ‘R’.

3. Throwables

The player can pick up throwable bombs, these can be thrown to distract the patrollers for a while.
The patrollers will investigate the impact zone before continuing to roam.

4. Keys

To reach the final room the player must find keys. These keys produce a specific sound that will guide the player to them.

Controls:

W,A,S,D – movement

‘Space’ - Jump

‘R’ - Patroller Sense

‘F’ - Interact

‘LMB’ - Throw Bomb

Samples used:

Custom produced and edited:

AI_exam_Chimes_1-FlamGlock

AI_exam_Chimes_2-FlamGlock

AI_exam_Chimes_3-FlamGlock

AI_exam_Chimes_4-FlamGlock

Ellen_Footsteps_Stone_01 -> 09

Ellen_Footsteps_Puddle_01 -> 06

CellyVoca_Ellen_Attack_2__enhanced_

CellyVoca_Ellen_Attack_3__enhanced_

CellyVoca_Ellen_Attack_6__enhanced_

CellyVoca_Ellen_Attack_8__enhanced_

Ellen_Grenadeer_Voca_01

Ellen_Grenadeer_Voca_09

Ellen_Grenadeer_Voca_15

Ellen_NPCIdle

Ellen_Success_2a

Ellen_Whoosh_Staff_1

Ellen_Whoosh_Staff_2

Ellen_Whoosh_Staff_3

Ellen_Whoosh_Staff_4

EllenOST2

External:

Ellen_Shimmer by Soundly

rumble_f_001 by Sonnis GDC Game Audio Bundle - 3Maze - Dronea

Windy_storm_with_trees_rustling_and_bird_croaking by Sonnis GDC Game Audio Bundle - dmt3p - Forest Orchestra

Plop by DAE

Ellen_SpaceHanger_Selecting-001 by Soundly

SciFi_Blasts_1 Soundly

SciFi_Blasts_2 Soundly

SciFi_Blasts_3 Soundly

Error_Sound_01 Soundly

Error_Sound_02 Soundly

Error_Sound_03 Soundly

Error_Sound_04 Soundly

Ellen_UIBleeps-003 by Soundly

Ellen_UIBleeps-005 by Soundly

Ellen_UIBleeps-006 by Soundly

Ellen_UIBleeps-008 by Soundly

058_Drone_-_ANTIUSFX_Zenhiser by Zenhiser

Globally most assets used inside the project are static straight one-shots or short looped Metasounds with slight pitch or start offsets, which would also be possible with soundcue's.
The environmental drones however are something else completely.

MS_Soundscape_Drone has a collection of 3 wave players. One with a –8 semitone pitch shift. One that has a random start offset time based on the duration of the input sample, pitched up by 7 semitones. And one with the same random start offset with an added randomized pitch shift between –32 and –24 semitones.
These 3 then are crossfaded with eachother, go trough limiters, get mixed in to a mono mixer. This signal is then split into a low-pass and high pass filter, each with a graph input slider.
Finally the resulting signal is mixed and sent to the mono output.

This essentially produces an endless drone loop from a single waveasset.
Once I had the drone running I used it as a framework for another ’Wind’ environment sound.

MS_RoboVoca, the vocalization of the patrolling NPC’s, is another example of a mildly complex Metasound.
The input is an array of 3 different samples.
The index selection is randomized per loop and has a random pitch shift between –5 and +1 semitones.
The output becomes Mono and sent to both a Bitcrusher and a Ringmod. The Ringmod In carrier is a sinewave and the In modulation is the waveplayer output. The ringmod gets compressed and both Bitcrushed and Compressed signal are mixed with eachother and sent to the output. Giving a fun low fidelity effect as a result

The Simon Note Stands change their inner sphere's material dynamically, briefly, while playing their corresponding musical notes. Green for a correct choice and Red for a bad one.

In parallel, when the player selection phase begins, an overlay material will be drawn when the player is close enough and is looking in the direction of said sphere, giving a form of player feedback.

The complexity here was to set up a system that would generate a random sequence of played notes, save that sequence, delegate them to the correct Stand and check if the player selects the correct note or not. On top of that I wanted a dynamic difficulty parameter that controls the amount, similarity and speed of the played notes.

Using a custom built mixer I was able to push passive mixes based on dynamic events. A player SFX would duck the music for example. Routing sounds to busses I was also able to control volume through UI elements.

By using a save state system the user is able to control Master, Music, SFX and UI buss volumes which are then set or saved until the bus parameters are updated again.

The Patroller was equiped with a procedural Niagara object that changes is shape based on audio near its location in 3D space. A FOV Decal was also introduced to show the player what the Patroller actually sees. Stepping inside this region fills a meter, once the meter is full they'll give chase.

I was able to implement hearing and seeing systems using the built-in AIPerception and PawnSensing systems.

AIPerception allowed me to add "hearing" logic and PawnSensing allowed me to add "seeing" logic.

The throwable sends out a Noise Report on the impact location. Allow the player to sneak past Patrollers.

Pickups spread throughout the level emit a specific spatialized sound, guiding the player to their location.

A special thank you for helping me build this project:

Alexander Deweppe,
Bert Wouter,
My classmates,
Game Design Guy Community,
The Unreal Source Community, 
TheSoundFXGuy Community

And of course the entire DAE school for teaching and honing me new skills

Link to project: 
https://tinyurl.com/simonndodge