Blindfire - Technical Audio Design

On Blindfire, I was responsible for creating the link between audio design and game design. For the audio designers, I prototyped systems that allowed them to seamlessly implement their assets in game. This meant that they could iterate on their ideas more quickly. For the game designers, I provided insight to how audio can be best utilised into their mechanics, as well as the limitations of what can be achieved. I then assisted in ensuring there was a constant dialogue between these two disciplines.

Elevation System

In response to the feedback players had to the trailer, the Designers decided to add gantries to some of the levels. This added a level of verticality that our existing audio technologies weren’t able to clearly communicate. This isn’t ideal in most games, but for a game like Blindfire which is primarily navigated through sound, we had to solve this.

My solution was to use height offset between the listener (the character you’re playing as), and the other players in the level. That way we could treat the audio differently when another player is above or below you. Since only “elevation” is provided by default in Wwise, I asked a programmer to calculate the offsets for me, and to send the resultant values as RTPC’s to Wwise. I then used this data to apply volume attenuation and filtering to enemy gunfire and Foley.

Further, we realised that certain sounds were noticeably unclear for being spatialised. In his GDC talk on Spatial Audio, Ian Kelly talks on this point. He mentions that tonal sounds without broadband content are particularly hard to pinpoint. To help alleviate this issue, we bussed and attenuated certain sounds such shell-casings when they were offset too far. This left the noisier elements to paint the spatial picture.