Did you hear William's screams in the distance and the creak of the door? It's the sound that the audio department took over. For a long time, they have all faced the same ironic problem: no one listened to them. But now, in FPS style, sound has become a core part of design.
Crytek Audio Director Florian Füsslin said: "The audio is mature." "Previously, we preferred flavor and atmosphere. Now we can really bring players to the world. It is very detailed and you can read.
Füsslin means that sound can be information, and in competitive shooting games, information is everything. If you know the origin of your opponent or what you plan to do next, you can make a plan yourself. For Crytek players Hunting: ShowdownUbisoft Rainbow Six: Siege, Even Shootout in modern war In mode, close listening has become a powerful tool.
Crytek chief designer Dennis Schwarz said: "We have basically deprived players of information in the game." In "Hunting: Duel", the map you enter can contain up to 12 other players-but Unlike traditional battle royale games, you can't determine how many people are left. "You have to build mind maps about the surroundings. Because of the lack of information in other areas, sound has been increasingly transmitted."
"While stealth invisibility was taken into account when designing Hunt, the community found that noise could keep them alive by scaring off opponents."
Experienced Hunt players are like one of its powerful bosses: a spider sits in the center of an audio cue network, waiting for prey to sell its place. The giveaway could be multiple sounds: a crow beating by a group of crows disturbed by footsteps, or a terrifying horse tweeting by a passing hunter. Experts learned to distinguish the groan of the old door from the groan of armored zombies, and the groan from nearby branches and long-range rifles.
You can find the same principle in Rainbow Six: Siege, albeit on a much smaller scale. Note that the storytelling sound of the exercise can save you from a grenade salvo, which will penetrate the wall, and the shrill screams from the drone tell you to be alert to spies. The best players can even use gunshots to identify specific enemy operators and prepare defenses accordingly. However, this rich gadget recognition soundboard was not what Ubisoft wanted from the beginning.
"The siege development process was very long and went through multiple iterations," Ubisoft Montreal sound designer Adam Tiller told me. After canceling Rainbow Six: Patriots, Ubisoft left the swollen and violent shooter campaign of the 00s and reduced the series to a map centered on a single building. In these narrow environments where sight is sparse, they find that listening has become increasingly important.
"It may not be planned, but it's been shown long before we can use it," Tiller said. "Of course, as a sound designer, we are happy to use any excuse to emphasize the sound more."
In the years since then, the Siege team's approach to small object noise has changed from "cool sounds to cool visual effects" and has gradually become useful to players. The designer provided the audio team with detailed information about the dimensions of the gadget, how the electronics work and the physical materials. Therefore, they all make clear and recognizable sounds when they are used. "I would doubt whether we would dare to do a sound-centric design without community approval," Tiller said.
The Hunt team has also seen its sound design accepted by players for a long time. Crytek has added a clinker generator and a loud gramophone that hunters can activate in an ambush to cover their path. What they didn't expect was that these environmental noise makers would also be used to intimidate the enemy. Although the stealth feature of stealth was considered when designing Hunt, the community found that noise can make opponents alive by scaring away opponents.
"In our internal testing, we proceeded with caution," Schwartz recalled. "But then we saw players rampaging on the map, headshots and asking for more."
Crytek has developed tools that allow hunters to interfere with the hearing of other players, such as chaotic bombs, which can be thrown 20 or 30 meters, and simulate the sound of a gun battle. Hunter's system also offers some less technical methods: for example, shooting a crow in the distance with a silent gun, which will give the opponent the wrong information about where you are. The game has developed metadata based entirely on the mind maps provided by the sound.
"Sound is one of the things most of me (as humans) don't really care about," Tiller said. "When we make games, we start from scratch. We have to manually recreate what you might not notice in your daily work. All small sound prompts that come to you. However, they are essential for your brain to fully understand the world around you. "
If other shooting studios want to keep up, they should listen carefully.
