Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1524863
112 M PS E . O R G How did you ensure that the audio playback resulted in a soundscape that was crisp, detailed, and uncluttered? HS: So, in terms of multi-player, one aspect to consider is how content is handled when it originates from your own character versus your teammates' character. You can have the same weapon being fired by both your character in a first- person view or your teammate who is 100 meters in front of you. You might want a much more shallow attenuation over distance for when you are firing the weapon, to give it priority in terms of loudness in the mix, compared to your teammate who should get much quieter as the distance increases from camera to character. To do this, you can either have two separate sets of content and structures, which means twice the setup and twice the content to maintain, or alternatively, you could have a single set of content and structures, but dynamically, change the routing and attenuation over distance based on whether it is you or your teammate firing. The latter approach is what we went for and it helped us to optimize the mix depending on who was firing a weapon and every other sound associated with the player, including Foley and equipment. Naturally as well, we have many enemies and environmental sources of sound in this game, so not only are all four of your teammates causing chaos, but many other aspects of the gameplay add to the challenge of handling the mix. For this title, we made strong use of Wwise's HDR feature, which helped us to create a hierarchy of priority for every sound in the mix and then use that to decide how much one sound should duck another based on the category of each sound. It works very effectively to create momentary space in the mix and allow every transient and attack to come through cleanly, which is particularly important in a shooter like this with a lot of short, sharp sounds like gunshot and explosions, etc. We also leaned on other techniques at a more macro level, with dynamic EQ and dynamic ratio compression to further control and make room for sound effects against the music and dialogue, increasing in effectiveness as the gameplay gets busier. There are textures in the game that result from different armor, equipment, and weapon load-outs, etc…. From where did you source that material and can you talk a bit about implementing that into the game? JF: As our PlayStation Foley team got brought onto the project, we had a few style meetings with Arrowhead's sound designer, Olliver Andersson, to discuss the weight and heft of weapons and armor in the game. The Foley (i.e.: footsteps, gear, and clothing) had to have space marine character, consist of highly modular parts, and performed with self-awareness of its place in the mix. Sony's Foley stage in San Diego is loaded with lots of great props acquired over decades by our PlayStation sound designers, as well as a vast footwear selection I brought from my previous cinema- oriented Foley stage. For armor, I took inspiration from Andy Malcolm and Gary Hecker. They posit that the sound of heavy armor won't come from hitting metal plates together. Rather, metal plate rattle should serve as heft indicators for the overall thump of a plate carrier or a hard leather ballistic vest. Helldivers can wear light, medium, and heavy gear sets and scaling that weight for each armor set was important to add variety to the footsteps and traversal. We created separate baseline clothing to correspond to weight class. For weapons Foley,