Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1524863
120 M PS E . O R G tunnels to cathedral like spaces, and a gift where our need matched the tech advance precisely. All sound is recorded and designed super dry of reverb, relying on the in-game processing to bed those sounds into the environment. With Until Dawn, we had to write our own dual-reverb- zone system. For House of Ashes, we had spatial volumes playing beds 2D inside and 3D outside, portals focusing and diffracting sound sources through multiple reverb zones with directionality, early reflections emitted from the environment closest to the listener (camera), late reverbs filling the surrounds and attenuation curves that controlled the drop off over distance, the wet/dry, the richness, even the speed of sound. The results were stunning! While working on the VR title Rush of Blood in 2016, we envisioned a suite of features we struggled to name correctly, using terms like 'directional reverb tails' and 'environmentally responsive early reflections' and although it took a few years for these to arrive, it was worth the wait. Not only did this improve the immersion in the environments, but every sound, gunshots especially, described the environments perfectly. Directionality and proximity of enemies felt so natural, and this setup even improved the sense of intimacy with creatures that reacted to your sound. This was a literal paradigm shift and is now an everyday practice. How much runtime audio signal processing do you incorporate into your games? Can you explain the impact this has on the overall sound experience? BP: We push for runtime signal processing and plug-ins 99% of the time, versus baking effects into assets. On a base level, this enables a better mix delivery giving more control to adapt the sound, leads to a more cohesive experience and assures the same quality in multiple languages. But its greatest win is to give analogous control over a sound behavior to match and follow the narrative. All processing, effects, spatialization, attenuation, occlusion, and mixing is live and interactive which is essential to be adaptable when a seq is edited, a camera is moved, or we desire to Alien vampires - House of Ashes ‒ Act 2 Jason, House of Ashes ‒ Act 3 Rush of Blood