Hello Stalkers!
Welcome to the new (and hopefully much better) 2021! Refreshed? Full? Ready for new challenges? We certainly do! Immediately after returning from a well-deserved rest, we went to work at full speed. This year will be especially important for us with the upcoming game premiere, so keep your fingers crossed for us!, so keep your fingers crossed for us!
Although we must admit that even during the holidays, not everyone was idle - we used the break to update the Unreal Engine to the latest version 4.26. Thanks to this, the game will work better on PC, and it will also be possible to release it on new generation consoles with raytracing and not only!
In the meantime, we invite you to share some information about what we were working on before we fell into holiday lethargy.
What's ringing there?
Of course, as usual, there are fixes for the major and minor bugs you caught. However, something invisible is worth mentioning at the beginning too. You can’t see it, but you can definitely hear it. Yes, the in-game sound design fixes are incoming!
We have slightly improved the system of additional sounds of the main character's steps - now you can determine the probability of hearing these sounds for each type of surface on which Igor moves (e.g. branches breaking when he walks on a grass, or a piece of glass on a concrete pavement). We are also testing the sounds of walking on various types of rubbish inside buildings. Igor will be much more likely to hit trash/glass/paper along the way.
On top of that, we've also worked a bit on the system that suits Igor's breathing sounds best suited to him, as well as fine-tuning Igor's responses in the Moscow Eye and Red Forest events. We've also added missing sound effects to fill each event action. Plus, we've included the sounds of rain dripping in puddles.
All this will make the experience coming from the Zone even better (especially with headphones).
The Heist!
You often ask us if we will ever post anything related to The Heist - the last mission in the game that will make it all clear!
Seems that any news about The Heist would be currently much more interesting for you than the Chernobylite release date itself! You are so into your early access game that you want to know the finale as soon as possible. It's amazing and we love how much you feel connected with the story! It is also a sign that you liked the game a lot and want more. It makes us more than just happy.
Well, that day has finally come. It is finally time to answer this most pressing question. It's time to give you a little but long-awaited sneak peek from The Heist.
Are you ready?
Here it is!
Ladies and gentlemen, here is a bush. The bush you'll see in The Heist.
Of course, it’s a joke. Sorry for being so cold-blooded and savage with our “readbait”. But believe us, if a higher instance gave us the green light, we would show you much more. However, we agreed on that, we want to provide you with a fully developed end product and at the same time protect you from spoilers.
Give us time and you will not be disappointed. Meanwhile, we collect materials and wait for the aforementioned green light.
But in order not to leave you with anything, in the picture below you can see how we worked on such a detail as hair. With this little trick, we make them look more realistic than before.
Here is another thing worth mentioning. See what tangle of connections we have to go through in the editor so that the hair on the head and on the chin behaves naturally. At the same time, we must take care of their optimization so that the movement of even one little hair will not "crash" the game.
How to hear Chernobyl?
It is no coincidence that the beginning of the report is devoted to the accompanying sounds in the game. Why? Because today we want to introduce you to a man thanks to whom you can "hear" Chernobyl.
Adam Dyrszka deals with the complete sound design of Chernobylite (worth emphasizing: not music! We will write about it later). - I make sure that the game world is filled with sounds everywhere. For example, in the woods trees rustle in the wind, when a soldier walks towards us we hear stomping, when it rains - drops break against windows and windowsills, if something explodes your speakers should shake the whole house. Generally speaking, I do my best to never be too quiet during the game - says Adam.
As he admits, it is quite a challenge to add audio to such mysterious places as the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and the Dead City. - It is easy to thicken the sound environment with chirping birds, flying planes, street noise and other human activity. However, we must remember that this place is dark, lifeless as we know it - he explains. - Apart from the supernatural phenomena characteristic of the game itself, where you can get carried away with fantasy, creating zone sounds takes hours of searching for references, listening to authentic recordings on the spot and then time-consuming testing plus correction. Honestly, looking at the end result I am quite surprised that we managed to get such a varied and interesting background based mainly on the noise of wind, leaves and various crackles - he adds.
The question is how are the sounds for Chernobylite designed? Well, first of all, you must be aware that when designing all kinds of sound effects, we try to create unique content, unique for this project. What does it mean? Where possible, we try to record our own sounds. It is especially important to create your own library of sounds for the characteristic elements of the project - says Adam. - It is best to show it on the example of the title green crystals and any anomalies associated with them. In the game, they make a high-pitched, sometimes squeaky glass noise. I needed something one-of-a-kind, so I borrowed the crystal vases from my grandmother, all she had actually. And then hit them for a few hours with various objects and "played" them with a cello bow.
Another important and at the same time the most characteristic element of our game are the lines spoken by the characters wearing gas masks. In order to achieve such an effect, it was impossible (especially during a pandemic) to invite voice actors to put on masks and speak through them into the microphone. This had to be approached differently. - Our solution was to create a proprietary effect using bandpass filtering. For this purpose, I used several different gas masks and a small speaker from the computer set. I "dressed" this loudspeaker in masks, and then generated a specific sound impulse that I caught with microphones. After running such a recording through the appropriate software, I got a database of some extremely realistic effects that are applied to the dialogues in real time inside the game - explains Adam.
Adam admits directly that recording and creating unique sounds is a great fun and gives a lot of scope to show off. However, not all sound effects can be achieved on their own (e.g. explosions or the noises of certain vehicles), especially with the limited time for project implementation. - That's why we use extensive libraries of very high-quality sounds that allow us to create multi-layered and effective SFXs - he says.
That's it for today!
Take care, Stalkers!