Hello Neyyah adventurers - far and wide! It has been a while since I last updated the Neyyah steam page. My last entry involved discussing exciting adventures ahead with the game development: what 2023 has to offer! At the moment, sound development is the main focus, and I want to share with you some of the work so far - revealing my process, what software I use, and how the sounds become part of the Neyyah world.
A whole new dimension of life has been unlocked with putting the sound into Neyyah's world.
It's been an amazing process so far, working from raw sounds I have recorded myself (with the exception of a couple of natural based elements which I'll mention later on this update)
- A screenshot showing one of the scenes from Neyyah within Visionaire Studio 5 game engine, and the sound 'containers' associated with this scene
These sounds are then manipulated within the DAW I use called Sonar Cakewalk Platinum, where I mix a variety of these raw recordings together to generate very realistic, full - sometimes very complex - sounds for the game. I also have to make sure these all run smoothly within Visionaire Studio 5. When it all works out well ... it brings a smile to my face, hopping from one location to the other - not just seeing visuals change, but the sounds along with them.
- a recent devlog where I demonstrate my sound design process (a visual cut down on some of the topics I'll be touching upon in this update!)
Suddenly, everything really feels alive. There's new life breathed into these environments, and I want to discuss with you my process in making this happen ...
.YY.
I'll start from the beginning ...
I have always been interested in anything creative, whether that's writing stories, creating art (painting, drawing, clay modelling) or music (playing guitar, performing as a singer / songwriter, producing music etc). Music took me further down a passion rabbit hole in my mid-late teens, where I studied Music Technology for my BTEC National Award course during my A level studies here in England, which I gained a distinction (and made the recording studio at school pretty much my second home at the time!).
- certificate of my BTEC Music Production course (obtained 2009!)
By the time I was living in Western Australia in 2012, I started pursuing music in various ways - through performing, songwriting, recording and teaching music too!
Recording and producing music has always been a fun process for me. I love the visual sense to it, and imagining / envisioning the detail within a soundtrack - pulling songs apart, hearing all the layers that make up a recording, and how they've been mixed, etc.
In making Neyyah, I have found myself mostly consumed by the art side of development - building the worlds in Blender, rendering the scenes for the game, etc. It's been really nice taking a break from this, and all the engine implementation work to solely focus on generating the 'sounds' for Neyyah. Not the music - this will follow ... although I have briefly touched upon this in some of my previous test builds ...
- an example here in my 2021 Felitsu Island Walkway test build playthrough
Nope. For now, I am focussing only on sounds.
.YY.
I have to start off this sound design journey by introducing to you 'MOVO'. He's been recruited as my sound design companion in this sound design adventure. He comes in very handy, and has a good ear for what sounds good ;P
- feel free to watch Movo's introduction on this dev log!
The Tascam recorder has been wonderful in sourcing a majority of Neyyah's sounds - from local areas around Felixstowe, Suffolk, England, as well as being in Western Australia recently for the filming of the live action characters for Neyyah - more on this at a later date!
As with Neyyah's visuals, I really want to focus on the details in where sounds are coming from within the game world. Each environment is different, despite the nearby rocky outcrops or ocean looking the same. There might be more of a beach in which the player is situated within the game, so the sounds of the ocean may change - foliage rustling in the sea breeze, insects in the nearby foliage, etc. The sound of the ocean will change depending if the player is surrounded by rocky walls, or up high on a rickety steel platform, the railings taking a bit of a battering from the sea breeze ... And maybe a portal is releasing its siren up ahead; this will either louden or quieten depending on how close you may be to it.
- having fun with Youtuber 'Adventure Game Geek', recording sounds at Shingle Street, Suffolk, England. Check out his amazing adventure game reviews here: https://www.youtube.com/@AdventureGameGeek/featured
Once I have a variety of sounds recorded, I can then jump into the game and start to dissect the areas in which to work on, one by one. I may need to record more sounds to accommodate for a given environment, but what I've found with the way I work in designing sounds for Neyyah is I can very quickly take any sound I have and alter in such a way that it fits what it needs to represent. Sometimes, it's not so easy, and takes just a bit more searching or potentially recording ... But the process of dragging sounds into the DAW program I use called Sonar Cakewalk Platinum and then moulding something completely different (churning out the complex machinery of a portal machine firing into life, for example) isn't very difficult to achieve!
- another example which I video captured and slammed onto the Neyyah Youtube channel, where I show the tracks / sounds used to generate an eerie atmospheric ambience for a dark corridor in the game, from Cakewalk, into Audacity and finally Visionaire
Cakewalk enables me to bring out more in each sound I add - whether that's a creaking floorboard, a generator gurgle, a steamy hiss, a squeaky tap, or a metal scrape ... The sounds range from very quiet to sometimes very loud, and boosting the gain / volume is something I can do in Cakewalk too. Equalisation is a big key to making some amazing sounds in the game, and adjusting this when necessary. A wooden door opening or closing may require more on the high end frequencies, as the original recording may sound too bassy and full for the type of door having the sound effects applied to.
- an example of tracks within Cakewalk, and a reverb effect bringing out more depth to a particular track.
Reverb may be used to great effect for interior locations. It also softens metallic sounds, and helps add more body to a mix as well.
A great example of interior vs exterior is how one door within the game may have two different versions for its 'opening' state (and the same would be done for the 'closing' state too). The reverb would come in handy for the interior version, where the sound of the door opening may have a more reverberating quality to it, while outside it may sound cleaner and closer, too.
- Exterior position of door, where sound of the closing / opening will be brighter and closer and the textures of the sounds (creaking, hinge squeaking, possible wood scuffing the floor, door knocking against the post after it opens) will be sharper
- On the other side, the same sound mix can be used - however, this time, more reverb may be added to certain / or all tracks to give the sound a more airy and echoing sound. This all adds to the realism and immersion.
Another element of the sound design which I find really fun and is usually the 'icing on the cake' once I have a mix finished is adding automation to certain tracks. In the instance of the doors, the creaking sound which plays as the door opens might pan more on the left or right speaker, depending on the direction it's moving. This gives the sound a more immersive effect which fits the visual.
- in this video, I captured some work from Sonar Cakewalk, implementing a delay effect, which is also being automated, so the effect itself can change within the track. Automation offers various avenues of sound design creativity!
Neyyah's sounds can fall into two main categories - ambience (background sounds such as ocean, generators, distant animals, environment noises in general ...) and interactive sounds (which would come under buttons being pressed, levers pulled, or doors opening / closing). Such interactive sounds usually play against an animation. These sounds have to sync with these animations during the gameplay, so when the animation is triggered within Visionaire Studio 5, the sound plays simultaneously!
- creating sounds for a portal machine
In Cakewalk, I am able to bring in the animation and perform the mix of sounds to sync exactly where I need them to be within the game. Some door sounds (if, for instance, they share the same materials, use the same mechanics to open with the game world) can be recycled, but certain adjustments might need to made to sync with extra or less frames one animation might contain. This can easily be done within Cakewalk usually. Animations are brought into Neyyah as frame sequences (.webp files) so they're recorded from the game using OBS, cut and exported as .mp4s, then imported into Cakewalk.
Once a mix is finished, I can then bring it over to Audacity where I export it as an .ogg file, and perhaps add some extra gain to the mix before I send it over to Visionaire Studio 5.
- adjusting gain volumes and comparing mixes within Audacity before exporting as .ogg files
Audacity, while having a less powerful array of effects compared to what my Cakewalk Platinum Suite has to offer, has been useful in speed and pitch shifts for certain raw sound recordings, turning the sound of cicadas for example into more frog like noises!
- in this scene for example, rather than working with a multitude of mechanical sounds, I have created a very natural earthy soundscape, full of insects, birds and other interesting sounds! I have also captured this from within a test play in Visionaire, and can observe what sounds are playing on any given scene, keeping track of what sounds should or shouldn't be playing!
.YY.
Visionaire offers a nice extensive use of tools for having sound within a project! Big thanks to Simon on the Visionaire discord for assisting me with some of the following tools and processes, too!
- A screenshot from within Visionaire, revealing scene and what should happen at the beginning of the scene (in the case of sound design, I'm showing the list of sounds which will play).
Each of these sounds is in fact a container of sounds. Audio containers within Visionaire can hold as many tracks as you like, and some of the ambience containers I've created are a mix of ocean sounds, insect sounds, winds, etc - all mixed into one container to play at a given time.
Buttons and levers don't require containers, as they can play upon an action such as a left click. The useful element to an audio container is that they are set to play automatically (and loop if necessary) upon any scene and so when loading a saved game, they will play automatically, and you won't be left with silence, until your first click left, right or forward (or look up, down, zoom in, zoom out ... whatever it may be).
- for instance, this button will play a sound which pressed, so the sound is integrated into the engine in a different way.
The other cool thing with Visionaire is the use of blend tracks - something which Simon helped me with recently. They enable sounds to fade in and out, louden or quieten, depending where you're at in the game - what value is set. Each blend track is set to a value within Visionaire, and usually range from 0 (being silent) and 50 (being the loudest - to whatever volume is set for the entire container). This has been a wonderful way to blend and fade certain soundscapes together. For example, a slight shift from being at ground level to a higher platform above sea level may be implemented into Visionaire using containers which share some similar sounds, but alterations may be made to certain volumes, or maybe one track has been completely reworked in Cakewalk to cater for the environment change, so having a fade from one container into another (one drops, the other rises in value) can have some very nice effects of traversing through environments within the game! They work very well too. My job is to double check that all containers are doing what they should be doing!
- This container has a variety of sounds happening. While all set to hit a value of 50, they individual tracks will be set to various volumes. The container volume is like the master volume for all contained sounds!
.YY.
There's still a bunch of environments that need sound added, but so far, it's been wonderful jumping from one area of the game to the other. There's definitely a big shift in the way the game delivers itself now, breathing a whole new source of energy and life into the game. The prerendered graphics now speak to you, and you can almost just stay stationery at one given scene and just listen to the world around you. It's fantastic, and I can't wait to fill the entire Neyyah world with sound!
Thanks for checking in on this update! I hope to make a start on some music for Neyyah by end of the month too, but I know my time is very much occupied for the sound elements. Will be great to finally share some of my plans and ideas for Neyyah's music!
Again, check out my recent dev log on sound design here, which goes through the process in real time, where I discuss what I'm doing in cakewalk, listening back to sounds, mixing, and also working in Visionaire!
Til next time! Hope this all sounds good to you ;P
- Aaron Gwynaire / Defy Reality Entertainment