BOTINATOR
Technical Sound Designer & Composer
SUMMARY
Botinator is a physics‑driven FPS adventure game blending puzzle and combat mechanics. This is a project where I had full creative and technical freedom, as I was responsible for the creation of assets as well as the implementation. There's a huge emphasis on physics in-game. Therefore a lot of the systems were parameter controlled, to match with the oumph the game showcases!
PS: I made an in-depth video where I show and reflect upon the events! I would recommend watching it if something on this page seems unclear.
FMOD Walkthrough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7EJfgJNRFM
DESTRUCTION
Every destruction sound is controlled by a parameter sheet - which layers more samples the stronger the impact force is. The start offset is also manipulated by the impact parameter - Playing from an earlier point in the sample when there's a stronger impact. This gives a lot of dynamics with the transients, as I save the transient part of the samples for the stronger impacts :)
WATER
The water sounds consist of three different events! Water Enter, Water Exit and Water Loop. Let's plaska!
The Water Enter loop plays similarily to the Destruction sound more layers with a stronger impact force, but also plays a nested Scatterer instrument which simulates water drops landing around you. I explained this system in my walkthrough video if you're interested in reading more!
Water Loop also layers more samples during a stronger velocity, which is calculated by multiplying the mass of the moving object to the speed of it.
Also EQing was a huge part in getting the sounds right, as I'm removing highs from the sound during lower velocity to save dynamics.
Every footstep calculates how deep the footstep is in the water, and sends it to a parameter which modifies the sound appropriately. You'll hear more light splashing in shallow water, and gradually more sloshing, wading sounds when in deep water.
Any object which emits from a point underwater has a low pass applied to it, which is handled through code.
Combat + Reverb System
- Combat SFX -
The Spider VO was made using Serum. I just played around with my keyboard until it had the right whispy robotic tone!
Also some of the spider VO was granularily created using Ableton's granulator. By running a sample through it, I got a lot of nice repetitive digital sounds that I chopped up and added into FMOD.
I separated most of the layers of the sounds so that FMOD could run a unique combination each time it played.
The Spider's Flamethrower plays inside a transition region, that moves to it's ending sample should the bool switch to true.
- The Reverb System -
In Unity, the game's areas are mapped out in zones. There are four different zone types:
Outside, Cave, Room, Tunnel. A player can exist in multiple zones at the same time, and your sum zone location is always clamped to 1.
Through Raycasts, the size of the current room is also calculated, which affects my reverbSize parameter. This mods some values of the reverb to affect Early Reflections, Decay Time, as well as High Cut.
It works really nicely and isn't as expensive as the earlier version of reverb calculation, which handled it through voxels and raycasts. The old system tanked the FPS when something loud happened in the metal tunnels, so this is a much cheaper alternative as no expensive calculations are made!