Follow The Sound: A Procedural Audio Minigame

In-game screenshot from Follow The Sound.

From the beginning of February until the end of April, I did an internship at Nemisindo, a fast-growing start-up company that offers state of the art services in procedural audio. My main task was to design and build a minigame in Unreal Engine that would showcase as many of the procedural models featured in their plugins as possible.

As of early August 2022, Nemisindo has three plugins for the Unreal Engine out in the market (plus plugins for Unity, and more to come):

• The Action Pack, which includes Explosion, Gunshot, Rifle, Helicopter, Jet, Propeller, Rocket, Alarm, Alert, Siren and Fire models.
• The Adaptive Footsteps, which comes with 5 different shoe types, 7 surface types and additional controls for the pace, step firmness, steadiness, etc.
• The Nature Pack, which brings nature-inspired Droplets, Fire, Rain, Water, Waves and Wind models to any interactive environment.

As is illustrated above, the sonic options are many. But making a game that has a smooth audio-driven gameplay while concisely featuring many of the above models was a unique challenge.

My initial idea was to make a third person shooter kind of game, implementing the Rifle and Footsteps models on the main character and the rest in the scene’s environment and objects.

But that’s beaten to death, right? Plus, the intense action might shift the player’s attention from the audio to the graphics. So, how does one keep the game audio-focused?

After a bit further brainstorming, the answer came in the form of a common game mechanic that has stood the test of time like few, but approached with a slightly unorthodox mindset:

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Collectibles. But emitting directional sound and being hidden in a 3D scene.

That’s roughly how Follow The Sound came to be. The objective is quite simple: there are ten sound emitting items scattered around the map. Each item is visually representative of the sound it emits. Can you locate and collect them all in under three minutes?

All sounds are procedurally generated at runtime.

Here’s some basic information about the sound models used in the game:

• Collectibles: Droplet, Gunshot, Rifle, Explosion, Jet, Helicopter, Propeller, Alarm, Fire, Rocket
• Footsteps: Trainers/Sneakers on Concrete, Gravel and Grass surfaces
• Nature Ambience: Wind model from the Nature Pack
• UI Collection Sound: Two-Tone Siren model (yes, with enough imagination, you can also make procedural UI sounds!)

Follow The Sound was created in Unreal Engine 4.26. All 3D models used in the minigame are free assets downloaded from the Unreal Marketplace (City Park Environment Collection by SilverTm) and from cgtrader.com.

Learn more about Nemisindo’s Action Pack, Adaptive Footsteps and Nature Pack at nemisindo.com.

I’d like to thank my PhD supervisor and CEO of Nemisindo, Dr. Joshua Reiss, for this creatively and technically didactic opportunity. Additionally, I’d like to thank Nemisindo members Selim Sheta, Jack Walters and Clifford Moses Manasseh for their valuable feedback and help in packaging the final version of the game.

You can freely download a Windows version of Follow The Sound here.