Introductory Cutscene with Foley
Gameplay - Headphones Recommended
SoulSync City is a first person shooter with a heavy focus on mobility. In the left hand, the player carries a pistol which deals more damage as the player moves faster. In the right hand, the player wields multiple tools that enable the player to move quickly through movement similar to dashing and "rocket jumping". In this project, I was the sole sound designer in charge of creating all sound effects and implementing all audio into the engine, be it sound effects or music and it's transition behavior, through modifying and creating both scripts and prefabs. Alongside this, I had minor involvement with the development of the tools and tended to find ways to "break" the tools and find strong combos through playtesting.
All sounds were typically made of smaller sounds, attempting to cohesively and accurately represent actions with multiple smaller actions. I would often try to "strip" a sound down to what was making each small part of the overall sound effect. For example, with mantling, it was the mechanical hands hitting the ledge, the servos that enable the robotic movements, and the fabric of the clothes brushing the surface. After identifying these, I searched for sounds that appeared to fit close enough to what I was expecting before I cleaned them up and modified them to better fit each element of the sound effect.
As part of the process of implementing, I had been using an Audio Source Pool which was initially setup by the team's programmers. However, I was finding ways it was overly restrictive in what it allowed, so I was often modifying the functionality to enable more variation in how sounds were played to fit the source. After a few changes, I decided to make my workflow a bit more streamlined by creating a singleton similar to a dictionary of Audio wrapper classes that had automatic unpacking functionality to make implementation easier across the project.
As for the game design, I had some minor involvement in helping to lay out the groundwork of the tools and mechanics, as I already had experience working with these systems in my high mobility shooter prototype, particularly helping to keep them controlled in overall speed and direction. Most of my involvement in those areas had been through "breaking the tools" using knowledge from other games that I've played with similar mobility to do so, or pushing for changes that would add more ways each tool could be used like combos through how they function on a scripting level.
This game also found its way into MDev (Midwest Game Developers Conference), where our display was run by our producers. There, we won the Best of Showcase: Student Entry 2024.
