Sandy Soldiers
These past two weeks I finished the rest of the ant sounds:
attacking (1 hr)
walking (30 min)
And then made the trooper sounds:
getting hit (1 hr)
dying (1 hr)
attacking (3 hr)
equipping (1 hr)
walking (1.5 hr)
1 ) Ant
The ant sounds were made with my voice (and effects). The pincher sound was made with nail clippers and scissors.
Instead of a whole walk cycle, the ant walk sound is split into individual footsteps that will be randomized together in Unity to create a natural sounding walk. But here is a demo of what they’d sound like together:
2 ) Trooper Attacking
The challenge with the trooper sounds was making all of the specific variations for each sound. For example, there needed to be an attack sound for the medium trooper with a sword. And then each of these needed three slight variations just so that you weren’t hearing the same exact sounds over and over in the game. Because you have so many of the same troops, this is especially relevant.
These sounds didn’t include the impact of the attack, but rather the swinging. For the swinging sounds, I used a broom handle and swung it in front of my mic to create a ‘woosh’ sound. I pitched that sound up or down depending on what weapon was being used and who was using the weapon (medium soldier vs golem). And then I added a bit of sand sounds as body movement.
The difference between the fist and sword sounds is subtle, but I think it will make sense in context.
The bow sound was made with elastic workout bands plus a high pitched woosh at the end, and some sandy stuff for body movement.
medium trooper bow
To different the golem from the medium trooper, I added some ‘large shifting rock’ sounds. To create this I took some pebble crunching, pitched it down, and added some distortion.
golem hammer attack
3 ) Trooper Equipping
For the equipping sounds, I just made a generic sound and then layered on top of that. The generic sound was made with jacket movements and a bag of sugar.
Then the armor and sword sounds were made using pots, pans, and knives.
4 ) Trooper Walking
The walking sounds were made using similar sounds to the ant walking: bag of sugar, sugar crunches, etc. To distinguish between golem and medium trooper I made the golem footsteps more boomy.
The golem is a complete walk cycle because of the rock shifting sounds that make the golem stand out. With the medium trooper it was easier to just make individual footsteps that can be aligned with the animation in Unity.
It’s been a lot of work these past few weeks, and I’m very happy with how it all turned out. Next is the implementation, which is the area in which I know the least, but I’ve got some programmers helping me so it should be cool. The one thing I haven’t added to any of the sounds is reverb. I’ve been waiting to see what they all sound like in game to do so. I’m not sure if that was the best choice, but we’ll see haha. As always, thank you for reading! And Happy Thanksgiving!
Cover art by Lin Yang, from our game Defenders of the Dune.