Secret Keep - Dev Diary 24: Sound Propagation

2023-12-25th - Xmas Update!
A look at where I'm at with sound propagation, and laying the foundations for the AI Guards (and later, other characters as well).
Disclaimer: I'm using placeholder sounds from Thief while prototyping and getting features working.

[@Cutting2Night]

Thanks for that in-depth look! What a nice Christmas present 😁
Happy holidays!
🎄🎅🌟

[@ehcmier]

Very nice! It's pretty dang effective, and as a taffer, comforting in that paradoxical way.
Merry Christmas, man.

[@DalaiViD]

Do you find positioning the audio source in the doorway feels natural and isn't too confusing? I've built a couple of systems like this before and last time I used the path length to reduce the sound volume, but kept the direction towards the real source, so that the player can still discern the location of nearby guards accurately. Putting the sound source in the doorway means all the sounds will stack up in the same place, not sure if that amount of fuzziness adds to the tension or if it makes the sneaking frustrating since you can't tell where the guards are exactly?

[@muzboz]

That's a really interesting point, actually!
I've not tried it without the re-positioning of the sounds.
Perhaps just applying suitable FX (volume damping, LPF, Reverb) could be enough to just make it all work!
Without positioning it in a doorway, or opening through which the sound came.
I guess I just felt like the sound, in real life, would come via an opening, and you'd hear it there, even if it had bounced around to get to that opening.
I really need to test it with a better level generation algorithm, so I have more extreme cases of the layout of rooms and hallways, and see how that feels.
I could always try making them play from their actual source position. :D