Sprint 5 - Paranoia

For sprint 5, I had much less documentation to work on and mainly focused on a couple of spreadsheets for the programmers and on identifying the majority of the sound effects we would need to include in the game to make it feel complete and atmospheric. The first thing I worked on was the spreadsheets for narrative triggers and puzzle dependencies. I started with the puzzle dependencies, going through all of my documents and maps to make sure that I didn't miss any puzzles or items. Using these, I went through each area and listed the puzzles in each one to first get a complete list. Then, I went through each puzzle and fine-tuned its priority, category, location, and whether it was cleaning-dependent. I also included short descriptions for each puzzle, as well as a drop-down for the programmers to change the status of each puzzle's implementation.

After this one was complete, I used the framework I had made and created a narrative trigger spreadsheet. This one is meant to list all the important events triggered as the player progresses through the game. For example, narrative scenes triggered by cleaning a certain percentage of an area, or the feedback a player receives when interacting with specific objects in different states, such as the front door when it is locked versus unlocked. I went through all the important objects that should give the player feedback when interacted with, writing unique short dialogue that will appear to make the player feel more involved and connected with the world.

Once these spreadsheets were completed, I worked on something simple to get a bit of a break. I want the main character's state of mind to be visually indicated to the player, so I made a simple red vignette that subtly intensifies as the character becomes more paranoid.

After this, I began sourcing and processing all the sound effects I thought would be necessary for this build of the game. I started with the footstep sounds, getting walking and running variants of wood, grass, stone, and carpet materials, so the sounds accurately reflected what was being walked on. I then gathered sounds for all the tools, including the spray bottle, the loop that will play when objects are wiped with the sponge, the loops for the shears, and the loop for the hammer. Next, I got the sounds for various interactions, such as opening and closing doors, UI button sounds, and picking up and putting down objects of different sizes and materials. Once I got all these sounds and trimmed them to how I wanted, I processed them with a bitcrusher to give them a slightly aged effect. I tried my best to match the audio bit depth and kHz to those of the PlayStation 2, while ensuring it still sounded full.

Once I had processed all the main sound effects, I turned my focus to the ambient sounds. Instead of just sourcing a full ambient mix from the internet, I decided to take several different sounds, loop them, and layer them together to make custom ambient loops. I made separate loops for the daytime base, nighttime base, on-edge loop, and paranoid loop, respectively.

For the daytime base loop, I used birdsong, pond insects, and wind noise to create the feeling of being on the estate. I didn't want any human noise or city distractions and went with a more peaceful sound. For the nighttime base loop, I used mostly the same layers as the daytime loop, but removed the birdsong and added a cricket track. Birds, in my opinion at least, are very comforting and pleasant to hear, and most of them are asleep by night, so I wanted to completely remove them to increase tension and add to realism. The two more challenging loops to make were the on-edge and paranoid variants. My goal with these two was to build tension by adding lower, subtler sounds to the nighttime base to keep players engaged. For the on-edge loop, I added a bass track that made the base nighttime loop a little more ominous but wasn't too obvious. Then, for the paranoid variant, I added another track on top of that that was a bit more obvious and added even more tension to the loop. I also added increasingly intense sound effects within the paranoid loop, intended to keep the player's ears primed. Overall, I think my work turned out pretty well this sprint, and I'm hoping that we will be able to continue making progress and finish strong.