Update #16 (New Level Reveal, Sound Design & Camera Movement)

We've got a ton of new content to unpack this week!

Lots of real-life analog sampling & Level -6! 

Highlights:

⋅ Improved Camera Movement System (Sampled from actual handheld cameras

⋅ New Flashlight and Footstep Sound Design (Analog sampled on exact surfaces (Details in "The Details"))

⋅ New Level Reveal! (Level -6 (Bedroom Nostalgia)) ("Nostalgic item additions" Submission Poll coming soon)

⋅ Level 18 Optimizations & Environment rework (Leaks coming soon)

Coming Soon:

⋅ "Nostalgic Item Additions" Submission Poll! (Set for July 25th - 30th)

⋅ Trailer 2! (Estimated 3 weeks out!)

⋅ Level -6 (Bedroom Nostalgia) Leaks (Set for July 26th & 28th)

⋅ Level 18 (Childhood Memories) Leak (Set for July 29th

The Details (for nerds):

This week has been one my (The main dev) personal favorites. Sampling and bringing sounds, textures, items, and camera movements from the real world into UE5 and seeing/hearing the results can be amazing (when it goes right).

First, we set out to capture some real world sounds for footsteps on various surfaces in-game. Using a handheld mic we sampled from various carpets, tile, various concrete surfaces, and a few foam and foam mat surfaces. Next we took our raw samples and slapped them into our DAW (digital audio workspace). After a fair amount of picking and choosing ( * throwing out half of our samples), noise reduction, and a few room reverb profiles, we exported our finished samples and replaced our cues in UE5. Sound Design can go a long way in adding those nuanced details that make an environment believable and trick us for a moment into believing it's real. 

In addition to sound sampling we also got a chance to fully 3D scan and bring in-game a handful of childhood nostalgia. After reaching out and compiling a list of some of our most nostalgic and memorable childhood toys, games, chairs, and items we got to work 3D scanning and creating our model replicas. (For anyone curious we used the Shining Einstar 3D scanner as our main scanner). We finished scanning and exported all our models and textures into straight into UE5 to test our results. We then went back and scanned everything again. After perfecting as much as we could we were finally satisfied with all of our bottled nostalgia. But, we also realize that only a small amount of people will find our popular childhood toys nostalgic. So, to try to get as many peoples childhood memories in game as possible, we're going to be opening up a Submission Poll where everyone will be able to submit their favorite/most haunting childhood items and we will pick a top 7 to recreate and add into Subliminal! (Details will be posted very soon in a separate post)