A Key Element During Stormy Weather news

Last year, I began my quest into the wild world of space restrictors and stereo audio in Shadow of Chernobyl. I've had the chance over this long period to re-evaluate my own work and style for this mod, inspired by games I've been playing recently with exceptional audio, such as Limbo and The Last of Us. My skills have grown a bit and there are some things that I've needed to revisit and update along the way.

A big part of my stormy weather audio overhaul, which is the entire subject of Dev Diary 12 (yup, still workin on that), is getting interior audio right. The audio can't get in the way and be jarring, but it still has to be showcased enough to put you in the environment. It has to make you feel like you are there.

Pretend it is raining heavily. Pretend you are in this small, decrepit building in the Cordon:

In vanilla Stalker, the engine doesn't natively support specific audio cues for when the player enters a building. Last year, I hacked together a way to do so, and added a feature where that audio changes based on the weather. Now, the audio changes based on the intensity of that weather, also. In LURK 1.2, when you are inside during a heavy storm, you'll hear variations of what I've embedded above - depending on the storm intensity and the type of building you are in. I've started re-organizing my creation process to make all of these small changes in content possible (I can remove the wind from this track easily and change any creaking textures, for example, allowing for a wide variety of variation).

Last year, I made an unlisted video (which I am making public for you all, despite the rough edges) where I demonstrated that this method worked in-game and was fully-functional, minus a few hiccups that I've been working on since.

I guess what I'm saying is that I feel a lot of my old work, mostly in the ambiances, lacked subtlety and texturing, which I've experimented with on this track through faint creaking of the building's structure, and adding a melancholic wind element. If you sit back and listen, the creaking won't take you out of the experience - it will just build upon it with the rest of the audio in more of a cooperative way. I have a lot of ideas to build on this, and I've recorded the majority of the audio that I need.

I hope you guys are alright with me being open in this way. I really would like to get more updates to you all but I have just had so many other things going on. I'm happy with whatever time I have to work on LURK, though.

Oh, by the way, I recorded that wind in my New York City apartment, and the rain and creaks in a tin-roofed cabin in Colorado. All in stereo, of course. Did I mention I recorded some incredible audio in an ice cave in Iceland? That'll be great in certain areas, I think :)

- Dae

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