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Together, Apart
MASON VICTORIA
sound design | composition | implementation
Wartorn (Audio Director) | Unreal 5/Metasounds
In April 2024, I joined Stray Kite Studios as the Audio Director for their first original IP, Wartorn. My role was to shape the sonic identity of the project, overseeing the development of a unique sound palette for over 150 in-game units, including voiceover and combat audio. I was also responsible for defining the overall aesthetic of the game’s ambience and soundtrack.
I expected that we would have to be lean on resources, so I focused early production efforts on building automated tools that leveraged data tables to streamline the assignment of unit VO barks, basic/ranged attack sounds, and footsteps. Eventually, we brought on a contract sound designer and composer to help with assets on the game while I took charge in implementing all audio assets in Unreal.
Audio Direction & Milestone Planning
The plan was to launch Wartorn in early access by mid-2025 (a goal we successfully achieved). Within the first week of joining the team, I immediately got to work on developing a production schedule, hiring and budget plan, all while simultaneously prototyping a soundscape for the game.
a snapshot of my Early Access production schedule and budget sheets, which used various formulas to calculate the financial and labour costs of various features.
As Audio Director, it was important for me to demonstrate how audio could rapidly enhance the player experience. To start, I focused on creating a soundscape that focused on unit combat and distance attenuation (since the player is able to zoom in and out of the battlefield). This quick iteration also helped me gathering immediate feedback to ensure my sonic palette aligned with the game’s design pillars.
an early iteration of Wartorn's battle system with a prototyped soundscape.
Following initial meetings sparked by this prototype, we defined our game pillars as brutal, clever, and intimate. With this direction in mind, I set out to establish my own "Audio Pillars" to lay the groundwork for what would ultimately become Wartorn's sonic identity. I created an "audio hub" to keep things organized and easily accessible for myself and the potential contractors we were going to work with later on in the project.
The audio pillars, which was placed in our Audio Hub I created in Coda, our collaborative workspace of choice, to keep things organized and easily accessible
Sound Design & Implementation
After finalizing the initial prototype and receiving approval to move forward, I decided to spend the first few months of the project focusing on building efficient audio tools. By developing systems that used procedural sound design and data tables to automatically configure audio, I was able to streamline tedious implementation tasks. Building these tools and pipelines helped me from getting bogged down in routine work and allowed me to stay focused on creating assets for the project.
an early prototype of the procedural foley system built for units. This was eventually refined so that the looping sound would be destroyed if the unit was not moving or was near a large group of units. This helped unclutter the soundscape.
an example of our unit audio data table, which automatically sets our combat barks, basic attacks and footsteps to its respective units.
In regards to sound design, we decided to differentiate our units in two primary ways: mantras and elements. In Wartorn, mantras are "a fictional conceit that helps drive the functional and strategic differences between units in the game". Since each mantra has an inherent "personality", I decided to create an ADSR that each "attack" can follow - combining that with elements such as fire, water, tar, grass and lightning resulted in a unique palette that felt holistic and cohesive.
After the initial plan was set, I began working towards a creating various elemental sounds that took into account the characters mantra. By making these stems modular, we were able to swap out layers of sound, which resulted in more unique sounds with existing content. These were then added to the character's animations via Event Notifies to ensure they were aligned as accurately as possible.
Music & Implementation
I had the pleasure of working with Felipe Tellez on the soundtrack of Wartorn. Felipe has an extensive background in modular synthesis, so his transition from film scoring to games composition was quite easy. Felipe began writing demos for Wartorn in Ableton, taking advantage of the DAWs "live" mode, which allowed him to trigger individual stems in sync with a central clock.
It then occurred to me - since Felipe was building his tracks modularly in ableton, wouldn't it be easier to just recreate Ableton in Unreal? I quickly started putting together a MetaSound that was reminiscent of Ableton's track launcher.
After a few iterations, the MetaSound patch worked as intended, and so I became combining multiple "track launcher" patches to create the equivalent of a ableton live session. The result was an almost 1-to-1 recreation of the session that Felipe had built inside of the DAW, replicated in MetaSounds.
Voiceover Pipeline, Direction & Editing
[ This section is still in progress! ]
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