[Audio] How to force sounds from the main hero to be in center of the screen?

Hi guys!

I’m an audio designer and right now I’m trying to figure out how can I do something with this problem by myself.

We develop the third-person game and have encountered one issue that can’t be resolved for a long time. Here is the video (listen carefully to the sounds):

We put the ears in to the head of the main hero to better feel the character’s move’s and fighting feedback. But we realised that the sound start to be first-person in terms of panning (spatiality, call it whatever you want). For example:

  • If hero attacks with the sword,the whoosh sound located in far right.
  • If we gettng hit from the left, the sound pans hard left.
  • Footsteps - hardly panned to left/right speakers.

Well, just as if you playing first-person view.

I’m not good at Blueprint scripting, if anyone have some workarounds, please drop me a guide how to force this sounds to be more in the center of the screen.

It sounds like your audio listener is located on the hero itself, which explains the hard panning.

You can either play with the “Non-Spatialized Radius” value on the sounds attenuation itself - that way sounds will not be spatialised below a certain distance.
However it’s bug-prone, and I’m not sure about its portability on Mac and Linux as your game is multi-platform.

The best option is to change the audio listener position from the blueprint itself. Try putting it on the camera first, then maybe you’ll have to tune it a bit - be wary considering rotations as well.

Hey Newest thanks for the workaround, I will keep it in mind. I just want to know how it can be done specifically for main character. Right now we use one set of sounds for main hero and enemis, so i’m just worried about how it will affect the enemies sounds which sounds good right now.
You are right about the change audio listener position but it is a really painfull decision and director won’t change it right now.
Many thanks for your thoughts!