This is a post written by @AmbientSorcery
Introduction
As we learned in @Trustmeimrussian’s tutorial on immersifying your audio, sound design plays a crucial role in the player experience. In this tutorial, I will focus on the process of creating engaging environmental audio— aka the ambience or sound world of a game.
Reference Game
London in Watch Dogs: Legion feels alive because of its rich and ever-changing soundscape. The hum of traffic, the chatter of pedestrians in different accents, the blaring sirens, and even the street musicians make the city feel like it’s constantly in motion. No two moments sound exactly the same, making each street in every neighborhood feel unique.
Definitions
Before we dive in, here’s a guide to some of the terms you’ll see:
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Environmental Audio: The collection of background and atmospheric sounds that define a space, enhancing immersion and a sense of place. This includes ambient noise, spatial effects, and foreground sounds that contribute to the overall soundscape.
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Layered Soundscape: A structured mix of ambient beds and dynamic foreground sounds that create a rich, immersive environment. Layers may be pre-recorded or dynamically triggered based on game logic.
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Procedural Audio: Sound that is generated, modified, or controlled dynamically in response to in-game parameters, rather than being solely pre-recorded.
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Ambient Bed: The continuous background sound that defines a space (e.g., city hum, wind in the trees). Also referred to simply as ambience.
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Tonal Bed: A low-frequency, persistent ambient element that establishes space and depth (e.g., distant traffic rumble, HVAC noise). Also referred to as a base layer.
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Foreground Sounds: Individual sounds that play occasionally to add realism and variety (e.g., car horns, footsteps). Also referred to as a dynamic layer.
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Walla: Indistinct background chatter representing a crowd, often looped as part of a layered soundscape.
So, how can we build a game with this level of audio excellence?
Step 1: Listen Closely
To create an immersive soundscape, start by listening to the real world.
You probably already know where your game is set—whether it’s a medieval village, a spaceship, or a forest on an alien planet. For this example, let’s focus on a setting that most of us know from real life: a city.
Let’s start by asking a question: What does a real city sound like?
Real City
If you live in or near a city, take a walk and listen closely to the sounds around you. You might even take notes or make recordings. Another easy way to analyze city soundscapes is by listening to YouTube videos from different cities. This allows you to hear city sounds from around the world, helping to give your in-game city a unique identity instead of a generic one.
For this example, here’s a video of a walk through Manhattan, New York City. Listen to the first few minutes and make a list of different sounds you hear:
Now here’s an excerpt of the video where I labeled the sounds I hear in the environment. See how it compares to what you heard:
Here’s all the sounds I hear in that video:
- Tonal bed/base layer (the hum from the city’s distant traffic, air vents, etc.)
- Music from nearby cars/boomboxes
- Indistinct chatter from passersby (walla)
- Wind
- Laughter from passersby
- Skateboarder passing by
- Metal and other random clangs
- Footsteps from passersby
- Vehicle engine sounds (various kinds of cars, garbage truck, scooters)
- Occasional voices that rise above the chatter
- Machine hum (HVAC or similar)
- Subway train from underground
- Car horns
- Cyclists passing by
- Squeaking car brakes
- Cars passing by
Additionally, here are a few things I saw in the video that I might include even if they weren’t prominently audible:
- Trees
- Birds in trees
- Crosswalk signals
Other sounds I can think of that didn’t appear in this video but belong in a city environment:
- Sirens (police, fire truck, ambulance)
- Car alarms
- Construction site noises
- Helicopters overhead
- Public buses
- Above-ground trains/trolleys
- Kids playing in parks/playgrounds/schools
Additional things to Consider When Building a Sound World
City-specific sounds
What sounds are unique to this city? For example, Tokyo has musical crosswalk signals
and pachinko parlors
London has Big Ben’s clock chimes
and the sound of double decker buses going by
Mumbai has rickshaws
and temple bells
Think of sounds that make your city special and include those sounds.
Language and culture:
What language is spoken in your city? NPC voices, walla, and announcements should reflect the local language and culture.
Time of day
The sounds of a city change throughout the day. Daytime is busy and energetic, while late at night is quieter and more sparse. If your game has a day-night cycle, changing the soundscape accordingly will enhance immersion.
Mood
What is the vibe of your game world? If your city is vibrant and lively, include more music and laughter. If it’s a dangerous place, emphasize sirens, alarms, and tense atmospheres.
Tonal Bed
Finally, a crucial part of city sound design is the tonal bed—the underlying resonant hum or rumble that defines the space.You might not consciously hear it when listening to an environment, but it’s essential to building a lifelike soundscape. In a city, this is often a deep, steady rumble from distant traffic, HVAC systems, or wind between tall buildings. This sound runs continuously in the background while foreground sounds play intermittently over it, grounding the environment in realism.
Example: Roblox Modern City Template
Now that we have a clear understanding of what defines a city’s soundscape, we can start thinking about how to recreate it in a game. Before diving into building our own from scratch, let’s examine an existing example: the Modern City template in Roblox Studio. This template provides a basic audio setup for an urban environment. By looking closely at this template, we can identify strengths, limitations, and opportunities for improvement when designing our own city soundscape.
Roblox Studio includes an audio package with its Modern City game template. The template provides sounds for three locations: City, Park, and Pizza Parlor.
Let’s examine each.
City Sounds
The City folder contains two ambient tracks that loop simultaneously:
Ambience Track 1
- 36 seconds long
- Mostly a deep resonant hum, providing a sense of space
- This is the tonal bed, and it helps the environment feel immersive
- Contains distant voices at 10 seconds in, which may not be necessary
Ambience Track 2
- 48 seconds long
- Features urban elements: sirens, people, vehicles
- Establishes location and time of day (daytime city)
- Downside: All the different sound elements - sirens, people, vehicles - are pre-mixed into a single looping audio track. This means the same sequence of sounds plays over and over without variation, making the environment feel predictable and less dynamic.
Together, these tracks create a layered soundscape, but because Ambience Track 2 is a static loop, it’s a bit boring and repetitive. It could be improved by using procedural techniques to create a dynamic layer of foreground sounds that plays over a tonal bed, which is exactly what happens in the next set of sounds. Let’s explore that.
Park Sounds
Here’s a breakdown of the audio elements in the Park folder:
Birds
- A collection of 27 short bird calls that play intermittently.
- Here are three of those 27 sounds
Grass rustling
- 6 short samples of grass movement triggered at random intervals.
Wind gusts
- 6 different wind sounds that play at varying times.
Park ambience
- A 36-second loop of soft wind moving through the trees, providing a steady ambient bed.
This setup is a great example of a layered soundscape utilizing a procedural audio approach. Unlike the City environment, where most elements are baked into a static loop, the Park’s audio layers are triggered dynamically. Foreground elements—like birds, wind, and grass—play at random intervals over a continuous ambient bed, ensuring that the soundscape feels fresh and varied.
This procedural approach enhances realism and reduces repetition. Because sound events trigger in different sequences each time, the player never experiences the exact same pattern of sounds twice. Even if they stay in the Park for an extended period, they won’t notice obvious looping, making the sound world more immersive and less fatiguing over time.
Additionally, when you enter the Park, the city ambience fades into the background, creating a smoother transition between environments. The sounds here are more natural and organic, helping to establish a peaceful outdoor space, while still maintaining the presence of the city.
Pizza Parlor
The Pizza Parlor takes a very different approach—one that is much less effective. It uses a simple, minute-long ambient loop, consisting mainly of a tonal bed that sounds like a faint vent or machine hum.
While this provides some sense of presence, it lacks defining details. Without additional audio cues, this space feels vague and could just as easily be an empty warehouse or a spaceship rather than a restaurant.
To bring the Pizza Parlor to life, we’d expect to hear:
- Background music, setting the atmosphere (e.g., a radio playing or muffled restaurant tunes).
- Kitchen sounds, like pizza ovens, sizzling food, clattering dishes, and staff chatter.
Without these elements, the Pizza Parlor feels sterile and unconvincing. Strong environmental audio is essential to reinforcing a location’s identity and making it feel like a real, lived-in space.
Comparing the Three Environments
These three examples from the Roblox Modern City template demonstrate different approaches to environmental audio:
Park – The best example, with a procedural layered soundscape that keeps the environment varied and interesting.
City – A decent attempt at immersion, but too reliant on static loops that limit variety.
Pizza Parlor – A weak soundscape that lacks identity, making the space feel generic and lifeless.
The contrast between these environments highlights the importance of layering and variety in sound design. When you invest time in making a game world visually appealing, it should sound just as rich and immersive.
The Roblox template provides a useful starting point, but we can push things further. Using our city walkthrough sound list from above, we’ll now begin designing a fully customized sound world—one that brings a city to life with dynamic, procedural environmental audio.
Step 2: Find Sounds
Let’s say we’re creating a general daytime city soundscape—similar to the Roblox template, but with a more detailed, procedural approach. Since we compiled a comprehensive list of city sounds earlier, the next step is to refine it into a focused asset list. This list will serve as a guide when sourcing our sounds, ensuring we have the right balance of elements. Of course, we can always adjust and expand the list as needed.
| Asset List | |||
| LOCATION | NAME | DESCRIPTION | LOOPING? |
| Environment | City | Tonal bed | Yes |
| Environment | City | City layer (traffic) | Yes |
| Environment | City | Car horns | No |
| Environment | City | Gusts of wind | No |
| Environment | City | Subway train underground | No |
| Environment | City | Metal clangs | No |
| Environment | City | Vehicles passing by | No |
| Environment | City | Squeaking car brakes | No |
| Environment | City | Sirens | No |
| Environment | City | Birds | No |
| Environment | City | Crosswalk signals | No |
As described above, the tonal layer and city layer sounds will loop continuously to provide an ambient bed, while the foreground elements play intermittently at random intervals to form a dynamic layer. When searching for and collecting assets, we’ll want multiple variations of each of the intermittent sounds to create variety within the environment.
This video shows some of my process for creating sound effects playlists to use in a Roblox game using Audioscape’s Discovery Tool (which you can use with a Roblox account). See my search tips below as well.
Search Tips
1. Use Broad and Specific Keywords
- Start with broad terms like “ambience,” “background,” or “environment.”
- Then get more specific based on what you need, like “city street” or “distant traffic.”
2. Look for Distant & Muffled Sounds
- For atmospheric layering, search for “distant,” “muffled,” or “low rumble” to find background city noise, subway sounds, or factory hums.
3. Filter by Length
- Longer clips (30+ seconds) are better for tonal beds/base layers, ambience and other looping backgrounds. When searching for these sounds, try sorting the results by duration from longest to shortest to view longer samples first.
- Short clips, on the other hand, are usually one-off sound effects like single car horns and metal clangs. Try sorting results shortest to longest for these types of foreground elements.
4. Exclude Unwanted Words
- Use negative searches to filter out irrelevant results by adding a “-” before a word you want to exclude.
- For example, after finding a distant traffic sound I liked, I needed a closer city traffic sound. To avoid duplicates, I searched for “city traffic -distant”, which helped me find different results.
5. Experiment with Synonyms
Not all sounds are named intuitively. Try alternative words:
- Wind → “breeze,” “gust,” “air movement”
- Traffic → “cars passing,” “road noise,” “engine hum”
- Footsteps → “walking,” “running,” “shoes on pavement”
6. Search for Real-World Objects & Materials
- “Metal creak” for construction sites
- “Water drip” for alleyways or sewer sounds
- “Wood creak” for docks or bridges
7. Preview Multiple Options
Since quality varies, listen to multiple results for the best fit. Even if a sound isn’t perfect, you may be able to tweak it or layer it with others.
Conclusion
I hope these search strategies help you collect sounds to make amazing sounding environments. I’ll be updating this post soon to include tools that make it easy to implement a playlist in a Roblox game!
Spending the time and energy to build a sonic world that’s as strong and striking as your visual world is worthwhile. It will:
- Make your game stand out by giving it a strong, unique identity,
- Make your visuals and mechanics even more impactful by engaging other senses, and
- Help make your game a place that players want to return to over and over.
Stay tuned for more game audio tutorials coming soon!
