Oregon Road ‘83

Overview

Oregon Road ‘83 is a post-apocalyptic, resource-management road-trip game being developed by nuclear historian Dr. Alex Wellerstein. The game is based on 1971 text-parser game The Oregon Trail, with the player trying to travel from Missouri to Oregon. It takes place in an alternate reality where nuclear war erupts in 1983, devastating the United States. I joined the Oregon Road ‘83 team in the summer of 2024. I served as Music Coordinator, as my knowledge of sound design, middleware implementation, and programming allowed me to oversee and handle the overall audio development process. I implemented FMOD, an audio middleware, and worked with rest of the audio team to create and implement audio design.

FMOD Implementation

When I initially joined, there was no audio in the game, nor any system for implementing or controlling it. After advising Dr. Wellerstein on the benefits of using audio middleware, I implemented the FMOD Studio API into the game’s development environment, establishing a system to implement and control dynamic music and sound effects. I taught the other members of the audio team about how FMOD works and how to create events that can be called during runtime.

Since the game is web-based, I learned how audio is handled in a browser environment, and how to control audio behaviors in JavaScript. Below is a sample of the main implementation code, which imports the FMOD API, constructs the runtime FMOD system, and loads relevant event banks.

Code sample of the FMOD API implementation.

FMOD Event Programming Sample

The gameplay of Oregon Road ‘83 is split into two parts: a “city” section, where the player is in a city and can interact with the locals and scavenge for resources, and a “travel” section, where they move between points of interest on the road, with various random events occurring as they travel.

To begin implementing sound for the “travel” section, I created a simple FMOD event for each kind of vehicle engine (small, medium, and large), taking into account various transitions that can occur when travelling (engine stopping, engine breaking down, and brake squealing during a crash). I made these transitions into FMOD markers, with a Stop Event between the sounds, and fades between the transitions. Each marker has a respective parameter exposed in the game code, which controls transitions between sections.

Sample of a car engine event programmed in FMOD Studio.