Thundershower has returned to the Bayou! Our latest in-game Event, Judgement of the Fool, sees the skies crack and the heavens open with this long-awaited storm . In today's blog, we wanted to share a peak behind the curtain, chatting to the development team behind Thundershower to reveal the craft and the passion that went into creating this unique weather condition.
Meet the Storm
Thundershower is a dynamic Time of Day condition that cycles between intense and lighter rain. This creates unique visual and gameplay variety on every map it appears. Like all special Time of Day conditions, the Thundershower introduces significant gameplay twists: rain masks footsteps, ravens are disturbed by the storm, and fog rolling in as the storm intensifies - reducing visibility. These effects are far more than cosmetic, they fundamentally alter how players approach Bounty Hunts.
The team has built a whole new audio system for Thundershower, which has now been enhanced for CRYENGINE 5.11 engine upgrade. Designed to create an ultra-realistic, dynamic soundscape, this system immerses players completely within the stormy environment. Now, let's dive deeper into the inner workings of the Thundershower.
The role of ambience in game design
Hunt: Showdown 1896 is renowned for its tense atmosphere, and its audio design plays a pivotal role in crafting that experience. Every sound in the game is diegetic. If you can hear it, it exists in the world, and locating its source can mean the difference between survival and certain death. Animals, monsters, creaking windmills, crackling fires, rustling vegetation, howling wind - all contribute to the Bayou's living soundscape. The only exception? Crickets in the bushes where you're hiding - these exist purely as ambient audio.
While environmental sounds deepen immersion, they must never obscure critical audio cues, such as enemy Hunters. This balance becomes especially challenging when introducing new weather conditions. The Thundershower, for instance, naturally muffles players' ability to pinpoint sounds yet it also demands a dynamic, engaging soundscape that avoids repetition and is enjoyable to listen to. Striking this balance is no easy feat.
How the Audio Design Team made it rain
Creating convincing rain in a game is challenging and the complexity of its sound design can easily go unnoticed. A raw recording of real rain produces little more than fatiguing noise. Our brains perform psychoacoustic filtering, letting us tune out the constant background noise of rain while focusing on distinct details. Games and cinema, however, can't replicate this natural adaptation. The effect is akin to standing in a reverberant room: you might not notice the echo until you hear a recording of it, where the unnatural persistence becomes jarring.
Another hurdle is environmental specificity. Real-world rain recordings are tied to their original surroundings, creating dissonance when players rapidly traverse different spaces. Dynamic positioning, shifts between indoor and outdoor areas, and varying acoustics in game all make pre-recorded rain feel artificial and disjointed.
That's why procedurally generated rain is far more effective than static recordings. By reconstructing rainfall through layered systems simulating how droplets strike wood, metal, puddles, and foliage developers craft a dynamic soundscape that avoids monotony. Each surface contributes its own rhythm and tone of drips and splashes, building an immersive storm without overwhelming the player. The challenge lies in compensating for the absence of touch, smell, and taste, using sound alone to sell the physicality of rain all while ensuring it enhances gameplay rather than obscuring it.
Technical implementation
The expansive maps in Hunt: Showdown 1896 presented a unique challenge for rain implementation: manually placing individual audio emitters would be impractical at this scale and would impact performance negatively. This limitation drove the development team to create an automated systemic solution using raycasting.
The system works by casting multiple rays from the sky downward around the player's position. When a ray intersects with a surface, the system dynamically generates an audio emitter at that location. Each emitter plays dripping sounds specifically tailored to the material it struck whether it's wood, metal, stone, or foliage. This raycasting approach enables highly localized rain effects that accurately respond to the diverse materials throughout the environment in Hunt: Showdown 1896 maps.
The following chart shows the audio grid visualizing multiple layers around the player that come into play when simulating a rain in Hunt: Showdown 1896:
A hyper-realistic detailed rain soundscape is created by many overlapping dripping sounds. Players experience true spatial audio: hearing distinct raindrops pattering on a metal roof to their left while simultaneously detecting different impacts on a wooden plank to their right. This precise positional audio creates unparalleled immersion.
In summary: thundershowers audio ambience is built from the following layers:
- Dynamically generated rain spot emitters
- A subtle surround rain sound for additional width and to smooth transitions from the rain spot emitters
- Rumbling surround Wind
- Environmental sounds such as violent wind gusts, groaning trees, rustling underbrush, and distant thunderclaps to complete the living environment
On top of these layers, many more dynamic effects are added:
- Footsteps transform into squelching boots, maintaining environmental authenticity while improving enemy Hunter detection
- Compounds come alive with amplified rattling, creaking structures, and water dripping through cracks
- Wind howls through doors and windows
- Interior spaces gain richer ambience than in regular times of day, balancing the gameplay advantage of sheltered positions
The sounds change dynamically with the intensity of the storm, from a light shower to a full blown rainstorm.
We hope this has been an enjoyable deep dive into the making of the Thundershower. And remember, Hunters, if you can't hear your enemy – they can't hear you either.
- Your Hunt: Showdown 1896 Team