Mic Input - Additional Games Design Feature

Added feature incoming

I was researching into ideas for extra mechanics that could make the game more unique, immersive and more surprising.  With that, I looked into the horror games and what they do to stand out against there competitors.

With that, I looked into a couple of specific (Alien: Isolation, SOMA, Outlast).  With that, I remembered a unique thing that was seen within certain games (Manhunt and Alien to name two) that used mic input.  with that i started researching into if it was applicable via UE 4.17 but only using blueprints and not C++.  My results came back that although it was requested and could be quite applicable, there is no real plugin / applicable way to input a mic to a game for game play use whether VOIP or in game mechanics.

With that and alongside the questionnaire, I asked a former community dev for UE4 if they had heard anything in regards to this.  This is the results, I got back:

The big results are firstly that 4.19 is going to have a massive input with sound updating in both Codec (multiplayer / sound wise) as well as integration of mic input application.

With that, a dev from Australia got in contact with me in regards to mic input.  After initial issues, with unreal not detecting my microphone input, we found that we needed to activate it within the .ini files.  After finding this we activated it within the third person blueprints, i used the input and then worked with branching decisions of the actual volume of the input.  (The louder you are, the float value changes (Louder = higher)), with that i made arguments in where the volume governs the pawn noise of the sound.  So if you scream or talk, your player will make noise. 

There is a threshold which was put in, if it is under 34db, it will not activate on the float value.  If it does go over 34db then the float value changes to the float value for arguments.

Please see the below video for a demonstration of it in game.