Ever tried to play Mario or [insert your favorite game] with the sounds muted? It just isn’t the same, is it?
When creating games, specially in jams, we often don’t have a specialist on sound effects (or the time to learn everything that is needed to become one). Fear not, here are a few simple tips that should help you get by!
###as3sfxr
Despite the weird name, as3sfxr is a very simple tool for generating simple sounds. It gives you a few nice presets (explosion, shooting, powerup…) or completely random sounds that you can further tweak. They all carry an 8-bit era vibe to them but they work fine on many games.
After you are done, you can export the sound effect as a .wav file - making it easy to convert to whatever format that you want.
###bfxr
Bfxr is essentially a more advanced version of as3sfxr, offering more options for you to play with when working on your sound effects. Just as before, you are presented with a few presets and can further tweak them to your liking.
While it might seem daunting at first, try changing one parameter to notice how it affects a pre-generated sound until you get the hang of it.
###Foley
“Fo-who?”
Foley. Basically, it is the reproduction of everyday sound effects - these are later added to movies, games and whatnot. How do you achieve that? Banging everyday objects together.
Ok, that is an over simplification but sound effects are everywhere. Clink two glasses, notice the sound it makes. Could you use that? What about rubbing paper? Punching cabbages? Or flicking your cheek to make a watery-sound?
The video below explains it in depth and gives great ideas on how you can use everyday objects to create an awesome array of sound effects.
###Audacity Now that you are all excited, I highly recommend getting a good microphone and installing Audacity (available for OS X, Windows and Linux).
With it you are able to record the sound inputted into the microphone and, through filters, fine tune it until you reach what you want. A simple example is extending for how long a sound happens (and thus changing how we perceive it) or adding echo to a voice, making it seem otherwordly.
Whatever you do, try to keep it simple.