Windows Sound effects?

[deathsquishy]

I was wondering if you guys recommend any places to get or create good sound effects? I was hoping for a program to create them, but the only ones I saw listed in the free programs list sounded a bit to retro for what I'm going for. The game is set in medieval times, and I was hoping to give it a very spooky/atmospheric feel.

 

[Simon Gust]

There is this "list of free tools" (in this subforum even)
https://forum.yoyogames.com/index.p...e-tools-and-websites-for-game-creation.22209/
There should be a section with sound effect tools.
I personally use bfxr

 

[deathsquishy]

i looked through there but they sound a little too retro for what I'm going for. I would describe my game more as dark souls -ish, would it maybe be possible to get free sound effects for use in a program like LMMS to edit for variation? or will I either need to buy some online or else make my own recording studio setup just for this?

 

[sylvain_l]

dark souls -ish

I'm not much into it (tried, but it's way over my level from my experiment).
So just sharing from my limited experience. You'll need a DAW (I personnally end up with Fl Studio) and for the style of music you want I assume in addition you could have to look for an orchestral/symphonic sound library in complement.
that's the easy part. because the real part is then composing the music XD (making random note noise is easy, making a good melody with the right mood you aim for is hard)
And you'll have just the music, you'll still have to take care of adding some medieval-gothic like choir to it if you aim for having that too.


alternatively (but that'll work mostly if you are going for non commercial) you can find a lot of music of any genra for free often under CC-sa-by-nc or similar. For commercial most of the time it's paid.

p.s.
there are some gmc members more experienced in that field, they could certainly give wiser advices

 

[zendraw]

you can use lmms for both sound effects and music. id reccomend u record the soundeffects urself and then just edit them in lmms.

 

[deathsquishy]

thanks a lot for the help guys! I think I'll attempt the music on my own at first, I've played piano since I was 10, drums since 16 (I'm 26) and have studied a bit of theory on udemy, but it's nice having music resources in case I either don't like the results or I find it taking up too much development time.

I might try using bfxr as placeholder sounds for now, until i can manage recording on my own. freesound.org or soundeffectsplus.com seemed like other possibilities I might do for effects as I doubt I'll be able to really afford a recording studio for it

 

[Mick]

@deathsquishy Here you can find 30+ GB worth of samples that you can use royalty-free even in commercial projects: https://sonniss.com/gameaudiogdc18/ There's all kinds of sounds in that package, bits and pieces from professional libraries.

 

[Yal]

Was gonna suggest Freesound, but it's already been suggested... there's also audio sections at OpenGameArt.org, which could be a place to look for music (there's some really good composers there, like Alexandr Zhelanov, but there's almost no quality control so be prepared for digging a bit to find the true gems). BFXR is pretty good, the main caveat is that it only does retro sounds (which can sound really out of place in games that aren't retro)

Make sure to note down licenses of everything you get, preferably in the filename you save stuff under. Saves lots of time later. And you might as well veto stuff before you download it, so that you don't base your entire soundscape on non-commercial licensed stuff when you plan to make a free game, and then have to replace the entire mood if you decide to go commercial later.

I'd also recommend getting used to at least Audacity for editing sounds, stuff like paulstretching and frequency-domain editing can do a lot for the overall quality of a sample. Also remember that you can make a truly unique sound by overlaying several sounds, as demonstrated in this GDC talk: