I can has sound effects!

2011-10-15

This is undoubtedly no big deal for most game developers, but all my games have been mute so far. Not by choice, either. I know people who are equally good programmers, artists and musicians, but that’s hard. Those of us who are more specialized have few real options:

• Find suitable royalty-free sounds and music. Emphasis on suitable: it can be very difficult to find something that just happens to match your concept, unless it’s very generic “pew-pew” and “boom” noises.
• Recruit someone who can make some sounds for you. Except… even if it’s a friend who does such things for fun, they’d much rather work on their own projects. If you could afford to pay for it, the issue would be moot.

This is why I’ve been thrilled to discover a little utility called sfxr, which enabled a complete newbie like me to generate a usable set of sound effects in one morning. They’re far from perfect: if you try [[Buzz_Grid?]] now, you’ll notice the actual sounds don’t match the written ones, and some of them sound pretty ridiculous to boot. Still, the game has gained a new dimension, and that’s where the real value of sfxr lies: in enabling me to go from nothing to something. The rest can be learned.

Just remember: if your game has sounds at all, it should also have a way to mute them. People aren’t always in a position to use headphones, and they shouldn’t have to mute their entire system just for your game. Thank you.