Sound Design

My weakest area is in sound design and creation. I always dread having to make sound effects for the game. I end up enjoying it sort of like exercising, though it's tough to get the motivation to start. I like to think positively that it's the easiest area for me to improve in when working with sound effects. Fortunately Hamdija is handling all the music and doing a real bang-up job.

I would love to have someone (other than me) recording each sound effect from nature, or blending natural sounds to get a new sound. Unfortunately, I don't have the time or the budget or the equipment to record each sound effect in Weapon of Choice. I honestly think the sound design is coming along at least satisfactorily, and sometimes really well. Since I'm not recording the sounds, that means I have to get samples from somewhere.

When I first started in the industry over a decade ago, RWS was using 'the General' for sound effects. I think that still stands as a very good option, but since then I've worked for wealthier studios which employ sound designers in-house who often record new, unique sounds for each effect. MBG has neither of those options. While $1500 isn't a fortune for the General, it is enough to force us to consider other options. One of those options I've found while looking turned out to be great.

The site is called SoundSnap and as far as I can tell, it offers royalty free sounds effects for commercial use. To make sure I 'make it mine' I never use a raw sound from their site. I always mix each effect with at least one other sound I get from there, or from some other free site. Because it is 'user-driven' it's sometimes difficult getting a specific effect, but it often has lots of effects for most things, and they're all free. I do find that SoundSnap usually has high quality sounds and can be great in a game once you massage them a little.


For the sound massaging, I like to use GoldWave.
I actually did buy a license for only 45 dollars which I felt has definitely been worth it. The demo version of the program offers most of the functionality if you're interested. The program itself has many mixing features and is fast and simple to use.

To round out this media post, I actually used Windows Movie Maker to create the first trailer of the game. Wikipedia tells me it's been bundled since Windows Me (so you probably own it) but I've never needed it until now. I've found it fairly powerful and easy to use. Since it's free and did the job well enough, I'm sticking with it for now--and the new gameplay trailer which will be available next week!