Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Free Sound-Ef ects Libraries
The growing open source movement means that often you can i nd
sounds at no cost at all. But you must be careful to ensure that you have
the rights to use these sounds in commercial products.
Once you have found your cool sounds, you'll want to insert them into
a multi-track digital audio workstation (DAW) to edit and layer them.
DAWs provide sound designers with toolboxes for recording, editing,
and manipulating sounds in creative ways. Sound designers may use
software plug-ins, and other editing techniques to create custom ef ects
and evocative landscapes. The job of the sound designer is to manipulate
sounds to enhance the events on the screen. Simple games may call for
just a few sounds, while more complex games may require thousands.
Let's go over some of the types of techniques and processing sound
designers regularly use.
These websites of er free sound ef ects
for designers on a budget, which can
be useful, but are often of dubious
quality and may require processing to
be ef ective.
EDITING TECHNIQUES
One Shots and Looping
A One Shot i le is a i le that plays only one time when
it is triggered. These were originally triggered from
tape cartridges and used a lot in radio stations to
create canned laughter and on the spot pre-recorded
sound ef ects. The term has since developed but it still
refers to a i le that plays in entirety one time only, with
no interruptions. A One Shot i le should be carefully
edited so that it starts and ends smoothly, with no
clicks or pops.
Credit: Jeremy Engel.
Looping is, of course, absolutely important, both from
a resource perspective as well as a gameplay perspective. The creation of seamless loops in games is
essential, because games are often indeterminate with regards to time, and you don't have a lot of audio
budget with which to store i les on the platform.
Loops can be of background ambient material, or of foreground local sound ef ects. Testing your loops
for clicks and pops is a must. One common way to avoid this nasty issue is to make sure your audio
waveform comes very close to the exact middle of the waveform on both the beginning and at the
end—what's often referred to as a zero crossing. Other techniques of looping can include copying and
reversing the sound, crossfading the ending material into the beginning, and many more.
Take it from us—learning how to seamlessly loop audio will be an absolutely required skill. Anyone who
provides loops that have pauses, clicks, or pops, will soon i nd themselves having to redo their work. And
 
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