[dial up modem internet connection sounds]

[balegdeh]

[that’s why I love, nestle crunch (slap sounds) (screaming child sound)]

[vine boom]

If you read these words and have at least imagined a single sound effect, then you already know what this devlog is about! Unless you have that sort of condition where you can’t imagine sounds or noises in your head, then I’m really, really sorry for you (and honestly, I’m glad I’m not you). So, let’s get this over with!

SOUND SOUND SOUND

By default, a game would be incomplete without its audio counterpart. In the visual novel space, music is often used to help portray a mood, and often, that is enough! Sound effects, however, can play an awesome role of immersing players in your game space.

For example, I tweeted a scene from one of the new chapters that we had in our dev account.

From the text, we can see that Scarlett is walking away from wherever Taylor and Lori are hiding. But adding the sound effects element, we can see more of the scene as it plays out in our head: The fast footsteps of Scarlett and then her walking away. Honestly, I see it as Scarlett getting angry LMAO. I don’t wanna spoil anything from the scene, so that’s all I’m gonna say. 

RESOURCES

So, where do you usually get sounds? Well, I am a simple man: I go to freesound.org. It’s that simple, really. Some people might have other sites they know of, but I think it’s way easier to look for stuff on there.

There are limits to what sounds you may use though. Just make sure the license attached to the sound you’re using allows usage of the sound file in a legal way. The safest way for this is looking for sounds under a creative commons 0 license, which essentially is public domain. Go wild!

EDITING YOUR OWN SOUNDS

But you know, sometimes, a certain sound effect just doesn’t hit at all, like you want to do something more or you have a certain vision in your head.

I’ll keep things simple. For example, there’s a scene where a character knocks on a door and opens it directly afterwards, and I want to do all of that in one sound effect. So how do we do that? Well, we find two of those sound effects and stack it!

Like so.

Notice that the knocking sound can only be heard from the left audio channel. There are a lot of effects that may help you in editing your audio other than simply stacking them. With the knocking, I panned the audio to the left to simulate the fact that, well, it is coming from the left side of wherever room the perceiver of sound is.

I think the effects that I used the most on this project include Left & Right Panning, Reverb, and just simple volume automation. I could teach about the process on how to do certain effects, but a sfx tutorial is not something to be put on a devlog honestly. I will say, however, that these effects are pretty easy to do. Audacity is a free and robust software in case you, dear reader, are interested in delving into sound editing. Plenty of youtube tutorials, too!

MAKING YOUR OWN SOUNDS

However, there comes a time where I’ve browsed all I could, and I cannot find the sfx that I wanted. What do I then? Well, with the power of my phone recorder and some editing, I make my own sound effects!

For this one, I really needed a sound effect that will fit a scene involving plastic rings. I couldn’t find the specific sound palette that I had in my head, so I went ahead and recorded myself with a bunch of plastic coat hangers, and voila! It was perfect and it was exactly what I wanted.

Of course, this step isn’t that easy – you’d have to have a decent microphone.

I don’t have a decent microphone. Like I said, I only used my phone recorder. It was only half-decent. I had to clean up the noise it picked up and made some EQ changes (you know, like the bass and treble stuff). This definitely needs a little more knowledge about audio, but if you have the patience for it, it is very satisfying to have a more personalized game, and adding a lot of immersivity in the process.

So what’s the moral of the story? SFX is fun!

Also, hire more audio guys like me =D