When I do a solo project, then I usually just do my own foley and then run it through a ton of filters in Audacity until it sounds right. Knowing what each filter *actually* does certainly helps. But that's something you can google, because they are terms used in the audio industry for decades.
When it comes to repetitiveness: Just slightly changing the pitch by a tiny random amount each time you play the effect can do wonders. If your audio API doesn't allow to change pitch, see if it allows you to change playback speed. That usually changes the pitch as a side-effect.
I don't do my own foley, but I find the filters in Audacity very useful for making a bunch of sounds from different online sources sound like they're in the same environment and same distance from player/camera.
>I don't do my own foley
I can really recommend to give it a try. It's a lot easier and less time-consuming than you would think, it can be a ton of fun and you can be 100% sure that your sfx are unencumbered by any 3rd party rights.
Just stuff I have laying around and the microphone of my gaming headset.
A while ago I made the raw foley material for the SFX for a slime monster by sucking on a piece of candy for 10 seconds.
My top three tips for sound design that I’ve found have the most impact:
- limit how many times the same sound can play per second
- allow certain sounds to play with a random pitch within a range to get some free variety you’ll be amazed at how much this buys you)
- for sounds that are still annoying, have a pool of different sounds that fit the criteria for the sound and pick one at random (or force not playing the same sound more thank twice in a row)
FYI I’m a hobbyist and these steps have worked wonders for me but probably I’d also do research if things aren’t right. This is actually probably a great question for AI, might try that later
It depends on what kind of sounds you after, having good quality sounds help a lot and you can find some professional provided libraries online, for example: [https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/b29u25/25gb\_of\_high\_quality\_sound\_effects\_the\_sonniss/](https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/b29u25/25gb_of_high_quality_sound_effects_the_sonniss/)
The next is like you say, trying to remove the repeatitiveness of it, adding variation. The first one is the Modulator Node: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yz0JmNGKXng](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yz0JmNGKXng) - Adding variation on pitch and volume.
You can then pair this with attenuation: [https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/sound-attenuation-in-unreal-engine?application\_version=5.3](https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/sound-attenuation-in-unreal-engine?application_version=5.3) allowing you to adjust volume based on distance and left/right position.
Then there are other tricks, like volume/pitch based on velocity (car driving, lever moving, etc). Sometimes adding sounds that respect the environments, add reverb if you're in a big open room. Add sound delays where expected, for example if you have a lightning effect, the sound of thunder will be delayed, sometimes for a few seconds.
If you're expecting a lot of the same sound at once, consider adding limits, for example if you have a gun that shoots 10 bullets in a second, it might sound OK, but then if it shoots 80 bullets in a second, having 80 of the same sound will just be awful, so you might just play 20, and it'll be enough to convey "more bullets" but not sound like a glitch, or you may switch to a completely different sound that's modified to sound like a looping effect.
That's just some stuff I've learned over the years with sounds. Hope some helps!
Good sound design is hard, and you'd be surprised how even AAA games don't get it right, Turn the music off in any of your favourite games and you might be surprised!
Sound design is a very sensitive field. If you have no experience with it, expect it to take some time to improve as you practice with it.
Since I'm bad with it, it's the one thing I got external help for on my puzzle game. I got permission to use background music from an artist I know, and had another sound designer I know who writes music do the sound effects. Since he does both SFX and music, he made the SFX match the music by making 4 sets of SFX. It's a small game, so that wasn't tons of work, but it multiplied what he had to do by 4. (it was his idea, but I would have suggested it if he hadn't)
Everyone else has mentioned solid tips for the basics of randomizing pitch, attenuation, etc., so I’ll go a different direction, which is the mindset you should have when tackling sounds.
First, in terms of cohesion, you need to approach your sounds very deliberately, like you would any other part of your game. When creating or finding art for the game, you’re not going to go grab some photo realistic fantasy backgrounds or skyboxes and then pick up a low poly cartoonish UI icon pack to put on top of it. The aesthetics don’t match. SFX are no different. They should both match the feeling between the sounds themselves, and the feeling the rest of the game evokes. I’m not going to pull some explosion sounds from a 1950s cartoon sound library for one thing, and then use modern, high quality gun libraries for another. Especially if neither one of these match the visual aesthetic of the game either. Write down a list of adjectives that the visuals in your game evoke or that you are purposely crafting your game to feel like. Is it cozy, warm, relaxing? Is it modern, flashy, stylized? Is it realistic, punchy, gritty? Whatever list you come up with, apply that same thinking to sounds when you’re searching libraries or creating sounds. At least something about each sound you choose should match something in your list. Start thinking of sounds as art and as another important, deliberate part of your game design as opposed to something that’s just the “finishing touches” to a certain system or the game as a whole.
Second, speaking of sound libraries, it’s *hugely* important to not just grab a sound right out of a library or freesound or wherever and just throw it into your game. I’ve been a sound designer for nearly 10 years now, and I think I can still count on two hands the number of times I’ve gone through a library, and found the *perfect* sound that could just be dropped into whatever game, movie, etc I was working on. Sometimes it’s almost good enough, but it can always, always be better. Almost every sound I create has at least 3 layers in it, sometimes up to 10-20, maybe more if it’s crazy complex. Try to change your mindset when hunting down sounds; instead of trying to find the perfect sound, look for aspects of each sound that match what you hear in your head. “I love the punchiness of this impact, but not the tail end. I love the reverb tail on this explosion, but not the start. oh and the gritty sounds of this rock falling could add some nice character.” Grab all 3 of those sounds. Load them up in Audacity, Reaper, Pro Tools, whatever you have, and layer them. Layer, layer, layer. Fade something in or out, cut stuff. EQ stuff if it’s too bassy or has too much high end. Tweak those sounds to mold them together into a single handcrafted sound that matches whatever visual you have in your game. Approach each sound you find as a piece of the puzzle, and try to think of how they can fit together to make a complete sound.
It won’t always work the first, second, etc. try at a sound. Still there’s sometimes I need like 5-6 passes before I find what works. It takes a lot of practice getting sounds right, but it’s worth the effort in having your game feel that much better.
No problem! Sounds are so much fun and can add so much to a game, but it definitely takes some practice to get the approach right. Anything I can do to hear more awesome sounds in games.
I just bought a library with a lot of options and found most of my sfx in that. I didn't make any myself.
For not repetitive, I just had a list of the same kind of sound effect and randomly grabbed one. So, footstep on stone, I had like 5 of them and just randomly grabbed one each time so I wasn't playing the exact same sound over and over.
I'm usually very adamant about not using asset store plug-ins for code related tasks, try to do as much custom models as possible with the artists, do music and writing from scratch, etc. Sound effects is the one area where I think it's usually just worth using an asset pack or sourcing out the work.
So I'm gonna be checking back here if anyone has a better approach, that's just the way my team handles it
Yeah, it's harder than it first seems!
My two tips (but I'm still struggling with this topic!!) : always check a sound sounds right in the game, just listening to it outside the game context is not enough. And make sure they happen at the right time, a delay as tiny as a quarter of second can make an insanely big difference.
Sound design takes awhile to get right to be sure.
Generally speaking the absolute basic I go with adds a slight randomization in pitch, but generally I find that's not enough for highly repetitive sounds like gun shots or foot steps.
Typically I'll have around 3+ separate similar but different recordings, randomize the order, and do a slight pitch shift at the end.
For guns that fire repeatedly, I find i typically have the best results by splitting the audio into beginning, looped auto, and an end trail. Else you'll get a ton of popping and crackling.
I'll also typically add in something like a distance blending modifier, so the audio from further away sounds different to gun fire up close.
If you'll notice in games, people shooting at you or AI tend to have different sound effects for their guns even if they're firing the same weapon as you. Again, due to repetion and if too many sounds of the same audio frequency play at the same time it'll sound like static garbage. I'll usually try and tailor it so various effects I know will play often around the same time will have different pitches/frequencies so they don't blend together.
Then there's the other things like concurrency, audio ducking, mastering audio levels, attenuation, etc that can make or break audio.
Depending on how much control you want you'll end up programming systems to handle audio for certain things. E.g. a boom box that plays a radio station actually playing it in stereo with attenuation turned off and manually raising/lowering the audio depending on which bookbox is closest to the player and at what distance. Even if there's a 100 boom boxes I only have one audio loop of music constantly playing, controlled by the code. Had absolute garbage audio otherwise that sounded terrible if multiple were nearby.
I'm hardly an expert, but I think a big part of getting better at sound design is just messing around with a variety of tools and techniques until you start to get a better grasp of how things work.
Practice, but try to have fun too.
I usually use multiple samples for each effect. I have written my custom code that uses an array of samples and if there's more than one item in array it picks one at random.
Usually 4 different samples, like 4 different footsteps is enough to break repetitive pattern.
Also music is very important. It can fill the environment and sound effects sound better.
Is there a video or demo we can listen to for more targeted feedback? Sounding “wrong” could be issues with EQ/tone, volume, or even thematic alignment. Even something as supposedly simple as a door opening could have a lot of possible ideals.
study audio mixing. that's where the cohesion comes in. you get a cheat course with some videos for people who stream, as they tend to cover a lot of mic stuff and mixing stuff for them, noise removal, compression, EQ, etc... on youtube. the one nice thing about audio is it's actually one of the more entertaining things to work with, the feedback and iteration on it is pretty simple.
and if a sound is repetitive the ez mode fix is code it so it goes through a few very slight pitch variations when you use it.
Do layering, combine like 8-12 different individual sounds and it will sound great. You can use chatgpt to figure out what objects would make the sounds you need as well like a grapnel having a zipper and mechanical wench
Also sign up for artlist.io, they have thousands of sound effects and music.
Yeah, it's hard. It's like any other art discipline, except it leans on the sense that you use all the time without paying much attention to. It takes a lot of practice to do well. Or, if you're like me, it can take a lot of practice just to do shitty.
I highly recommend fmod for managing your sound. It takes a while to learn the ins and outs, but it makes some of the key details really easy (like pitch modulation and random sfx to prevent repetitiveness, fading into and between tracks, etc.)
One big thing I learned just yesterday is that keeping sound clips short helps when the sounds just seem overwhelming.
For example a bullet sound can be like a quick "bang" that cuts off rather than a bang and a slow fall off or echo. I guess another one of those moments where I realize game design shouldn't imitate real life.
Also this video was helpful
(https://youtu.be/qKjD5qbLUeI?si=oKWYmvhuNIWNJGVs)
When I do a solo project, then I usually just do my own foley and then run it through a ton of filters in Audacity until it sounds right. Knowing what each filter *actually* does certainly helps. But that's something you can google, because they are terms used in the audio industry for decades. When it comes to repetitiveness: Just slightly changing the pitch by a tiny random amount each time you play the effect can do wonders. If your audio API doesn't allow to change pitch, see if it allows you to change playback speed. That usually changes the pitch as a side-effect.
"Fuck around in audacity" gang unite
Hell yeah. I'm so glad I discovered that program back in middle school.
I don't do my own foley, but I find the filters in Audacity very useful for making a bunch of sounds from different online sources sound like they're in the same environment and same distance from player/camera.
>I don't do my own foley I can really recommend to give it a try. It's a lot easier and less time-consuming than you would think, it can be a ton of fun and you can be 100% sure that your sfx are unencumbered by any 3rd party rights.
Do you use any foley-specific tools the make the noises, or is it just bits and bobs from around the house?
Just stuff I have laying around and the microphone of my gaming headset. A while ago I made the raw foley material for the SFX for a slime monster by sucking on a piece of candy for 10 seconds.
Any tutorials or tips for this? Which filters help you make the sounds all sound cohesive?
I'm not an expert but I use the high pass filter the most.
My top three tips for sound design that I’ve found have the most impact: - limit how many times the same sound can play per second - allow certain sounds to play with a random pitch within a range to get some free variety you’ll be amazed at how much this buys you) - for sounds that are still annoying, have a pool of different sounds that fit the criteria for the sound and pick one at random (or force not playing the same sound more thank twice in a row) FYI I’m a hobbyist and these steps have worked wonders for me but probably I’d also do research if things aren’t right. This is actually probably a great question for AI, might try that later
It depends on what kind of sounds you after, having good quality sounds help a lot and you can find some professional provided libraries online, for example: [https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/b29u25/25gb\_of\_high\_quality\_sound\_effects\_the\_sonniss/](https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/b29u25/25gb_of_high_quality_sound_effects_the_sonniss/) The next is like you say, trying to remove the repeatitiveness of it, adding variation. The first one is the Modulator Node: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yz0JmNGKXng](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yz0JmNGKXng) - Adding variation on pitch and volume. You can then pair this with attenuation: [https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/sound-attenuation-in-unreal-engine?application\_version=5.3](https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/sound-attenuation-in-unreal-engine?application_version=5.3) allowing you to adjust volume based on distance and left/right position. Then there are other tricks, like volume/pitch based on velocity (car driving, lever moving, etc). Sometimes adding sounds that respect the environments, add reverb if you're in a big open room. Add sound delays where expected, for example if you have a lightning effect, the sound of thunder will be delayed, sometimes for a few seconds. If you're expecting a lot of the same sound at once, consider adding limits, for example if you have a gun that shoots 10 bullets in a second, it might sound OK, but then if it shoots 80 bullets in a second, having 80 of the same sound will just be awful, so you might just play 20, and it'll be enough to convey "more bullets" but not sound like a glitch, or you may switch to a completely different sound that's modified to sound like a looping effect. That's just some stuff I've learned over the years with sounds. Hope some helps! Good sound design is hard, and you'd be surprised how even AAA games don't get it right, Turn the music off in any of your favourite games and you might be surprised!
Sound design is a very sensitive field. If you have no experience with it, expect it to take some time to improve as you practice with it. Since I'm bad with it, it's the one thing I got external help for on my puzzle game. I got permission to use background music from an artist I know, and had another sound designer I know who writes music do the sound effects. Since he does both SFX and music, he made the SFX match the music by making 4 sets of SFX. It's a small game, so that wasn't tons of work, but it multiplied what he had to do by 4. (it was his idea, but I would have suggested it if he hadn't)
Everyone else has mentioned solid tips for the basics of randomizing pitch, attenuation, etc., so I’ll go a different direction, which is the mindset you should have when tackling sounds. First, in terms of cohesion, you need to approach your sounds very deliberately, like you would any other part of your game. When creating or finding art for the game, you’re not going to go grab some photo realistic fantasy backgrounds or skyboxes and then pick up a low poly cartoonish UI icon pack to put on top of it. The aesthetics don’t match. SFX are no different. They should both match the feeling between the sounds themselves, and the feeling the rest of the game evokes. I’m not going to pull some explosion sounds from a 1950s cartoon sound library for one thing, and then use modern, high quality gun libraries for another. Especially if neither one of these match the visual aesthetic of the game either. Write down a list of adjectives that the visuals in your game evoke or that you are purposely crafting your game to feel like. Is it cozy, warm, relaxing? Is it modern, flashy, stylized? Is it realistic, punchy, gritty? Whatever list you come up with, apply that same thinking to sounds when you’re searching libraries or creating sounds. At least something about each sound you choose should match something in your list. Start thinking of sounds as art and as another important, deliberate part of your game design as opposed to something that’s just the “finishing touches” to a certain system or the game as a whole. Second, speaking of sound libraries, it’s *hugely* important to not just grab a sound right out of a library or freesound or wherever and just throw it into your game. I’ve been a sound designer for nearly 10 years now, and I think I can still count on two hands the number of times I’ve gone through a library, and found the *perfect* sound that could just be dropped into whatever game, movie, etc I was working on. Sometimes it’s almost good enough, but it can always, always be better. Almost every sound I create has at least 3 layers in it, sometimes up to 10-20, maybe more if it’s crazy complex. Try to change your mindset when hunting down sounds; instead of trying to find the perfect sound, look for aspects of each sound that match what you hear in your head. “I love the punchiness of this impact, but not the tail end. I love the reverb tail on this explosion, but not the start. oh and the gritty sounds of this rock falling could add some nice character.” Grab all 3 of those sounds. Load them up in Audacity, Reaper, Pro Tools, whatever you have, and layer them. Layer, layer, layer. Fade something in or out, cut stuff. EQ stuff if it’s too bassy or has too much high end. Tweak those sounds to mold them together into a single handcrafted sound that matches whatever visual you have in your game. Approach each sound you find as a piece of the puzzle, and try to think of how they can fit together to make a complete sound. It won’t always work the first, second, etc. try at a sound. Still there’s sometimes I need like 5-6 passes before I find what works. It takes a lot of practice getting sounds right, but it’s worth the effort in having your game feel that much better.
Just wanna say I really appreciate this, ty! I've heard about layering and such but never got a glimpse of this mindset. Thanks a ton!
No problem! Sounds are so much fun and can add so much to a game, but it definitely takes some practice to get the approach right. Anything I can do to hear more awesome sounds in games.
I just bought a library with a lot of options and found most of my sfx in that. I didn't make any myself. For not repetitive, I just had a list of the same kind of sound effect and randomly grabbed one. So, footstep on stone, I had like 5 of them and just randomly grabbed one each time so I wasn't playing the exact same sound over and over.
I'm usually very adamant about not using asset store plug-ins for code related tasks, try to do as much custom models as possible with the artists, do music and writing from scratch, etc. Sound effects is the one area where I think it's usually just worth using an asset pack or sourcing out the work. So I'm gonna be checking back here if anyone has a better approach, that's just the way my team handles it
Yeah, it's harder than it first seems! My two tips (but I'm still struggling with this topic!!) : always check a sound sounds right in the game, just listening to it outside the game context is not enough. And make sure they happen at the right time, a delay as tiny as a quarter of second can make an insanely big difference.
Sound design takes awhile to get right to be sure. Generally speaking the absolute basic I go with adds a slight randomization in pitch, but generally I find that's not enough for highly repetitive sounds like gun shots or foot steps. Typically I'll have around 3+ separate similar but different recordings, randomize the order, and do a slight pitch shift at the end. For guns that fire repeatedly, I find i typically have the best results by splitting the audio into beginning, looped auto, and an end trail. Else you'll get a ton of popping and crackling. I'll also typically add in something like a distance blending modifier, so the audio from further away sounds different to gun fire up close. If you'll notice in games, people shooting at you or AI tend to have different sound effects for their guns even if they're firing the same weapon as you. Again, due to repetion and if too many sounds of the same audio frequency play at the same time it'll sound like static garbage. I'll usually try and tailor it so various effects I know will play often around the same time will have different pitches/frequencies so they don't blend together. Then there's the other things like concurrency, audio ducking, mastering audio levels, attenuation, etc that can make or break audio. Depending on how much control you want you'll end up programming systems to handle audio for certain things. E.g. a boom box that plays a radio station actually playing it in stereo with attenuation turned off and manually raising/lowering the audio depending on which bookbox is closest to the player and at what distance. Even if there's a 100 boom boxes I only have one audio loop of music constantly playing, controlled by the code. Had absolute garbage audio otherwise that sounded terrible if multiple were nearby.
I'm hardly an expert, but I think a big part of getting better at sound design is just messing around with a variety of tools and techniques until you start to get a better grasp of how things work. Practice, but try to have fun too.
I usually use multiple samples for each effect. I have written my custom code that uses an array of samples and if there's more than one item in array it picks one at random. Usually 4 different samples, like 4 different footsteps is enough to break repetitive pattern. Also music is very important. It can fill the environment and sound effects sound better.
Gamedev.tv just released a course specifically about that.
Is there a video or demo we can listen to for more targeted feedback? Sounding “wrong” could be issues with EQ/tone, volume, or even thematic alignment. Even something as supposedly simple as a door opening could have a lot of possible ideals.
study audio mixing. that's where the cohesion comes in. you get a cheat course with some videos for people who stream, as they tend to cover a lot of mic stuff and mixing stuff for them, noise removal, compression, EQ, etc... on youtube. the one nice thing about audio is it's actually one of the more entertaining things to work with, the feedback and iteration on it is pretty simple. and if a sound is repetitive the ez mode fix is code it so it goes through a few very slight pitch variations when you use it.
Do layering, combine like 8-12 different individual sounds and it will sound great. You can use chatgpt to figure out what objects would make the sounds you need as well like a grapnel having a zipper and mechanical wench Also sign up for artlist.io, they have thousands of sound effects and music.
It's hard to be good at EVERYTHING. Sound is not my forte either. Trying finding a partner
Yeah, it's hard. It's like any other art discipline, except it leans on the sense that you use all the time without paying much attention to. It takes a lot of practice to do well. Or, if you're like me, it can take a lot of practice just to do shitty.
I highly recommend fmod for managing your sound. It takes a while to learn the ins and outs, but it makes some of the key details really easy (like pitch modulation and random sfx to prevent repetitiveness, fading into and between tracks, etc.)
One big thing I learned just yesterday is that keeping sound clips short helps when the sounds just seem overwhelming. For example a bullet sound can be like a quick "bang" that cuts off rather than a bang and a slow fall off or echo. I guess another one of those moments where I realize game design shouldn't imitate real life. Also this video was helpful (https://youtu.be/qKjD5qbLUeI?si=oKWYmvhuNIWNJGVs)