Shmup sound effects

[louisg]

I haven't played around with this for a while, but I was wondering if anyone here had any insights on synthesizing shmup-style sound effects. While I'm pretty sure the explosion sounds are just lifted from old anime (70s, early 80s stuff with the zappy attacks in the explosion sounds), the weapon fire generally has a soft or washy sound which makes it easy to listen to for the duration of the game. I assume these are off a synthesizer.. anyone tried making these?

I used to have somewhat good luck for this kind of stuff with Stomper, but it was never quite right.

[monkeyman]

Try a programme called SFXR - usually does the trick for me.

Simple to use if a little limited, it's designed specifically for video game sfx. Have a play around with it and see if it does the job.

[Rozyrg]

Cool! I was going to ask about this, too.

Up till now I've been using whatever sfx I could scrounge from the net or what I've had sitting on my old hard drives (mostly junk I've recorded from movies over the years.)

I was either going to get my musician friend to hook me up with whatever crazy softsyths he has access to (I want him to do some music for me, regardless) or just do a Jeff Minter and rip sfx from classic arcade games.

I'd much rather use something I can make myself, though, so I'll give SFXR a go...

[ZacharyB]

Another vote for sfxr, only because it's the only one I know that has the ability to generate sounds using a pulse wave engine (sounds sound as if they were made on game boy hardware).

You could even buy the "retail" version of the Little Sound DJ rom for $2 and use that to make your sounds. Since it's a rom, you could even burn it to a flash cart and use a real game boy at that point.

After the SNES and the like it got into sample territory, so you could use anything. Like you say, it has to be a short sound that can be repeated; something the player can't get tired of!

If you don't already have it, I recommend Audacity for making sounds based off of samples. I think they have to have a low bitrate to sound the part.

[Rozyrg]

Wow, that was pretty much what I was looking for. Thanks.

I can see why you wouldn't want to use it for everything, though. It's awesome at those 8-bit fx; but maybe not much beyond. I think I'm still going to go back through my 'library' for a few choice samples.

[worstplayer]

If you have some VSTi host you can use Crystal to make all sorts of crazy sound effects.

[louisg]

Here's some of that washy gun sound I was talking about. I made these pretty quickly in Alpha 3. Some of the sounds use a filter envelope, some don't. The oscillators are sawwaves with some noise added. I'm now trying to do good insta-laser sounds.. some kind of AM I think for the wind-up =)

http://www.gorenfeld.net/lou/shmupfx.mp3

[ZacharyB]

Nice, Louis! Maybe a little less attack for the louder ones in the future--it is after all a sound that is going to be heard over every other sound and music in the game, constantly.

I'd even say that it has to be the player's comfort sound; when things get tense, the player is going to rely on the ability to summon the existence of this sound which will indicate that he or she is blasting back. This effect probably has to be even more prominent in a bomb sound, if it's a type of game that has one.