LudumData

Sound Assets for Indies & Ludum Dare

[raw] LD22LD #22 30. Dec 2011 · 17:06 UTC · 14 days after compo start by Ralkarin · 3

Hey Indies,

One thing that my LD 22 entry (and most games I make) lack is sound.  I have little to no experience making sound, so I wanted to get some feedback from the community about how indies either prepare or gather sound effects for their games.  Right now, my “option of choice” is to go to Freesound.org and play with sounds for ~1 hour until I find the ideal one I want to use (for 1 sound clip), and it takes forever, and sometimes the sound I want isn’t there!

I did notice the LD team was awesome and posted a bunch of tools here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/tools/ for us to use, which is cool, but I had a few questions for the community.  Answer as few or as many as you’d like! :)

Do you use LD’s recommended tools?  Are they any good?
Do you outsource your sound generation (can’t for LD-comp) to someone else?  Do you pay them?
Do you use any other tools to generate sound?  Free vs. Low-Cost?
Do you make your own music?
Finally, do you use any reliable royalty-free sites to pull music and sound from? (is that legal for LD?)

Thanks for sharing!
Josh

Tags: sound

Comments

30. Dec 2011 · 17:18 UTC
I know a lot of people in Ludum Dare use Sfxr or Bfxr to make sound effects. The problem is, most of the time you can tell by playing that the sounds came from these softwares, and I thinks it spoils something. Moreover, since a lot of people use it, it’s not very original.

I prefer to craft my own sounds with Audacity and a microphone, it’s pretty funny and requires to be quite inventive.
Jorjon
30. Dec 2011 · 18:36 UTC
You can’t use sounds from Freesound.org, because the asset is done by someone else.
digital_sorceress
30. Dec 2011 · 22:39 UTC
What would be be undeniably fair is that you only get credit for the work you do yourself.
sfernald
30. Dec 2011 · 22:53 UTC
For music and sound creation, my recommendation is Cubase. Maybe pick up the entry level version. It is the best tool in my opinion for any genre. Pro Tools is the best if you are recording rather than using software instruments.
31. Dec 2011 · 01:43 UTC
Fascinating discussion about SFXR. :)

I thought about replying and saying that if public domain sounds (created by someone else) are not allowed, why is it ok to use SFXR in LD games? But, I think I answered my own question after I thought about it a bit.
Hazard
31. Dec 2011 · 02:31 UTC
I don’t really understand why there is so much confusion about whats allowed for sounds and music. It seems pretty obvious for me.
31. Dec 2011 · 02:48 UTC
Thanks Hazard, I completely agree. That being said, perhaps I shouldn’t have asked the last question about whether royalty-free sound assets from somewhere else are eligible. I didn’t mean to derail my own thread into a debate about whether using someone else’s assets are allowed or not.
01. Jan 2012 · 17:52 UTC
I have some sound tools that I highly recommend: