[gameprogrammer] Re: Sound Effects

[David Olofson <david@olofson.net>]

On Monday 14 August 2006 00:10, Marian Schedenig wrote:
[...]
> What's the common way to get sound effects for free games (GPL in
> this case)?

I have no idea what's most common, but I've seen (heard) pretty much 
everything; sounds from old commercial games that have been put in 
the public domain, original recordings, synthesized sounds etc.

Some are probably stolen, or based on stolen sounds from commercial 
games and movies, but that's a legal gray zone. I wouldn't go there, 
for several reasons, moral and others.


> Record them yourself (don't know how to do that for a scifi
> shooter)?

Record and process. You can use vocoders, extreme resonant filters, 
distortion and other effects to transform pretty much anything way 
beyond reconition.

You can also create sounds from scratch using various types of musical 
synthesizers. Virtual analog synths and modular synths and similar 
(Csound, SuperCollider, Nord Modular and whatnot) are probably the 
most appropriate types for traditional sci-fi style sounds. Of 
course, the more powerful the tools, the harder it is to get them to 
do what you want... :-D


> Find them on the net?

Probably a few good ones out there, but in my experience, you get what 
you pay for.


> Buy a sound effects CD (any recommendations for good, cheap,  
> available ones - and what about licenses)?

Generally, the licenses of the more expensive CDs allow you to use the 
sounds in pretty much any way you like, short of just selling them as 
is.

The cheaper ones are either, uhm, not quite as good - or they may have 
a license that does not allow commercial use, so you have to pay 
extra for a different license. Could save some $$$ if you only need a 
few of the sounds in the library.

Either way, there might be issues with sublicensing any of these 
sounds to go with a GPL project. You've paid for using them in your 
products, your copyright - but those licenses are usually written 
with proprietary productions in mind, and media that doesn't easilly 
allow individual sounds to be extracted. GPLed game is very different 
in terms of what end users can and may do with it.

(BTW, the game *data* doesn't have to be GPLed, just because the code 
is... Hint: Id Software.)


//David Olofson - Programmer, Composer, Open Source Advocate

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