Hi there! I've been working on the music and SFX for our game, Cavian, for the past couple of weeks and just thought I'd share my experiences with you here to get some feedback and advice. I'm really new to the audio side of things and so my experience is pretty limited. I've been using Audacity and an AT 2020 mic to record and edit compilations, using a variety of instruments including flute, voice, ukulele, guitar and djembe for music and an entirely random assortment of items for the SFX (including an assortment of glasses, straws, cat litter, chocolate bar wrappers among other things...)

Has anyone got any good tips on creating realistic sound effects (on a budget)? It's been a tricky experience for me so far as nothing seems to end up sounding the way it was intended! Our game is about a bird born in a cave, so creating realistic sounds of a bird walking, flying and landing has been the most challenging thing for me. If you have any tips at all, I'd love to hear them.

Here's a link to the latest compilation (really short, but just to give a flavour)

Feedback is very welcome .

Thanks for reading, hope to hear from you soon!

Hey,

I liked your music track - it was nice! Some of the SFX around it were distracting because they were lower in quality. The water drops sound needs more of a tail on the reverb. A cave has more echo and depth than what I'm hearing.

Our game is about a bird born in a cave, so creating realistic sounds of a bird walking, flying and landing has been the most challenging thing for me. If you have any tips at all, I'd love to hear them.

Depending on your budget and your intentions, an a la carte website might really help you find some of those hard-to-record sounds. Something like Sound Dogs or Sound Rangers or even Pond 5 could work well. If you're wanting to create everything yourself and not use any 3rd party materials, then this thread has some good info which can get you started: http://www.gamedev.net/topic/523411-creating-sfx/

Thanks!

Nate

I think Audacity as the only program that you're using might not be enough. You could add a few programs to your freeware arsenal:
- http://www.wavosaur.com/features.php (You need to collect VST filters to use with this.)
- http://lmms.sourceforge.net/home.php (A freeware multi-track sequencer, might be useful for filter sweeps and automation.)
- http://traverso-daw.org/Features.html (Multi-track editor.)

If you're going to record the sounds yourself, you need remarkably good sources.
If using those objects didn't get what you expected, then you need to experiment with different objects (which produce different timbres) and much bigger ones at that (which produce stronger sounds, which allow for cleaner recordings and give you more material to work with).

Also remember to overlay layers of sounds (technically known as "sweetening"). You can create a completely unique, production-ready sound by using the right source material and thinking of sound in terms of parts: attack, sustain and decay, whether it is a quick or slow sound, all sounds have these parts.
Depending on how exotic the sound is, you can use one or more layers per part.

Another DAW you could use is Reaper pretty sure you can use the free (mod edit: $60) version It comes with a lot of basic filters etc but no VST's. I find it easier to use than audacity for editing sounds (except if you have to cut the soundfile or something like that). My advice would be try a few different DAWs and use the one which you feel most comfortable with

Another DAW you could use is Reaper pretty sure you can use the free version

There is no free version of Reaper. There's two versions: http://www.reaper.fm/purchase.php

"Fair Pricing - There is only one version of REAPER. We offer two licenses, depending on how you use it.

$225: full commercial license.
$60: discounted license."

Many, many thanks for all your comments and advice. Will have a look at all those different DAWs and try them out. This is a really complicated subject and I have a lot to learn! Some very useful tips there though to get me started. My aim is to record everything myself- will see how this goes and hopefully be able to produce some realistic FX! I'll post more music for your critique when its ready.