From roberts@angelo.amd.com Thu Oct 27 01:21:55 1994 Newsgroups: rec.games.programmer From: roberts@angelo.amd.com (Dave Roberts) Subject: Re: Where to find sound fx? Organization: Advanced Micro Devices, Santa Clara, CA Date: Tue, 25 Oct 1994 18:29:41 GMT In article , Tom Williams wrote: > I am currently working on a shareware game that needs navy sounds fx. >Such as ship guns firing, radar scope fx, red alerts etc. If anyone >knows of an ftp site or commercial source where I could find such sounds, >I would greatly apreciate it if you could eMail me with the location or >information about where to find them! > > Thank you very much for your time and trouble! I was looking for something similiar a few months ago for the game I did for my book, but I couldn't find much of anything. Most of the sites that have sound files just contained numerous clips of Kirk saying, "Beam me up Scotty..," and things like that. Some had explosions and things, but most didn't. What I ended up doing was simply making wierd noises into a microphone using my mouth and then using all sorts of digital effects processing on the result to get to something that was acceptable. In general, I think I succeeded (I'm sure you guys will tell me when the book comes out). In general, I think a lot of people do stuff like this. I recently downloaded One Must Fall from Epic and was glancing at the readme file. The readme text was written by the author's brother who did the sound effects for the game. The readme has quotes from some of the major contributors to the game (the programmer, the brother, Josh Jensen for the sound code, etc.). One of the brother's quotes was something like: "Hey, when I bang these two spoons together, and lower the sampling rate, it sounds just perfect..." Anyway, it's not as hard as you may think. After fooling around with the effects processors in a good sound editing package, you'll hardly recognize the stuff. I can personally recommend Wave for Windows from Turtle Beach Systems. If you're looking for shareware, Cool Edit (COOLxxx.ZIP), is excellent, too. Anyway, you might try this as a first pass. The worst that will happen is you'll have "filler" sound effects that you can use to test and things and then replace them when you have time and find the exact effect you're looking for. I've got big questions about sampling stuff from a copyrighted movie or song. I don't know how small of a sound-bite they can claim copyright to, but I'd be sure to consult an attorney before snarfing something and then releasing it for profit (even shareware). If your program is free, then it's probably not worth them coming after you, but I feel really nervous about stuff like this, given our litigous society. Dave Roberts Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. I/O and Network Products Division david.roberts@amd.com