SOUND DESIGN IMPROVES EVERYTHING

Hello, RMN.

Today I'd like to talk about something I feel needs addressing, Sound Design.
Sound Design is something that is usually over looked by most developers.
Yet, sounds are what give your game weight and believability. Using them correctly helps to create atmosphere and ambience. In survival horrors, ambience is critical to it's success. As humans the things we hear effect us in more ways than we know. We relate to sounds and associate sounds with everything. Just by hearing chirping in the distance behind a background music track, we know that it is some sort of bird. To the trained ear, it is a specific bird. What I'm getting at, is sound design is just as important as a compelling storyline and a solid art direction. Now, there are a few things that you can do that can greatly improve the entire feel and quality of your work, on anything from games to movies.

#1 - Fading Music
Fading the music when transitioning from map to map or scene to scene is a very subtle thing. One that isn't usually noticeable. Yet, when it's not implemented, it's VERY noticeable. It can actually be quite jarring.

#2 - Ambience Background Noise
Okay so let's say you are in a serious cut-scene and you fade the music out. Silence isn't always a good thing. Instead replace it with plan, quiet, ambience sounds. So if the people are talking at a harbour and the music fades away have the soft sound of water slapping up against the piers in the distant background. This helps to push the envelope, saying "I'm not playing around any more." Also helps to ground the scene in general.

#3 - Randomly Selected Sound Effects
I've been doing this for just about every game I've ever made. This is especially important if you are designing any sort of action game with a Custom Battle System. The reason that this is so important is because when, let's use shrubs, a shrub is broken it will play that sound. But when two shrubs are broken at the same time, they will spam that sound. Hearing the exact same sound, almost echo. It sound terrible and drags down the quality of your game. It also come across as sloppy and lazy. So here's the easiest way around that. When it goes to play the sound effect, have a "variable" set to random 1 - 3. Have the SFX all set under the 3 conditional branches. So it will randomly select a different one every time. Now depending on what you are breaking you can alter each sound effect slightly by moving the slider for which speaker it plays out of. So have branch 1 set to "PLAY SFX IN MIDDLE BALANCE." Have branch 2; "PLAY SFX IN +1 LEFT BALANCE." And the 3rd branch, "PLAY SFX IN +RIGHT BALANCE." What this does is when the SFX are called to be played, it tricks the ear into thinking it's a slightly different sound. You can add as many branches as you like. This also breaths life into your game. It gives everything an organic and dynamic feel.

# 4 - Diversity in SFX
I know just as well as anyone else that finding the SFX that you need can be tricky if not a down right pain in the ass. So I've included a couple sites below that I use for 90% of the sound effects in my games. The rest I record with Acid Pro.

http://www.sounddogs.com/

http://findsounds.com/

Well, I hope this helped! If anyone has any questions or just wants to discuss any of the above mentioned topics, please leave a post. I'd also love to hear your tips and tricks when it comes to developing and crafting, Sound Design.

Thanks for reading!

- Ashes