THE UNDERAPPRECIATED BACKGROUND SOUNDS

Can you remember the last time you thought to yourself "Wow this game is really pretty!"?
I bet alot of you can.
Now think back again and try to figure out the last time you thought "This background sound creates such an awesome ambience!".
Yeah, I know it kinda sounds ridicilous to think like that, and most people probably don't.
But they should. Because ambient sounds hints at a world outside of what you can see on that tiny monitor of yours.
It ties together the world you've mapped in pure 2D (most likely if you're reading this) and enhances it to something almost real.
It also helps provide continuity between maps/scenes and reinforces the mood.
In short, it creates immersion like nothing else.

I'd like to clarify what I mean by background sound, or ambient sound.
Ambient sound means the sounds which are present in a scene or location and are not caused by anything the player is currently doing. It can be stuff like wind, water, birds, traffic noise or mosquitoes buzzing.
With that clarified, let's get started.
First I'd like to say that I will be writing this from the view of a person that mostly use RPG Maker as their weapon of choice when making a game, but most of it applies to any game ever made (probably?).

I know that adding ambient sounds in indie games is a bit of a hazzle,
but I like to think of it as a hazzle that adds a little spice to my game
that many others like it don't have. In short, it makes your game stand out.
You want that, don't you, you download hungry little mongrel?
Yes you do, don't deny it.

Let's start with the obvious.
The little folder called BGS.
This folder will be your first stop when adding ambient sounds to your game.
My belief is that BGS should be used in almost every map.
It's really easy to do add, and yet a lot of people don't use it for anything
else than maybe adding the sound of rain when it's raining
and the sound of water falling in a map with a waterfall.

Shiiiit, both rain and a waterfall, what do I do now?

The BGS should preferably loop and be long enough so that the
player won't start recognizing a pattern in the BGS (for example, the same
bird sound plays every 10 seconds).

How long it needs to be depends on how much time the player will
be spending in that area. Is it just some corridor that the player
passes through in 10 seconds? You could probably get away with a really short BGS.
Is it a dungeon where the player will spend 10+ minutes?
You should probably have a bgs that is at least 1-2 minutes long.

What do you choose as a BGS, then? Let's give some examples:
You're in a inn, looking for a quest? Add some BGS with people talking.
You're at the beach? Add the sound of waves crashing against the shore.
Inside some random NPCs house? Add the sound you used outside the house (for example a nature sound with birds chirping, a gentle wind, all that mushy stuff) and lower the volume of it compared to outside.
Usually it's not too hard to figure out a fitting BGS, just imagine what it would sound like in real life in that location.
Another thing to consider is the volume of your BGS. The most important thing to remember is what BGS stands for:
BackGround Sound. That means it should be in the background and not overpower the music or annoy the player.

Let's go one step further, with this whole ambient sounds thingy.
Let's add even more background sound to your game, which doesn't use that BGS folder.
How do you do something more complicated than adding a BGS to your masterpiece?
I would love to tell you to use your imagination here, but I know that's too hard for several of you so I'll be nice and give you some help.

I'm gonna give another example:
Let's say you've made a creepy cave, full of trolls and bears and whatnot.
You added a creepy wind BGS. But how do you know there are trolls and bears and whatnot in the cave if you can't hear them? Well, you could go find them, but let's ignore that for now.
You obviously add distant troll groans and growls and a couple of bear roars to top it off.
I'll give you the method I use to do this in RPG Maker VX Ace.
Note that doing this will require some general knowledge of using VX Ace
and variables. It's really nothing complicated, though.



Let's explain that picture. First, you'll want to add a wait command before you play any sounds. Playing a (non-looping) ambient sound as soon as you enter a map usually isn't a good idea.
Next, about the conditional branches with wait commands in them. The reason I did it like that is to add some variance to the delay between each time a ambient sound playing, which makes it sound more natural. You need to make sure the wait commands are long enough that the ambient sounds aren't playing too often. Ambient sounds are supposed to be mood enhancers, not nonstop trollgrowling.

Then we have the the conditional branches with the troll/bear sounds.
The reason I put the sounds in conditional branches is so that the sound that plays varies.
The more conditional branches you add with new sounds, the better, basically. It just depends on how much time you want to spend making/finding these sounds.
Also, once again, remember that ambient sounds should be in the background and not overpower the music. This is double-true with one-shot sounds. Lower that volume significantly, it's supposed to be a sound that comes from far away.

You can also add multiple of these events with different sounds on each map, for example you could add another with general cave sounds like water drips, distant earth movement and bat sounds.
Just make sure you use a unique variable for each, and change the amount of time waited so that the sounds
doesn't play at the same time.

Finally, some links to great sites that I often use to find find my own sounds for my games:
http://www.sounddogs.com/ (probably the best ever, 670,000+ sounds, both ambient loops and stuff like creature sounds)
http://www.freesound.org/ (needs login, smaller library of sounds, but I find it's easier to find specific sounds here).