Find a wood nearby or some other foliage that is similar. If we think about this it’s not too hard to arrange. Our hero “Bob” is running through a wood, he isn’t being chased by anything, he’s just running. Secondly, what material is on the feet of your character?įor example, if your game character is running in a wood wearing big working boots, the sound needs to reflect this.

When you listen to footsteps there are various different things you need to think about. Let’s start with something simple, like footsteps. If you had for example access to an mp5 machine gun, and say an ak74 machine gun (oh how that would be great) you may find that when they are recorded, you find that they don’t sound “good” enough for your space marine super gun. You need to remember that sometimes the sound you know to be a certain item may not be recognised by other people because of how the sound or media is represented via other games or movies. For example, when recording gun sounds for Project IGI 2, Kim Jensen, the composer and sound tech for the former game studio “Inner loop” had to change the sounds as all the gun sounds were too similar. There are many instances where the “Real” sound isn’t the one used for the game. I would also suggest looking at various games to see how the sounds come out. If you want the sound to have less reverb, you would be surprised what noise you can create in a cupboard or small garage. For example if you want the sound to have a lot of reverb, you could always record the sound in a hall or church. Some of these effects can be created from “Dry” sounds (ill explain later) or you can be creative and record the sound in an environment that is close to the one you want.

This includes the environment that you want the sound to be used in, such as “Outside”, “inside”, “enclosed space” or “vast space”. You can even get away with a headset microphone if that is what you have access to.įirst of all you need to decide what sort of sound you are after. I would recommend an easy to use minidisk recorder or even tape and a good microphone. To begin, all it needs is a little imagination and some sort of recording device. It doesn’t take a huge amount of resource or software, and can be done with the minimum of equipment.

Without them we would be in a silent environment which wouldn’t be fun or entertaining at all.

Sounds are an extremely important part of any game.

How to create your own game sounds