That sounds pretty good, but how could you make it even better?
All games need sound, unless you are developing some sort of strange, minimalistic game. Sound effects give the game more character and satisfaction, so there is no excuse why you should not use them. It can be easy to get some simple sound effects off the internet and have them play when something of interest happens. However, there is this process called audio editing, which may be of interest to you.
Audio editing is basically manipulating an original sound to achieve a new, desired effect. It does not involve anything fancy that only professional sound engineers will ever need to use.
Note: When using sound effects in games, I tend to use .wav files as they are easily recognised by lots of audio editing software and are easy to get hold of.
The first and most used audio manipulation game developers use is changing the bitrate. What does this achieve? Adjusting the sound’s bitrate decreases the file size significantly. This is great when you have a long sound effect, which usually has a large file size. You can change the bitrate in most audio editing programs when exporting it. When it comes to bitrates, there are only three you need to worry about: 8, 16 and 24. A 16 bit sound is the standard bitrate for most items, but sometimes you can get a 24 bit sound (usually purchased tracks, professional recordings). You will never see 8 bit sounds available as songs, as the quality is lost a lot. But with sound effects, the quality loss doesn’t matter as much as it is usually a short, sudden sound.
Reverberation (reverb) gives sound effects more realism. People often mistake this for an ‘echo’ sound, but an actual echo sound is known as delay. Reverb usually has 2 main parameters for you to worry about: the room size, and the reverb amount. By increasing the room size, the reverb makes the sound like it was in a church hall, a theatre, or an empty game convention for the game you are making. Make this parameter quite high when the character is in a cave, so it actually sounds like he is in a cave! The reverb amount is how much reverb you want to add. So you may have set the room size to a fairly large amount, but if you have too much reverb, the sound becomes murky and blurred. You’d want significantly less reverb for sounds that are played outside, whilst adjusting it a bit more towards the higher end when underground, etc.
The use of equalisation (EQ) may not be needed, but it can definitely make the sound stand out, and seem more crisp and clearer. EQ is the process of adjusting the frequency levels of a sound so that you can reduce unwanted levels and boost the ones you want. For example, if you were editing an explosion sound, you’d want to reduce the high end very slightly to make sure it does not sound like a paper bag exploding. By slightly increasing the middle and low ends, you’d amplify the effects you’d want. If you boosted the bass more than the mid, the explosion would sound very heavy. By altering the EQ, you can make the same sound effect sound completely different with EQ.
When it comes to actually getting a piece of software that lets you edit your audio, you do not have to open your bank account. There are two that I recommend you use: Audacity and Reaper. They are both free (Reaper has an infinite testing period which essentially is the full version), and can be easily downloaded from trusted websites. If you are a beginner to the whole process, Audacity would be a good choice, but a lot more can be accomplished with Reaper.
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