I’ve just downloaded a program called SFXR by DrPetter. Windows only unfortunately, but really worth having. It’s a really simple specialised tool for creating 8-bit style sound effects that even I, who knows nothing of pitches and tones can use to make cool things. You can use the selection of sliders to change the attack, pitch, decay and all the other things that make up sounds, along with a choice of generators (sine, square, sawtooth and noise).

SFXR also has a few commonly used options like ’shoot’, ‘explosion’ and ‘powerup’ that will create a random sound within the bounds of your selection. Certainly much easier, faster and more effective than my former method for creating sounds, which was to talk into the mic for a bit, then chop out tiny bits with Audacity and distort them until they sounded vaguely like I wanted them to.

Download SFXR here.

EDIT:

You can also grab it for Linux, but no OS X build yet.

Filed under: games, internet, software by isaac on Dec 17, 15:30