[MUSIC].

I'm sure you've heard the term sound effects, or S effects, before.

Sound effects are all the little noises you hear while playing a game.

When you jump, grab coins, push buttons, or shoot a weapon.

The bleeps, bloops, and kabooms are all sound effects.

Now why would all these little noises

going off in the background be so important?

At their core, good sound effects let the player know that something is working.

Whether it's collecting coins [SOUND], jumping around on the

screen [SOUND], or setting off a giant explosion [SOUND].

Basic sound are vital to a satisfying gaming experience.

Sound effects are also important for adding personality to your

game and are key to building a memorable and exciting playthrough.

Maybe you'd like a realistic tone for your racing game [NOISE].

Or if you're in the mood for something a little more retro [SOUND].

The right noises and sounds will help you to

create the exact mood you are trying to convey.

It could be tempting to do a quick online

search for free sound effects that plug-in to your game.

And that's okay, but make sure you're getting them from a trusted network.

The last thing you wanna do is use something in

your game that isn't royalty free without knowing in advance.

Yet another great reason to create your own sounds.

For space cats old school arcade game play,

we're going to create some retro sound effects, similar

to the ones you might remember from consoles

like the Nintendo entertainment system or NES for short.

Lucky for us there's a great free application, called CFXR, that I

like to use to create eight and 16 bit sounds on the fly.

You've probably heard the term eight bit, thrown around a

lot these days, especially with the resurgence of retro games.

Sometimes called chip tunes, eight bit sounds are synthesized noises, produced

using the sound chips of old computers and video game consoles.

CFXR is a Mac port of the popular SFXR for Windows.

It's a free app that emulates these vintage

sounds and lets you customize them to your liking.

Let's open CFXR.

The great thing about this app is how accessible it is.

Even if you've never tried your hand at sound design,

you can jump right in, and start making some great content.

CFXR lets you tweak sounds to your exact specifications.

Let's try randomly generating sound effects using the buttons on the left.

Here you can select different types of sounds, like coins

[SOUND], laser shots [SOUND], explosions [SOUND], power ups

[SOUND], hit and hurt sounds [SOUND], and jumping noises [SOUND].

With just a few clicks, it's possible to land on the perfect sound effect.

If you'd like to modify them further, you

can transform the sounds using the sliders here.

Let's take a look at the topmost sections.

Here, we have the option to alter the timing, punch, and decay of our sound.

By dragging the attack time slider to the right, you'll

notice that the sound is stretched out and peaks later.

[SOUND]

[BLANK_AUDIO].

[SOUND].

Increasing the sustain time will lengthen the sound in general.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

[SOUND].

Sustain punch will change where and how intensely the

sound peaks, relative to the attack and sustain time.

[SOUND].

And finally, decay time will affect how the

sound fades out and where it will cut off.

By dragging the slider all the way to

the right, you can really extend the sound effect.

[SOUND].

You can make some pretty big adjustments

to the sounds just using these four sliders.

But don't be afraid to try a little bit of everything.

Now you may not be familiar with terms like vibrato,

Phaser Sweep, or High Pass Filter Cut Off, but don't worry.

After adjusting one of the sliders, you can click the Play

button to hear the effect your changes have made on the sound.

You can also a shortcut, Cmd+1, to play the sound at any time.

[SOUND]

[BLANK_AUDIO]

[SOUND].

At the top of the app, we're able to

select the waveform to modify the sound at it's core.

The waveform is the shape of the sound.

I like to think of them as different instruments.

There are four different waveforms to

choose from, square, sawtooth, sign and noise.

Let's select Play On Change so we don't have

to keep clicking the play button over and over again.

Now listen to the differences of each waveform on the single powerups sound.

[SOUND].

You'll notice that the noise wave is much different than the other three.

Noise is best suited for making harsh

effects, as the sound produced is very degraded.

This is perfect for explosions.

Now we'll begin generating these sounds using the buttons on the sidebar.

Since we're using randomly generated sounds, your

work may sound a little different than mine.

First let's find a shooting sound.

[SOUND].

This sounds good for our laser, however, it may be a bit too long.

We can adjust the sustained time to make it a little quicker.

[SOUND].

Since we'll be firing rapidly, it's important

to make sure our shooting sound isn't overwhelming.

Annoying sound effects are a sure fire way

of getting users to switch their phone to vibrate.

Now that we have our first sound effect, let's mark it for later.

By clicking and dragging here you can set a star rating

for the sounds to keep track of the ones you like.

Let's highlight the sound effects we want to export

so they'll be easy to find when we're done.

Now for an explosion.

[SOUND].

This one's perfect, it's simple and can work for blowing up

the ships in mid air and when they crash into the moon.

Don't forget to highlight it.

It's a good idea to distinguish the damages

being taken when the dog hits the surface.

So let's add a hit hurt sound in there as well.

[SOUND].

This might not sound like much but little details go a long way.

I'm going to extend the decay time so the sound is more recognizable.

[SOUND].

Let's highlight this sound now.

Lastly, let's create a select sound for the title screen and game over screen.

[SOUND].

I wanna switch the waveform to sine to create a softer sound.

Let's increase the sustain time of it.

And I like my menu effects to have a bit of vibrato.

So let's adjust that now.

[SOUND].

Try bringing the start frequency down.

This will lower the pitch or tone of the sound.

[SOUND].

Now highlight it in the favorites area.

The last thing we need to do is export the files.

Scroll down and select our first laser

shoot sound [SOUND], then select the export button.

Let's name this file Laser and save it in a convenient location.

Now click export wave and our file is ready to go.

Follow these steps to export the remaining sound effects in our list.

Okay, we're all done.

Now that we've got our sound effects ready to

go, let's make some music to go along with them.