[D&D any ed] Are there any programs for sound effects on your laptop?

[newbDM]

Hi,

Does anyone know a program for making sound effects? I bring my Macbook to all the games I run, and I basically do everything from planning encounters to mapping my setting on it. I have parallels on it, so I run both Leopard and XP on it.

I have some old computer speakers I was just about to throw out, but then I got this idea for making sound effects during a game. At the time in my head I was planning a small-scale battle scene inside the PCs' home city (about 100 armed enemies who managed to sneak inside the city vs. 56 town guards) which they would need to intervene in, and for some reason I thought to myself "Wouldn't it be cool if there was sword-clashing sounds like in Age of Empires?". Then my mind starting thinking about squeaking door sounds as the party enters ancient rooms, explosion sounds the next time the PCs blow something up, boulder falling sound, pixie sound (I am planning a SNES Zelda Easter Egg with homemade pot minis), door being slammed opened sounds, etc, etc, etc.

So, anyone know know of a program which can do this? Even better, a program designed for just this?


Also, anyone know where I can find old SNES/NES RPG sounding songs? Preferably full albums/collection? I feel that the original FFs' music is the best RPG music ever.


Thank you all in advance for any help!

[valadil]

I've had an easier time yoinking sound effects out of video games. I haven't done this recently, but a lot of games of yesteryear used something kinda like a zip file for storing their sounds. You could just browse that and take whatever effects you wanted. You'll have to look for instructions specific to each game though.

[RTGoodman]

Just Google "sound effect mp3s," "sound effect downloads," or something like that. If you don't want to download stuff, you can buy CDs and/or CD-ROMS of sound effects at a lot of places. Valadil's probably right, too - I think I remember my old Age of Empires game having easily-accessible sound files of swords, shouts, and whatnot.

[Dr Bwaa]

rtg is right about Age of Empires: all of those games' sound files are very easy to access, not zipped or anything. This is how my friends and I have an awful lot more taunts than come standard... and why so many of them are soundbites from Starfox 64

I agree that video games are good places to grab sound effects from. My suggestion would be to find an emulator site (I recommend emuparadise.org), download the emulation of the game you want, and then search around for the sound files (the internets can probably help you for finding sounds in the more popular games). This will get you your FF fix, at least =)

[Iku Rex]

It's easy enough to find sound effects online. Many are in "wav" format. Google is your friend. After you download them (right click -> save) you can play them in a music player.

While we're on the subject of wavs I recommend http://www.dailywav.com/index.php . No sound effects as such IIRC, but lots of TV and movie wavs.

[Beleriphon]

http://www.a1freesoundeffects.com/

http://www.a1freesoundeffects.com/

http://www.partnersinrhyme.com/pir/PIRsfx.shtml

That should be a start. As for the program: Macbook = iTunes.

At least for the most part. If you want something to edit sound effects I cant really think of any. But iTunes, or any music player, should let you create a custom play lists and just loop them or randomize them as necessary.

[Dr Bwaa]

amendment following the "editing sound clips" comment:

for this purpose, go download audacity. It's free and very very good.