sfxr - sound effects for all!
Been tinkering with this over the last couple of days.
EDIT: I’ve put up a proper page for sfxr on my homepage: http://www.cyd.liu.se/~tompe573/hp/project_sfxr.html
As the audio geek I am, I find it a bit unfortunate that most LD48 entries are usually silent. I figure it’s probably due to the authors not having a quick ‘n’ easy application at hand for making sound effects and therefore neglecting that aspect of the game in favor of code and, usually, graphics. Even simple sound effects can add a huge amount of immersion and fun to a game, though.
What I present here is, if you will, an MS Paint for sound effects… or something along those lines. It’s meant to make it dead easy for anyone to whip up a few simple sound effects and save them as .WAV files for playback using most game/media libraries like SDL or pygame.
Basic usage involves clicking the left-most buttons to automatically generate random sounds loosely targeted at certain categories. For more advanced users it’s possible to spend some additional time to manually create fairly varied and interesting sound effects.
The interface is based entirely around sliders for controlling sound parameters, along with a few buttons. Even if you don’t want to spend time learning about all the sliders you can still have some fun just hammering away at them and listening to the various sounds that come out.
Hopefully this will mean that there’s no longer any valid excuse for anyone to get N/A in sound!
Download: sfxr.zip (win32, 48 kB) - Latest update: 2007-12-15 (see screenshot)
EDIT: Apparently it sort of works in wine 0.9.50, though with some stability issues. Fortunately though, the good Gerry JJ/mjau managed to port it properly. Here’s a copy of his post:
I ported DrPetter’s excellent sfxr (info) to SDL, so it can now be compiled and run natively in Linux!
Download: sfxr-sdl.tar.gz
Just type ‘make’ to compile. You need SDL and GTK 2.
Source code is obviously included in the portable archive, and anyone is free to use or modify it for anything they please. There’s no need to credit me, although it would be nice if you did. I would also appreciate a little email note if you do create something cool based on my code.
If I get around to making a little update I’ll include source code in the win32 archive as well.
Tags: effects, explosions, fun, laser, random, sfxr, sound, tools
December 13th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
Fan-Freaking-Tastic!
December 13th, 2007 at 7:40 pm
Wow, so is this kinda like Musagi for sfx?
I’m definitely going to look into this a bit before teh compo tomorrow, but will probably resort to mic’d sfx unless this is just toooo easy
December 13th, 2007 at 9:50 pm
Freaking awesome
This could be made in a really big app.
I’d love to have something like this, that lets me
a) create a general sound like your app does
and b) use that sound MOD-like to do small sound jingles
December 14th, 2007 at 1:55 am
Oh man, I’ve been DYING for something like this. Thank you! <3
It would be great if there was a way to copy/paste settings to/from other people without having to send a wave.
December 14th, 2007 at 2:37 am
this totally kicks ass, I had all of my old games factory sound files copied to my pc in case I needed them, but this covers just about everything I could need, heck if I have time I might make something to generate some music with this stuff
December 14th, 2007 at 8:56 am
This made my day!! Brilliant!
December 14th, 2007 at 12:10 pm
aggggh! Windows????
let’s see if it will run in my vm….
December 15th, 2007 at 6:01 pm
This is incredible! Thanks a lot, you saved project as far as ever getting sound goes
December 15th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
Great tool! My only complaint is that it’s too fun to play with and I probably lost a good half hour to mutating sounds..of course that was probably your plan all along >=P look forward to familiar pewpewpews from my game.
December 16th, 2007 at 1:44 pm
Cool ! Looking forward to some “export to mp3/ogg” function though
December 16th, 2007 at 2:00 pm
You rule BIG time
this is just plain great ! Even for lofi/techno music making !
December 16th, 2007 at 2:14 pm
Really nice. I’m going to join the suggestion bandwagon and add that you could have a displayed image of the generated waveform like windows recorder or goldwave or whatnot.
December 16th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
Plain awesome!
Those generators were a nice idea as well.
December 16th, 2007 at 3:53 pm
Fantastic. A must have.
December 16th, 2007 at 4:22 pm
I got your app to run in Linux by typing “./sfxr.exe” at the terminal, but no sound. Oh well.
December 16th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
Very, very cool. No more silent games ever again!
December 16th, 2007 at 8:32 pm
[...] I’ve just downloaded a program called SFXR by DrPetter. Windows only unfortunately, but really worth having. It’s a really simple [...]
December 16th, 2007 at 8:47 pm
[...] Tim I see that DrPetter has posted sfxr, a “a quick ‘n’ easy application … for making sound effects”. I haven’t [...]
December 16th, 2007 at 10:09 pm
Oh. Just discovered this bunch of comments now. Thanks for the kind words
Everyone who had concerns about portability or program features should make sure they get the latest version (the one with the randomize button, wohoo) and see if it’s been resolved.
Nathan: The sfs files are rather small, but not ascii/”copy-pastable”… small enough to email easily though, and be worked on + explored by other people.
Endurion: MOD-like? Doesn’t seem like quite the right place for it, have you tried musagi?
Popoyt: Ogg export would be quite possible, but in the meantime use oggdrop.
Basically the main goal of the program was to be dead simple to use, without lots of crazy features that almost nobody would need. Sometimes it would be nice to have the option of stringing sounds together in a more complex way, but there are always proper audio editors where you can process the exported sounds. For jingles and musical bits you’re instantly looking at something much more complicated as you need to specify notes and timing etc, so that’s probably best done in some kind of dedicated music app/composer/tracker.
Thanks again. I’ll update this post if I make significant changes/improvements to the program.
December 16th, 2007 at 11:58 pm
This is a great application!!!
I’ve been using FamiTracker to generate 8-bit sound but yours are much easier. A life saver for indie or 8-bit game developer.
Thank you for such a great tool
December 17th, 2007 at 12:20 am
Brilliant, absolutely brilliant. Here’s hoping that later versions will include more generated options like sword slashes/gun shots/etc. Very Cool.
December 17th, 2007 at 2:08 am
[...] one of the most useful application that a game developer could have. DrPetter has written a program which randomly generates a sound effect based on selected options and slider settings. The results [...]
December 17th, 2007 at 2:38 am
amazing piece of software
December 17th, 2007 at 2:48 am
Yes. Thumbs up!
December 17th, 2007 at 5:22 am
Great software!
Thanks.
December 17th, 2007 at 5:42 am
Hi!
Nice application :-). I’ve also made a similar application called Slashstone SoundFX Builder, which you can download from
http://www.badsectoracula.com/projects/soundfx/
It uses a different approach to sound generator. I used it to make the crude effects of my game, Nikwi
December 17th, 2007 at 5:54 am
I was able to compile the cource on linux after installing the gtk2 dev libraries. You should add a license to this and someone should add it to the distros. This seems like a very useful tool.
December 17th, 2007 at 6:59 am
[...] one of the most useful application that a game developer could have. DrPetter has written a program which randomly generates a sound effect based on selected options and slider settings. The results [...]
December 17th, 2007 at 7:36 am
Awesome Awesome Awesome!
My poor game development students will love this!
December 17th, 2007 at 10:23 am
Great tool!
Look forward to using it!
December 17th, 2007 at 10:32 am
[...] yes! The ever-inventive Dr. Petter has released a free sound program that lets you easily create retro-style sound effects: What I present here is, if you will, an MS [...]
December 17th, 2007 at 10:37 am
DrPetter, I MUST congratulate you on creating such an *truly and most splendidly* excellent little program called sfxr for creating some really hot sound effects for retro-game developers and also for even inspiring game developers alike!!! I have tried it at least twice, and it creates some RATHER impressive arcade-quality/8-bit sounds… and I sure will be using it a lot to add to my game developing tools, definitely!!! ^-^ !
I am working right now on developing the world’s very first original Native American shmup entitled “Native Legend Shorakee”, and with your sound-effects program, it will richly help MUCH greatly and then some in my original creations like this game, and I will keep you posted about the project on my site (http://aapproj.phatcode.net) as it develops!!
In the meantime, my man, God bless you big-time for creating this phenomenal and simple-to-use sound effects creator/editor, and my splendid congratulations to you on such an VERY awesome job well done and then some!!! (^-^)v !!
December 17th, 2007 at 10:54 am
Truly fantastic piece of software! I’ll be using this in my future projects and will be sure to give you a mention on my website later in the week
I honestly can’t see how you could improve sfxr (apart from somehow further improving the range / complexity of generated sounds), but if you do continue working on it, I wish you all the best.
*goes off to fiddle with it some more*
December 17th, 2007 at 11:19 am
Excellent tool! I try to utilise some effects in a game. Reminds me at vorgotten days when I played with the C64 sound chip. A pimped up version for longer effects would be cool, though.
December 17th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
has anyone tried running the linux version using fink or something in osx? looks like a rockin app btw.
December 17th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
This is amazing! Thanks! Heck now I want to make a pixel-art platformer just to go with these awesome sounds.
December 17th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
An essential piece of software that every game developer should have. Brilliant!
December 17th, 2007 at 10:36 pm
Do you intend to make a mac version? Pleaaaaaase… :p
December 18th, 2007 at 2:26 am
The Commodore-like font is a nice touch, heh.
December 18th, 2007 at 8:03 am
bolig/Benoit: There’s nothing Linux-specific about the SDL port, perhaps except for the use of GTK for the file dialogs. If you’ve got both SDL and GTK on your Mac, it should compile if you tweak the makefile a bit.
December 18th, 2007 at 12:30 pm
OH YES!!!!! This is awesome! Linux version too!
I’m a confirmed but currently feeling a bit lazy synth head, but I just love tools like this! “Randomize” should be a function on just about every synth out there.
Thanks so much!
December 18th, 2007 at 1:31 pm
Huzzah!
http://www.timdoug.com/sfxr-sdl-macosx-intel-10.5-alpha.zip
It’s very hackish right now (intel/10.5 only), but all the functions work. Make sure to read the readme! I’ll make it 10.3+ and Universal when I’m done with exams; keep an eye on my website.
Cheers!
-timdoug
December 19th, 2007 at 12:47 am
[...] has released sfxr, a sound effect generator created for LD48, a bi-annual 48 hour solo game development competition. [...]
December 19th, 2007 at 3:28 pm
[...] Link [...]
December 19th, 2007 at 3:43 pm
this is a lot of fun … easy to make fodder for piggy tracker =)
i suppose since this is only for sound effects, there’s no way to determine the frequency of the sound (to use it as a lead or bass instrument in a tracker)
December 20th, 2007 at 1:31 am
[...] browsing the indiegamer forums i found a post about sfxr wich is a little tool that generates sound effects. You just select a category of sound effect like [...]
December 20th, 2007 at 5:04 am
Does anyone have the zip file? Since I found the link to SFXR.zip about 24hrs ago, the http://www.cyd.liu.se domain has been unaccessible. I want to try it out!
December 20th, 2007 at 6:53 am
i get an error compiling on linux here
sdlkit.h: In function âvoid error(const char*, unsigned int, const char*)â:
sdlkit.h:13: error: âexitâ was not declared in this scope
sdlkit.h: In function âvoid sdlinit()â:
sdlkit.h:131: error: âatexitâ was not declared in this scope
make: *** [sfxr] Error 1
probably something pretty basic in a header or something, but i couldn’t track it down.
b
December 20th, 2007 at 8:53 am
@PROTMAN, I couldn’t download the file, too. But the SDL port mentioned in the post contains a Windows compiled EXE. Works fine for me.
December 20th, 2007 at 1:41 pm
Hi everyone,
I ported timdoug’s Leopard/Intel port to Tiger/PPC. Everything _seems_ to work. I also made sure to make it so settings saved with Intel boxes (including Windows) work on PPC machines. It’s PPC only, and only tested on 10.4.
App only: http://www.absoluteterritory.org/software/sfxr-mac-ppc.zip
Xcode Project:http://www.absoluteterritory.org/software/sfxr.tar.bz2
Hope it will be useful to those of us who use older Macs.
December 20th, 2007 at 7:52 pm
nice tool!
thanks to the author, and the two guys who posted mac versions. i’m running tiger on my intel mac, i found that volt’s ppc app appeared to work fine in rosetta - but i’ve also used his xcode project to compile an intel version. i didn’t change anything except telling xcode to build intel (i actually asked it to make a universal binary, but it didn’t seem to want to). i’ve not done thorough testing but had a bit of a play and it seems to work fine.
so, tiger-compatible intel version:
http://www.mediafire.com/?391wiynwrly
(sorry for the crap free web-hosting, feel free to mirror)
December 20th, 2007 at 7:56 pm
just realised, i didn’t alter the readme in the zip i just posted, so it still claims to be a ppc version. no biggie
December 20th, 2007 at 9:58 pm
Excellent stuff!
The only extra feature I could really want is the ability to easily (no need to tweak settings) generate clean looping sounds for engine noises and such.
December 21st, 2007 at 8:17 am
I made a game and used your utility for a few sounds, here is the post with the link back to you: http://www.justnbusiness.com/Blogs/Drop_In.aspx
December 21st, 2007 at 10:26 pm
[...] Ludum Dare » Blog Archive » sfxr - sound effects for all! (tags: audio freeware gamedev music tools) [...]
December 22nd, 2007 at 1:10 pm
sfxr: un generador de efectos de sonido…
sfxr es un sencillo generador de efectos sonoros de pequeño tamaño y sencillísimo uso; un programa verdaderamente útil para el programador de juegos….
December 23rd, 2007 at 9:06 am
[...] routines from the textbox code, allowing me to reuse the box style in other UI elements. Oh, and I messed around with sfxr a tad and made a few sound effects, only about two of which are included. Press Z to hear an [...]
December 25th, 2007 at 12:04 pm
Excellent, thank you. I’ll be using this for my upcoming game.
December 26th, 2007 at 8:16 am
This is brilliant! Wonderfully quick and simple to use for spot effects, which is exactly what I was after. Many thanks!
January 2nd, 2008 at 4:08 pm
This is awesome, it reminds me of Shoot ‘Em Up Construction Kit’s sound editor from waaaay back on the Atari ST and Amiga, anyone remember that? Or am I telling my own age? Well.. I was 3-5 years old when I had it, so nya!
January 3rd, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Feel free to read an Interview with DrPetter on this SFXR at Digital Tools: http://digitaltools.node3000.com/5minutes/tomas_pettersson_on_sfxr_and_the_ludumdare_48hour_game_competition.php
January 5th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
[...] feeding finished the Ludum Dare contest’s blog, I institute a nifty lowercase agency which generates 8-bitish sfx, without me having to undergo [...]
January 5th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
What an amazingly sexy little program!
Look forward to hearing it all over my percussion bits in the future
January 6th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
Very nice program, it is much faster and easier than anything I’ve ever used before! Thank you very much!
January 7th, 2008 at 4:23 am
[...] Sfxr von DrPetter ist ein kleines Tool, mit dem man auf ganz einfache Weise Effekte und Klänge im typischen 8-Bit-Spiele-Sound erzeugen kann. Das Ganze funktioniert über Schieberegler, mit denen sich Dauer, Frequenzen und diverse Filter einstellen lassen. Zudem lassen sich über Buttons Zufall-Sounds und Klänge aus Kategorien wie Pickup, Shoot, Powerup, Explosion und Jump generieren. [...]
January 11th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
Downloaded and compiled with no problems, and works great!
( ubuntu 7.10, previously had to do a sudo apt-get install libsdl1.2-dev libgtk2.0-dev g++ )
Thank you so much, cheers!
January 24th, 2008 at 5:09 am
[...] a month ago, sfxr was [...]
January 24th, 2008 at 6:46 am
The SDL port failed to start on my system, I needed to patch it.
Look here for the solution: http://blog.viridian-project.de/2008/01/24/retro-sound-effects-with-sfxr-sdl/
January 29th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
[...] Audacity. For the sound effects, I used DrPetter’s lovely retro sound effect generator, sfxr. If you happen to play guitar, you might be interested in the guitar tab for the in-game [...]
February 3rd, 2008 at 9:29 am
I’ve updated the SDL port with a fix for the SDL_OpenAudio issue (same dl link as before). Also, cancelling a save dialog would save to a random filename, fixed that too (thanks vegard =)).
February 8th, 2008 at 4:17 am
I have to try this out!! so much good feedback
February 9th, 2008 at 5:40 am
Thanks for the app. Incredibly useful and simple to use.
February 15th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
[...] best parts are the sound effects, made with the super awesome indie sound tool sfxr. I don’t know how I ever got by without [...]
February 18th, 2008 at 8:21 am
Very cool! I’ve been wanting something just like this! The principle of allowing quick experimentation is dead-on.
One bug: If I save the file as 22K, both Windows Media Player and Game Maker refuse to recognize it. Oddly, QuickTime has no problem with them. 44K is fine across the board.
February 21st, 2008 at 7:52 am
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February 22nd, 2008 at 2:24 am
[...] Discuss it here [...]
February 23rd, 2008 at 3:09 pm
February 27th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
very simple and useful tool for 8-bit sounds, thanks a lot.
February 29th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
http://www.isoundfx.com
March 1st, 2008 at 12:51 am
I love that tool, ‘cos it’s simple and effective!
I’ve made a retro-flashgame. all sounds have been created with SFXR!
Take a look: http://finefin.com/games/bugbc.htm
March 2nd, 2008 at 12:27 am
Best ever.
Mixed with the swave instrument in Musagi, thing’s get quite interesting
March 21st, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Wow! I just downloaded it not expecting too much and then this! Great work!!!
March 21st, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Wow it’s so good Pro i’ll get it now
March 29th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
thanks so much for this fantastic tool
April 14th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
THANK YOU!
April 22nd, 2008 at 10:30 pm
OMG, this program… this program OMG! DrPetter, this program…OMG!
May 15th, 2008 at 10:54 pm
Something small .. but nonetheless very useful. One might say the degree of usability is in inverse proportion to its size
Great work!
May 18th, 2008 at 9:58 am
I’ve made a real Cocoa port of sfxr, which is an universal Mac binary with proper saving and exporting with mac dialogs and all. Eh, I hope that was okay, I didn’t look for a license on the original source code, and I couldn’t find one now that I looked.
Anyways, I call it cfxr and it’s available at http://thirdcog.eu/apps/cfxr . Enjoy!
May 31st, 2008 at 5:04 am
[...] 地址：http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2007/12/13/sfxr-sound-effects-for-all/ [...]
June 12th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Thanks you very much.
June 25th, 2008 at 8:17 pm
this is wonderful!!!!!!
July 11th, 2008 at 1:23 am
WIKKID!
July 20th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
Will save hours of sound effect tweaking so I can get back to wasting my time playing games. Thank you.
Did two things and sfxr is running on my MacOSX 10.5.4 with no problems:
1) Changed sklkit.h line 95 from,
#include
into,
#include
2) Added the following alias to .bashrc file,
alias sfxr=’cd /Users/ppffffft/Programs/SourceCode/CPP/sfxr-sdl; ./sfxr’ # sfxr must be run from its home directory
July 20th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
Seems the
#include \
and the
#include \
got mangled in prior entry.
August 24th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
I am curious about the chances of getting the gui shrunk a bit and ported to the nintendo ds. It would be great to have a softsynth on the ds that can generate one-shot wav files for use in nitrotracker. iirc, there is an sdl lib available for the nds.
September 8th, 2008 at 11:53 am
What a brilliant little application - perfect for someone like me who doesnt know his reverb from his elbow.
Thanks very much!
October 1st, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Great tool, especially since I was tired of looking at pre-recorded SFX of low quality that didn’t match each other!
November 20th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
Great SFX Tool! Big Thanks to DrPetter!
December 15th, 2008 at 9:10 am
great tool! I will add a post about it soon
January 6th, 2009 at 4:22 am
Brilliant SFX tool saves sooo much time!