Jfxr: A browser tool to create sound effects for games | Hacker News Reader

Jfxr: A browser tool to create sound effects for games

jfxr.frozenfractal.com

53 pointsrinesh18 comments

I've seen SFXR before, and while I can see the point of using these tools for things like prototypes or quick game jam entries, I am absolutely appalled when the sounds end up in otherwise high quality titles. Why ruin a good, otherwise beautiful game with these unimaginative sound effects?

My issue is not as much that the sound effects are cheap or boring as the fact that I can immediately tell where they come from, and that it could easily have been avoided by paying a sound designer an almost negligible amount of money to make sounds that somewhat fit the theme of the game in a more profound sense.

Which titles specifically?

To OP: Broken in Safari OSX for me, works in Firefox.

I can't really think of any specifically except Hoplite right now. An absolutely great playing and great looking game where the author went as far as having it scored with an original soundtrack, but still stuck with those sound effects.

Not sure if you expected me to have compiled a list.

The original motivation for SFXR is the number of games produced that were simply silent. SFXR changed that to not silent.

It sounds cheap to say this, I'll admit. But if you want a better world you've got to make the tools that make that better world really easy to make, which is what sfxr is or was. Maybe we address this by making a tool that makes better sounds than sfxr. On the other hand, maybe we address this by making a tool that makes it really easy for game devs to work with sound designers.

> The original motivation for SFXR is the number of games produced that were simply silent. SFXR changed that to not silent.

Sure, it lowers the barrier of entry when it comes to sound design. I think it has worked well for a few games, and as I said it makes perfect sense for something like ludum dare or just prototyping.

But when you want to polish your game and have a vision and/or a budget of any sort, I don't see how the sfxr sound effects aren't the first thing to go. Sfxr makes it all a lot simpler, but it sometimes strikes me as arrogant to use it for an otherwise polished product, since in my mind it means that these game developers don't recognize that it isn't trivial to create a good set of sound effects.

+1 on creating a tool that makes collaboration easier. I have a friend who does this professionally, and the process usually involves manual revisioning by renaming files or timestamped folder names and moving them to dropbox. The last project I saw him work on actually had an in-house tool to manage volume levels and delay times, though.

sometimes the barrier to entry is simply not knowing anyone you can ask. I'd almost suggest something like 99 designs but, the problem with that site is it significantly devalues the work of artists. I would hope that any tool that surfaces for this niche is more respectful to the craft than that.

I remember another tool like this, for 8-bit/lofi sound fx.

http://www.superflashbros.net/as3sfxr/

Given the title they might be related?

it started out with sfxr [1]

then the clones started

the mac clone cfxr [2]

the flash clone, you linked to.

the fork of that, called bfxr [3]

the ios port [4]

the (much better, in my opinion than OP), js port [5]

sfxr.js [6]

sfmaker [7]

and I'm sure there's a handful of others. I think I'm missing one js clone- along with a number of game engine libraries designed to accept the source parameters for a sfxr sound or bfxr sound and generate them in real time in the game as opposed to storing a wav.

The opportunities for this genre of program are opening up now that the webaudio api is just starting to mature (though it has a fair way to go).

SFXR gives you a very very basic array of synthesis techniques. There's a lot more that is possible here- Plus the whole field of FM synthesis techniques (think genesis/megadrive era sound effects), game engine libraries are yet to be addressed in the browser, as the tech making that possible is still just around the corner in the next browser releases.

[1]: http://www.drpetter.se/project_sfxr.html

[2]: http://thirdcog.eu/apps/cfxr

[3]: http://www.bfxr.net

[4]: https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/sfxr/id349840825?mt=8

[5]: http://github.grumdrig.com/jsfxr/

[6]: http://humphd.github.io/sfxr.js/

[7]: http://www.html5gamedevs.com/topic/757-sfmaker-html5-sound-e...

How would I make a bell sound? (I know nothing about audio)

Can audio / sounds be copyrighted?

> How would I make a bell sound? (I know nothing about audio)

Frequency / phase modulation is notoriously useful for bell sounds. The idea is that you modulate the frequency or phase offset of a tone with another, tuned harmonically. I don't think that this tool is appropriate.

> Can audio / sounds be copyrighted?

Yes

The closest I got, and it's terrible.

    http://jfxr.frozenfractal.com/#{"_version":1,"_name":"Powerup 16","_locked":[],"sampleRate":44100,"attack":0,"sustain":0.29,"sustainPunch":0,"decay":0.95,"tremoloDepth":0,"tremoloFrequency":1,"frequency":1600,"frequencySweep":0,"frequencyDeltaSweep":100,"repeatFrequency":9.4,"frequencyJump1Onset":40,"frequencyJump1Amount":0,"frequencyJump2Onset":66,"frequencyJump2Amount":0,"harmonics":3,"harmonicsFalloff":0.5,"waveform":"sine","interpolateNoise":true,"vibratoDepth":0,"vibratoFrequency":427,"squareDuty":100,"squareDutySweep":0,"flangerOffset":33,"flangerOffsetSweep":-2,"bitCrush":16,"bitCrushSweep":0,"lowPassCutoff":22050,"lowPassCutoffSweep":0,"highPassCutoff":0,"highPassCutoffSweep":0,"compression":1,"normalization":true,"amplification":100}

(Yes, that is one huge URL)

EDIT: I put the URL in a CODE tag. That fixes the broken page, but breaks the URLification.

Just played around with it a little more, came up with this:

  http://jfxr.frozenfractal.com/#{"_version":1,"_name":"Powerup 16","_locked":[],"sampleRate":44100,"attack":0,"sustain":0.29,"sustainPunch":0,"decay":0.95,"tremoloDepth":0,"tremoloFrequency":1,"frequency":510,"frequencySweep":0,"frequencyDeltaSweep":100,"repeatFrequency":8.7,"frequencyJump1Onset":40,"frequencyJump1Amount":0,"frequencyJump2Onset":66,"frequencyJump2Amount":0,"harmonics":5,"harmonicsFalloff":0.06,"waveform":"sine","interpolateNoise":true,"vibratoDepth":140,"vibratoFrequency":427,"squareDuty":100,"squareDutySweep":0,"flangerOffset":33,"flangerOffsetSweep":-2,"bitCrush":16,"bitCrushSweep":0,"lowPassCutoff":10100,"lowPassCutoffSweep":0,"highPassCutoff":0,"highPassCutoffSweep":0,"compression":1,"normalization":true,"amplification":100}

I was going for a tolling kind of bell.

I got somewhat close by starting with the Pickup/coin preset (can click multiple times for a random version).

This site has a good amount of premade bells with the waveform graphs: http://www.audioblocks.com/search/?srch-type=sfx&categories=...

http://chuck.cs.princeton.edu/

Here's one for you.

    http://jfxr.frozenfractal.com/#%7B%22_version%22%3A1%2C%22_name%22%3A%22Powerup%2016%22%2C%22_locked%22%3A%5B%5D%2C%22sampleRate%22%3A44100%2C%22attack%22%3A0%2C%22sustain%22%3A0.29%2C%22sustainPunch%22%3A0%2C%22decay%22%3A1.58%2C%22tremoloDepth%22%3A0%2C%22tremoloFrequency%22%3A1%2C%22frequency%22%3A700%2C%22frequencySweep%22%3A0%2C%22frequencyDeltaSweep%22%3A0%2C%22repeatFrequency%22%3A0%2C%22frequencyJump1Onset%22%3A0%2C%22frequencyJump1Amount%22%3A0%2C%22frequencyJump2Onset%22%3A0%2C%22frequencyJump2Amount%22%3A0%2C%22harmonics%22%3A5%2C%22harmonicsFalloff%22%3A0.06%2C%22waveform%22%3A%22sine%22%2C%22interpolateNoise%22%3Atrue%2C%22vibratoDepth%22%3A6%2C%22vibratoFrequency%22%3A1%2C%22squareDuty%22%3A100%2C%22squareDutySweep%22%3A0%2C%22flangerOffset%22%3A33%2C%22flangerOffsetSweep%22%3A-2%2C%22bitCrush%22%3A16%2C%22bitCrushSweep%22%3A0%2C%22lowPassCutoff%22%3A10100%2C%22lowPassCutoffSweep%22%3A0%2C%22highPassCutoff%22%3A0%2C%22highPassCutoffSweep%22%3A0%2C%22compression%22%3A1%2C%22normalization%22%3Atrue%2C%22amplification%22%3A100%7D

Fiddle with the "frequency" slider to make it more or less high-pitched.

That's really good, thanks!

I put the frequency at 310 Hz and it sounded very close to what I was looking for.

It would be nice if this tool had arrows on the end of the sliders for finer adjustments.

Author of jfxr here -- wow, made it to the front page of Hacker News briefly, my 5 minutes of fame!

Were you looking for something like this? http://jfxr.frozenfractal.com/#%7B%22_version%22%3A1%2C%22_n...

Starting from a default sine shape, I set some sustain + punch for the initial, loud part, then a long decay to make it fade out. Then added some harmonics (overtones) to get it to sound more natural. I fiddled with the flanger to add a metallic ringing effect, and finally, I set a low-pass filter to take some of the edge off.

I was thinking more of a boxing bell, like the 3rd one on this page: http://mp3skull.com/mp3/boxing_bell.html named 79074^boxing bell mp3

Nice tool BTW, I could see lots of areas for expansions such as community sharing and allowing people to edit sounds somehow and then share their version, with ratings of course. Also some way to upload an existing MP3 and then edit that would be awesome.

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