Hello there friends! Long time no see.
I've been messing with sound, music, composing and playing for many years. I even instructed a few courses. I want to share a few insights with you, regarding sound effects, music, and integrating those into games. I can elaborate on each forever, so I just summed it up to a few short basics.
Music is a Tool
As you all must know, music in games is more than a simple progression of notes. It sets the atmosphere for your scene: Dramatic, Sad, Happy, Action-Packed and so on. A good example for this is, actually, Half Life.
If my memory serves me well, you could put your old HL1 CD into your stereo and listen to the game's soundtrack. Many people will remember where the music appeared in the game, and what happened in that scene. This teaches us that music goes hand in hand with the scene, and if the combination is successful, the music will have a huge impact on the player.
Music is NOT ambient sound - but it can still be used as a tool in many different situations, like:
1. Irony (Fallout 3 for instance - you can hear cheery and fun 40s music while wandering through what's left of the world)
2. Comedy (If anyone remembers, GTA1 had original songs which were very funny)
3. Communicating with the Player (starting an ubeat electronic music can tell the player it's time to bust loose and kick some ass, for example.)
4. Adding little touches to your scene (Remember the house in the old Italy map from CS, where you could hear some guitar playing, or an opera in the jukebox?)
5. Setting the mood (Ever heard the music playing on Silent Hill 4: The Room's menu?)
Remember that music can express feelings and make the players feel them as well. A large part of the players' impression from the game will come from the way the music makes them feel, combined with the game itself of course. Before writing a score (or finding suitable music) for your game you must first consider what is the general feeling that the player should have playing the scene. The music can make the player feel eased, optimistic, pumped, adrenaline-filled, relaxed, sophisticated (like in a heist movie) and there's really no end to what you can do. Just make sure you plan it in advance - before you start building your scene.
Since there's already a thread about creating a soundtrack for your game, I'll skip the subject and move on.
Ambient Sounds are a MUST!
If you're going to make a scene beliavable, you simply can't make do without proper ambient sounds.
Even if you decide to have complete silence as your ambient, make it so that the player will notice it! The lack of any noise is also an ambient (and a darn creepy one at that).
The best ambient I ever ran into was in the Cradle level in Thief 3: Deadly Shadows. It was so damn scary that I couldn't play more than twenty minutes in a row! I was frightened. That's the meaning of ambient: creating atmosphere by giving out little details through SOUND, not visually.
The best way to get a good ambient is to imagine yourself in a the scene you're creating, but imagine it's very real. Try making out the tiniest details about the scene, write them down, and see which of those can be conveyed through sound. The sounds don't matter, they can be anything from dripping to a movie soundtrack playing in another apartment. Also, the players don't have to be aware of the ambient sounds, as long as the little details are getting through to them. Play some GTA 4 and listen to all the little details - people talking, cars sounding their horns in the distance, sirens from the far ends of the city.
How to use ambient sounds:
Ambient sounds can help you create a sense of magnitude, and give depth to the game world. For example in CoD you can most of the time hear other battles happening elsewhere, which let you believe you're only a part of the war and not the only battle fought in the area.
Techniques like these are very simple to implement and they add tons of depth to your game.
Adding depth to your scene: AUDIO CLUES - Consider the environment and what sounds you can expect from it. If you wish the player to think he's in a big place, make sure he gets audio clues from ELSEWHERE, a place which doesn't really exist in the game, but can be inferred from the ambient sounds. See examples in the previous two paragraphs.
Also, audio clues can pretty much define the the size and nature of a scene, be it a bustling city, a narrow cave (hisses, rats, bug sounds, ehoes) or an epic battle (swords clashing, battle calls, etc.)
Communicating with the players by creating TENSION: Letting the player hear a monster they'll soon meet will build tension WHILE letting the players get ready for a meaningful encounter. This techniuqe is very wide-spread and is a great example of using tension to deliver a message.
Let the player hear what dangers lay in the scene, like a brigde that's about to collapse or a water dam that's about to burst. This will add tension, a sense of urgency and will complete the scene.
Sound Effects
As we all know, sounds effects play a crucial part in every media that suggests motion, even comics, which spell out the sound effects right on the page.
Sound effects are the coolest thing about audio, because you can always create them from completely unrelated things. For instance, the sound of your door slamming could be used for an old rifle shot, or a low cough can also fit a monster grawling in your game (IF it fits, of course). You can always find your effects in the most unlikely places, and you'll do oh-so-many stupid things in the process of recording them. Personally, I found that I could get tons of effects from my electric guitar.
My advice to you is to build your own database of effect recordings. Record, edit, create them yourself - every strange sound you make will someday be of use. You can also retouch them to make them fit to your needs, using a wave editor (my favourite is Audition by Adobe). Don't be afraid of experimenting with synths and sequencers (like FL Studio) and save everything you make. Try organizing it in a way that'll help you find your effect from among the thousands you'll one day have.
The hardest part about Sound Effects is recording them. Keep in mind that we only care about the end result, so the process of recording is important, but it's not a criteria. If you manage to get your sounds in good quality, you'll probably retouch them using wave editors anyway, so make sure you create a hi-definition copy of your sounds. Real pro's need to think ahead about thinks like Dolby, EAX, Surround or other sound technologies - and for that you'll need a real hi-quality microphone, and a real studio. I believe that you can make do with regular sounds and recording methods, you just have to be creative and make sure your sounds are top-quality. Use codecs like FLAC or loseless OGG instead of MP3s to save your sounds, and until you start your own big-budget game studio, make up for the amateur recordings with effects, filters, editing and pure creativity. I assure you that you'll be very proud when you manage to create the effect you wanted, with a sophisticated combination of simple means!
But effects are not only pre-recorded sounds, but also the way they are played: sounds will echo in certain places and depending on the architecture. A lot of physical phenomenon can be experienced through sound, like two objects passing one another very quickly, or slow-motion. These effects are usually not very hard to create, but they do require some programming. Do not pass them out -they're a very useful tool.
For instance, in the recent Source game Zeno Clash, the game sometimes slows down as you're about to take a hit, giving it a nice sense of drama - but alas! The slowdown has no sound effect, which kind of ruins the entire slow-mo. Remember the ending of HL2? Now THOSE were some sound effects. Go play it again and see what you can learn!
Well friends that's all I have time for right now. There's plenty more, I'll return and discuss other elements, but I think this here was a very nice start and introduction. For any questions feel free to PM me.
P.S. I just started a new blog, feel free to check it out! (link in my sig).
Peace out -